Fresh Pea Carbonara Pasta Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Do Italians put peas in their carbonara? ›

Similarly, garlic is found in some recipes, but mostly outside Italy. Outside Italy, variations on carbonara may include green peas, broccoli, tenderstem broccoli, leeks, onions, other vegetables or mushrooms, and may substitute a meat like ham or coppa for the fattier guanciale or pancetta.

This makes fresh pasta ideal for delicate sauces that use melted butter or whole milk as a base, like alfredo or carbonara, which are magnificent with fresh pastas like tagliatelle, pappardelle, and fettuccine.

The golden rule to silky carbonara is to whisk your egg whites so that they're completely incorporated with the egg yolks. This will create a smooth, velvety sauce. As like any pasta dish, including carbonara, cook the pasta perfectly al dente so that it's soft but still firm, with some bite.

What not to put in Spaghetti Carbonara? Don't put garlic, cream, milk or butter. It is not needed. It is fine if you want to make a dish with those ingredients, but if you want to learn how to make this dish correctly, use only pecorino, eggs/egg yolks, black pepper, guanciale, and pasta water.

Crispy pancetta is a traditional ingredient in a carbonara, and its rendered fat adds salt and flavor to the dish. While less traditional, sweet peas add brightness and balance the pork in this recipe. This carbonara comes together quickly, so it's important that your ingredients are prepped before you begin cooking.

Because in the traditional recipe there is no garlic, if you add it you will lower quality of a very good food. Why is there no garlic in carbonara? Because it's an Italian dish, not an Italian-American dish, and Italian cooking does not use garlic as heavily as Italian-American cuisine.

What distinguishes carbonara from other pasta dishes is its technique of combining eggs, hard cheese, cured pork, and black pepper into a rich, silky sauce. This recipe calls for raw eggs that are gently cooked by the hot sauce. If you prefer, you can use pasteurized eggs instead.

Must-have ingredients

that there are only five ingredients: pasta, pork cheek, eggs, cheese and pepper. That's it. A real carbonara does not contain onion, garlic, or cream.

For an extra creamy sauce, it's best to use mostly egg yolks. The egg whites tend to make carbonara watery, but too many egg yolks can make the sauce too custardy. The solution? Five egg yolks and one whole egg.

Does it matter what cheese you use for carbonara? ›

Pecorino Romano: This aged sheep's cheese is always traditionally used in the Roman pastas, and its salty, grassy, earthy flavor is absolutely delicious in carbonara. That said, if Pecorino is unavailable at your local grocery store, you can use Parmesan as a non-traditional substitute.

Carbonara is traditionally made with guanciale, or cured pork jowl, though pancetta is often substituted, and both are fatty, salty and deeply savoury.

And indeed, there's plenty of recipes that cheat by adding in cream. But today, we're making spaghetti carbonara properly, the authentic, traditional way. No cream. Just egg, cheese and a splash of starchy pasta cooking water.

The Italian version doesn't use cream or ham. It is made with pancetta (pork belly meat that is salt cured, also referred to as Italian bacon), Parmigiano Reggiano or pecorino romano cheese, eggs, and black pepper—called the basics.

It's a slight spin on spaghetti alla carbonara, a classic Italian dish. Black pepper is added to the pan with the bacon to toast and develop more flavor. Peas add freshness and a bright pop of color to balance out the rich egg and bacon sauce.

Adding peas to a carbonara is by no means classically Italian, though the combination of black pepper, pancetta, and peas is. I barely cook the peas—a quick blanching in the pasta cooking water right before you pull the pasta is all it takes.

Carbonara is made with guanciale (cured pork), eggs, Pecorino Romano cheese, spaghetti pasta, and lots of black pepper. Italians don't add extra ingredients like cream, milk, garlic, or onions.

The ingredients are simple—just spaghetti (or another long pasta), and the carbonara is made with pancetta or bacon, eggs, Parmesan, a little olive oil, salt and pepper. The silky carbonara sauce is created when the beaten eggs are tossed with the hot pasta and a little fat from the pancetta or bacon.