carbonara — United States

Carbonara is a pasta dish built on an emulsion of egg, hard cheese, and starchy pasta water, tossed with pasta and cured pork, and finished with black pepper. Spaghetti is the most common pasta, though other long shapes are also used. In the United States, the dish is widely cooked in home kitchens and served in Italian-American restaurants, where it has taken on its own set of common substitutions. Guanciale, the cured pork jowl used in Italy, is not always easy to find, so bacon or pancetta is frequently used in its place, and parmesan is often used alongside or instead of pecorino romano. The pork is rendered in a pan until crisp, while eggs are whisked with grated cheese and black pepper. The cooked pasta is tossed with the rendered pork and a little of its fat off the heat, then combined with the egg mixture, using the pasta's residual heat and a splash of starchy cooking water to thicken the sauce into a smooth coating rather than scrambled curds. Many American recipes add a splash of cream to the egg mixture, which is not part of the Italian preparation but is used to make the sauce more forgiving and less likely to curdle for home cooks; others closely follow the cream-free method, relying on technique and starchy water instead.