Brief Summary
This video is a guide to making a foolproof carbonara. The chef, Frank Proto, emphasizes the importance of using fresh ingredients and proper techniques to achieve a creamy, flavorful dish. He highlights the key steps, including toasting peppercorns, grating cheese, and mixing the egg and cheese mixture. He also explains the importance of using guanciale, a cured pork cheek, for its fattiness and flavor. The video concludes with a demonstration of how to combine all the ingredients and enjoy the finished carbonara.
- Toasting peppercorns enhances their flavor.
- Using two cheeses, parmesan and pecorino, adds complexity to the sauce.
- Guanciale is essential for its fattiness and flavor.
- Mixing the pasta with the egg and cheese mixture in a bowl helps prevent overcooking.
Frank Proto, a professional chef and culinary instructor, introduces the video and explains that he will be teaching viewers how to make a foolproof carbonara. He emphasizes that while carbonara may seem complicated, it's actually quite simple with the right techniques.
Frank explains that black peppercorns are a crucial ingredient in carbonara and that toasting them brings out a nutty, deep flavor. He demonstrates how to toast the peppercorns over medium-low heat until they become fragrant and start to pop. He emphasizes the importance of moving the peppercorns around to ensure even toasting.
Frank stresses the importance of having all ingredients within reach before starting to cook the pasta. He then demonstrates how to crush the toasted peppercorns using a pan and his body weight. He also explains the importance of grating the cheese using a microplane to achieve a fine texture that will melt smoothly into the sauce. He recommends using two cheeses, parmesan for nuttiness and pecorino for sharpness. He also emphasizes the importance of using room temperature eggs for the carbonara, as cold eggs will slow down the emulsification process.
Frank explains that mixing the eggs and cheese together is a crucial step in creating a smooth and creamy sauce. He demonstrates how to whisk the eggs and cheese together until they form a homogeneous mixture, ensuring that there are no lumps or unmixed ingredients. He also adds a small amount of the toasted peppercorns to the mixture.
Frank introduces guanciale, a cured pork cheek, as the star ingredient of carbonara. He explains that while other cured meats like pancetta or bacon can be used, guanciale is the traditional choice. He demonstrates how to cut the guanciale into large chunks, emphasizing that he wants the pieces to be visible in the finished dish.
Frank explains that he prefers to use dry pasta for carbonara as it holds the sauce well. He recommends using spaghetti for its shape and bite. He demonstrates how to cook the pasta in salted water until it is al dente, meaning it has a slight bite to it. While the pasta cooks, he starts cooking the guanciale in a pan with a little olive oil. He explains that the fat from the guanciale will help emulsify the sauce and make it creamy. He cooks the guanciale until it is light golden brown, ensuring that it retains some chewiness.
Frank explains that he prefers to mix the carbonara in a bowl rather than a pan to prevent the eggs from overcooking. He drains the pasta, reserving some of the pasta water, and adds it to the bowl with the egg and cheese mixture. He then adds the cooked guanciale and mixes everything together using tongs. He emphasizes the importance of mixing the ingredients thoroughly to ensure that the sauce emulsifies and becomes creamy.
Frank finishes the carbonara by adding more toasted peppercorns, pecorino, and parmesan cheese. He then takes a bite and expresses his satisfaction with the dish. He encourages viewers to eat the carbonara while it is hot and to enjoy the creamy, flavorful sauce, the chewy guanciale, and the spicy peppercorns. He concludes by saying that carbonara is a simple dish that requires a little technique and love, and that it is sure to please everyone.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “The Best Pasta Carbonara You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 I'm Frank Proto professional chef and culinary instructor and today we're going to make foolproof carbonara I'm going to teach you how to make carbonara that's luscious creamy and full of flavor this is Carbonara 101 carbonara is one of those dishes that can seem super complicated but in the end it's really easy and all you really need is a few techniques if you follow all of my techniques it'll be foolproof every single time one of the most important ingredients in carbonara is black pepper corns now I like to grind my own but before I grind them I like to toast them and toasting is going to give us this really nice nutty deep black pepper flavor so put it over kind of medium low heat and we're just going to put the pepper corns in until I start to smell that they're fragrant it's just a subtle Nuance that makes this dish so much
0:46 better make sure we're moving our peppercorns around so that they toast evenly so what I'm looking for here is that I can smell my peppercorn's getting fragrant they start to kind of like move around in the pan a little you'll see they'll jump a little right we might hear a little pop and once I hear that first popping I take it off I don't really want to go any further than that cuz then we're going to get it overcooked I'm going to let these cool on this tray and in the meantime I'm going to start prepping my other ingredients one of the keys to a foolproof carbonara is to gather all of your ingredients you need everything within Arms Reach so when I cook my pasta I'm not waiting for anything I can make it right away now that my peppercorns have cooled I can crush them now you could use a pepper grinder if
1:33 you want but I'm going to use the old classic technique I get the pan I hold it down with my hand here body weight down so I'm pushing and rolling almost like you're doing a lever right I'm pushing down on this side and crushing my peppercorn and rolling so I can smell as I Crush that these are super fragrant super nutty that toasting brings out those flavors we get the oils out and I don't want this to be super fine I want it to have some texture to it we're talking about how to take this dish from just kind of a standard dish to just that much better and as a chef grating your own cheese is super important for my carbonara I choose to use two cheeses I'm using parmesan cheese and I'm using peino and I do buy
2:20 the good stuff for this I go to the Italian cheeses if you can get it go for the best cheese you can find I like to use a microplane for this now a microplane is a very fine greater when this cheese melts I want it to be nice and fine I don't want to get shreds in there I want to get this beautiful fine cheese that's going to make my sauce super silky in the end what I like about using two cheeses here is the parmesan gives me a nice nuttiness and it gives me a really great kind of earthy flavor whereas the peino is super sharp and it's got a lot of bite to it so look I have a lot of cheese here and that's a good thing that's what I want so this is for about four servings now that my cheese is grated I can get to my eggs for carbonara I like my eggs to be room temperature so what I'll do is I'll set them on the counter for about a half hour before I make the dish cuz if
3:07 they're cold that's going to slow everything down I'm going to put hot pasta and cold eggs and the dish isn't going to come together and emulsify right so eggs are the binder for this dish this is what brings the whole thing together and I'm going to use three whole eggs and two egg yolks and what I like to do is crack my egg in half and just run my yolk between the shells until the white all runs out all away a lot of times people will just use straight eggs for this and that's okay but the yolk is a lot of fat and the white is a lot of liquid so by adding the extra yolk I'm adding more fat to the dish more richness to the dish the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to mix my eggs and cheese together and this is a really important step because I want this to be a smooth and creamy sauce around my pasta we want to get
3:54 this into a nice homogeneous mixture so that when we actually add the pasta to it we don't get scrambled eggs not a good look for carbonara all right so let's just take the cheese dump it into the eggs and we can just get this together and you'll see it's going to get kind of like a a thick creamy mixture get that all in there I use a whisk just to get this together but I'm not going to use a whisk past this point but you can see the mixture looks nice and creamy it's come together there's no bits of eggs or bits of cheese that aren't mixed in and that's what I want this is super important getting your carbonara to the right finished texture at this point I want to add a little bit of my toasted black pepper corns right give it a shake get a little bit of your finely ground
4:40 stuff get a little bit of your bigger chunks so my egg and cheese mixture is ready to go and now it's time for the star of the show The Guan chal and this is super traditional for carbonara now if you don't have Guan chali if you can't find it where you're at you can use Panetta I've seen bacon be used traditionally Guan chali is used for carbonara and that's the jow or the cheek of the pig that's been cured salt cured sometimes they rub it in spices and sometimes in peppercorn but it's just cured it's salty it's fatty it's delicious and that's why they use it it has that fattiness when we cook it out we get a lot of fat that helps make our sauce smooth and creamy so when it comes to gual I like nice big chunks of it so I like to cut my own I don't like to buy a pre-cut so I want to get nice Max
5:25 sticks or big mardones or chunks don't be shy I want them to be super visible in my dish so you see I have like kind of like this this match stick or a very thick match stick so we're going to cut those into nice chunks I don't want any wimpy little chunks I want to see this Guan chal it's a beautiful ingredient it's got some meat on it but it's not super meting now that I have my Guan chal cut my eggs cheese and pepper mixture we are ready to make our carbonara you'll notice in front of me I have all the ingredients I need within arms re reach this is one of those things as a chef that you have to set yourself up for it's proper me and pl my water is boiling I'm going to add some salt to my water I want my water to be basically sea salty and I'm using uh dry
6:12 pasta it holds the sauce really well I like to use spaghetti for this I like the shape I like the way it holds on to the sauce I like the bite to it pasta is going to take about 10 minutes and in that time I'm going to get my Guan chali ready to go so turn your heat on I like to use a little olive oil in my pan before I start cooking my Guan chal people will say but chef Frank the Guan chali has a lot of fat I like to put this in the pan to get the the process going quicker my gual is going to Brown a little more evenly I don't really have to wait for that fat to render out so a little bit of fat in My Pan to start is the way that I always go we're going to cook this until it is light golden brown you can hear start to sizzle I don't want this to be crisp I want it to have some chew to it in the end so we're not going to Brown it all the way we want to keep all the fat a lot of people say wo
6:58 that's a lot of fat we going to put that in the pasta yes we're using all the fat the fat is key to this dish it's also going to emulsify with the egg yolks and make this sauce super creamy don't forget to get in there and stir your pasta occasionally we don't want it sticking well how do you tell if pasta is done if you look at it right now it's still very firm right we want it to be nice and alente which means to the tooth we don't want it to be overcooked we want it to have a little bite to it my guali is ready to go you can see it's still bubbling away it's not completely done but if I leave it in the pan and keep it hot it's going to continue to cook I don't want it to get any more crisp in this so I think my pasta is ready the best way to determine if it is is to take a piece try not to burn yourself and actually taste it and
7:45 that's good to go a lot of people will mix carbonara in a pan and I don't like doing it in a pan right pans retain heat I'm afraid my eggs might overcook and get scrambled so I like to mix everything in the bowl that I mix the cheese and eggs in so let's take our pasta out right I drain it but I don't drain it too well we want to get a little bit of that pasta water in there the pasta water has starch it has a little bit of salt so this goes right into my eggs and this is going to start that process of cooking those eggs and then Wan chal and all the fat goes in don't be shy and then we mix I have a pair of tongs and here is the key here we want to mix mix mix right we want that egg and that cheese to start to
8:33 cook we want that fat to be emulsified into the sauce but look at that right super creamy those eggs start to cook it smells cheesy oh my gosh nice big chunks of the Guan chal which this is the important part here we're emulsifying the sauce around the pasta all that fat from the Guan chal is getting in there and we get this beautiful luscious creamy sauce look at that it's almost like magic when this sauce comes together give it a little twist I'm going to take some of my Guan chal put it on top right get some of that creamy Guan chal from the bottom I'm going to take a little more of my toasted black peppercorns and just a little more of my peino and parmesan cheese as if there wasn't enough already
9:19 and that is foolproof carbonara time to dig in I'm so excited this is one of those dishes that uh waits for no man woman or child you want to make sure you eat it while it's hot and ready to go make sure you get a little bit of everything in there the sauce is silky and creamy cuz I took the time to get everything mixed really well the Guan chali has some chuda it we get a little bit of spiciness from that black pepper corn and the mixture of BU cheeses sharp and kind of earthy I think makes this carbonara one of the best versions you'll ever have it's not complicated takes a little technique a little bit of love and just makes every part of you happy uh not only your tummy but your soul as well
10:07 [Music]
