Begin by freezing the guanciale (or pancetta or bacon) for about 30-45 minutes. This step prevents the fat from melting in your hands and enables you to slice the meat thinly and evenly.
Cut the rind off the guanciale. (Do the same if there’s a hard rind on the pancetta.) We like to slice our guanciale about a 1/4″ thick.
Lay the guanciale flat in a cool 12″ frying pan. Turn the heat to medium high. Cook the guanciale until it just browns on the edges and the fat begins to render. Turn the heat to the lowest setting.
Keep an eye on the pan and remove the pan from the heat if you feel that the meat is close to burning.
Break two eggs, separate the yolks and place the two yolks in a separate bowl with one whole egg.
Grate 1/2 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese. You’ll want to use the finest setting on your box grater. (This should be the setting with the diamonds.)
Add the Pecorino Romano cheese to the bowl with the eggs and whisk until combined.
To begin the pasta, boil about 5 cups of water in a saucepan large enough to fit the pasta.
Important Note
While many recipes call for boiling the pasta in a large amount of water, we use less water for two reasons. First, a smaller amount of water takes less time to recover to a full boil once the pasta is added. Second, the density of starch is greater with less water, which creates a sort of loose slurry that thickens the sauce.
When using a long strand pasta like linguine or spaghetti, it may be easiest to use a 12″ sauté pan to boil the pasta. If, like us, you use a large sauce pan, you’ll still need to bend the long stranded pasta to submerge it all in a small diameter pan in a small amount of boiling water.
Either way, we prefer pans with long handles (like our All-Clad pictured here) since they make it easier to use tongs to remove the pasta from the water.
While the pasta is cooking, position the bowl with the egg and cheese mixture over the boiling water and whisk with a fork, letting the steam from the pot gently heat and emulsify the egg/pecorino mixture. This positioning will help the cheese and egg mixture combine and thicken, preparing the sauce for its final step.
About three minutes before the pasta is fully cooked, raise the heat on the guanciale to medium high.
Add one to two ladles of the pasta water to the pot with the guanciale (about 3/4 cup.)
Once the linguine is cooked to just al dente (you can taste to check), use tongs to transfer the pasta to the pan for finishing.
If you choose to use a colander instead, you can move about 2 cups of the cooked pasta water to a heatproof measuring cup before draining your pasta. Though you may not need the water, it’s good to have some in reserve in case the sauce gets too thick.
Once the guanciale and pasta water are thoroughly mixed with the pasta, immediately take the pan off the heat and slowly add the egg yolk cheese mixture to the pan. Mix the pasta and egg mixture until the sauce emulsifies through the pasta.
You should see the bottom of the pan when you drag a wooden spoon across it. If you find that the sauce is a little thin, you can drag the pan on and off the heat. However, be careful not to leave the sauce over the heat too long. If you do that, the egg yolks will begin to curdle and scramble.
Add pepper to taste. We recommend adding at least a teaspoon or more so that the black specks are prominent throughout the pasta. This is not a recipe where ‘less is more’.
Serve linguine carbonara in individual pasta bowls. You can grate additional Pecorino-Romana on top of the pasta if desired.
