Spaghetti Carbonara (aka the pasta with the raw egg sauce)

I've always been afraid to make spaghetti carbonara. I made it once when I was maybe eleven, with my mom: we followed the instructions on the inside of an egg carton. Needless to say, the dish turned out to be a disaster (the sauce turned into a lumpy custard), and I never tried making it again... until now. I've always thought of Spaghetti Carbonara as a classic Italian dish, one that's good to know how to make even if you don't eat it often. It can be a crowd pleaser when it's done right, probably because it's essentially bacon and eggs with pasta, and who doesn't love that? (Well, maybe two people I know whose names start with J... but you like bacon don't you???)

For the prep:

• I spent: $4-6
• Ingredients: 5/5

It's hard to say exactly how much this recipe cost to make, mostly because the ingredients are things you're likely to already have in your fridge. I personally don't eat or cook with a lot of bacon, but I had some in my freezer from when I made another dish a few weeks ago and didn't use up the entire pound of bacon you're forced to buy everytime you want a few slices. The optional white wine cost me around $12, but the recipe calls for such a small amount, that you can barely say that the wine was a real cost. Plus, wine can be used for other recipes. Or drinking. Your choice.
The most expensive item for this dish was the block of parmesean cheese I got, which cost me $7, but I only used about half in this dish.

Cooking

• Easiness: 2.5/5

I followed the recipe on Allrecipes that can be found here. Here's what I used:

1. 1 box of spaghetti (454 g) (On a side note, I tried Catelli's "Smart Pasta" which is supposedly whole wheat while tasting like white pasta. I hate whole wheat pasta, so I was a little nervous, but although I could taste a slight difference from my regular pasta, it was still pretty good)
   
2. Olive oil
3. 4 slices of bacon, diced
4. 1 onion, chopped
5. 2 cloves garlic, minced
   
6. 1/4 c. white wine (I used a sauvignon blanc)
7. 4 eggs
8. 1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese
9. Fresh ground pepper
10. Nutmeg
11. Milk

I used half the bacon that was cited in the recipe, and added the items of nutmeg and milk.

Despite the simplicity of the ingredients, there are a few things you have to watch out for during the cooking process.
Start out by putting a pot of water on the stove so it'll be boiling when you need it. Season it with salt. The recipe suggests that you cook the pasta first and then set it aside, but no matter how much olive oil I've used, I can never keep the pasta from sticking once it cools. Also, having hot pasta is going to be a vital point later in the recipe, so don't cook your spaghetti just yet.
Use a large, sturdy skillet to cook the bacon until it's crisp. This is one of the most annoying things to do, because not only does bacon takes forever to cook in a skillet, the amount of fat that comes out of the stuff is kind of disgusting.
Whatever you do, don't get impatient and turn up the heat and try to cook the stuff faster; it seems like a good idea at the time, but the bacon WILL burn. Your smoke detector WILL go off, especially if you have a tiny little apartment like me (yes, I know this from personal experience). Keep your heat at a low to medium-low level.
Since the bacon will take a while to cook, use this time to beat the eggs together (and chop your onions and mince your garlic, if you have not already done so). Based on recommendations from other cooks on Allrecipes, I added the grated cheese to the eggs and mixed well. (Definitely use the real parmesan for this recipe, I think it would taste really odd with the green can stuff.) I also added ground pepper and about half a teaspoon of nutmeg to the egg-cheese mixture. Some users were adding heavy cream to their eggs as well, but since I'm not a big fan of heavy cream (for more than one reason... damn you, lactose intolerance!), I added some milk (yes, lactose-free :p). Just a splash.

Whenever you notice the bacon is done is a good time to throw your pasta into the boiling water, but now you'll have to be time aware to get everything going at the right time.

Take the bacon out and drain it on a double layer of paper towels. You want to have about 2 tablespoons of bacon fat in the skillet, so if you've got too much in there, you'll want to carefully spoon out some of the fat into a glass jar or something to throw out later. BE CAREFUL, it'll be really hot, and grease can give you some nasty burns.
Add the onions to the skillet (with the remaining fat) and cook until the onions become soft and translucent. Add your garlic and cook for another minute. If you're using wine, add it now and cook for another minute. Return the bacon to the skillet.
If you've time it right, your spaghetti should be about done. Turn the heat off from your skillet. I use a slotted pasta scoop to transfer the cooked pasta directly from the pot to the skillet. I added a very small amount of olive oil to discourage pasta stickiness then tossed to mix everything together.
This is when my anxiety kicked in. To make a good carbonara, YOU CANNOT COOK THE SAUCE. Since the sauce is almost entirely egg based, too much heat will cook your eggs and you will end up with scrambled eggs and pasta, not a creamy, saucy dish. Based on the consensus of other reviewers on the site, I hoped that the heat from the freshly cooked pasta and remaining heat in the skillet would be enough to set the sauce, but not cook it.
I took the skillet off the heat and added the egg mixture and immediately began tossing the pasta. Lo and behold, no scrambled eggs! Saucy goodness! Yay!
Serve immediately with some parmesan sprinkled on top. I skipped the parsley in the recipe because I don't like parsely and wasn't going to buy an entire bundle to use just a little as garnish.

The Result

Thanks to some of the reviewer advice on the site, I think the dish turned out pretty well. However, it didn't taste exactly like I expected it would for a carbonara; that's probably because this recipe isn't a true carbonara recipe. "Real" carbonara would use pancetta, not bacon, and does involve some heavy cream in the sauce. Despite this, the meal was satisfying, but it's probably not something I'll make often.
In the future, I'll probably add some mushrooms and possibly frozen peas to increase the amount of vegetables in the dish. If I can track some down, I'll try out using pancetta (and maybe... even heavy cream).

• Guilt factor: High. Especially if using heavy cream in the sauce, I find it hard to justify the amount of fat and lack of vegetables in the dish. I mean, sure bacon and eggs are both proteins, but does bacon fat do anything good for you? And I felt kinda uneasy because the eggs don't cook all the way through (even though I know the risk factor is actually quite low).
• Servings: 4-6. You're getting a lot of food for what you're paying.
• Leftover rating: 4/5. I wouldn't freeze it, but the flavors do hold in the fridge for a reheating. Just make sure when you're microwaving, you use medium heat and you don't over do it, or you're going to cook the sauce in there too.
• Taste: 3/5. Not unpleasant, but definitely felt like it needed something to boost the flavors a bit.

Overall rating: 70%

• The good: Ingredients are cheap and easy to find, makes a decent amount of food that keeps well and can be eaten later in the week.
• The bad: Can be tricky to make, and not particularly healthy. Not a "real" carbonara recipe. Flavors, although pleasant, fall a little short.