Borderless Cooking

Category: Recipes

Simplified recipes for dishes from around the world, written for a normal kitchen. Every recipe tells you which ingredients and tools you really need, and which ones you can skip.

  • Spaghetti Carbonara Recipe in Five Ingredients and One Rule

    Carbonara has five ingredients and the internet argues about all of them. Guanciale or bacon. Pecorino or parmesan. Cream or no cream. Whole eggs or yolks. Read enough comment sections and you start to think you need a flight to Rome before you are allowed to cook it.

    You don’t. This spaghetti carbonara recipe uses what a normal supermarket sells, and tells you where the “proper” version really makes a difference and where it doesn’t. The one thing that genuinely matters is not an ingredient at all. It is getting the eggs off the heat at the right moment, and that part is explained step by step below.

    carbonara_recipe

    Ingredients you really need

    • 200 g dried spaghetti
    • 100 g smoked bacon or pancetta, cut into 1 cm strips
    • 1 whole egg plus 2 egg yolks (about 100 g in total)
    • 50 g parmesan, finely grated, plus 10 g extra for serving
    • 2 g freshly ground black pepper (about 1 teaspoon)
    • 2 litres of water with 12 g of salt for the pasta

    No oil and no butter. The fat from the pork is enough.

    The salt for the pasta water is lower than most recipes use, because the pork and the cheese are both salty already. Taste the sauce at the end before you add any more.

    Ingredients that are nice to have

    • Guanciale, 100 g, instead of bacon. This is cured pork cheek and it is what Romans use. It has more fat than bacon and that fat has a sweeter, deeper flavor that ends up in the sauce. It is also not smoked, so the dish tastes cleaner. If your supermarket has it, buy it. If it doesn’t, bacon gets you most of the way there. You can read more about how guanciale is made if you are curious why it costs more.
    • Pecorino Romano, 50 g, instead of parmesan. Pecorino is made from sheep’s milk and is saltier and sharper. The traditional recipe uses it, and you will notice the difference if you eat the two side by side. On its own, a carbonara made with parmesan is still very good. Some people use 25 g of each, which is a sensible middle ground.
    • One extra egg yolk. It makes the sauce richer and more golden. Not necessary, but nice if you have one left over.

    What you really do not need: cream. This is not about being authentic. When the eggs and cheese are handled properly they turn into a sauce that is already creamy. Cream is usually added to hide eggs that have scrambled. Fix the technique and there is nothing to hide.

    carbonara_ingredients

    Tools you really need

    • A large pot. At least 3 litres, so the 2 litres of water and 200 g of pasta have room to move.
    • A frying pan big enough to toss the pasta in. A 28 cm pan is right for two portions. The pasta finishes in this pan, not in the pot.
    • A bowl and a fork for mixing the eggs and cheese.
    • A grater. The cheese needs to be fine, not in thick shreds, otherwise it clumps instead of melting into the sauce.

    Tools that are nice to have

    • A pasta fork. It lets you lift the spaghetti straight from the pot into the frying pan, with a little of the cooking water still clinging to it. That water helps the sauce come together. It is one of the tools on our list of underrated kitchen tools.
    • A fine rasp grater. It turns hard cheese into something close to powder, which melts almost instantly. A normal box grater on the finest side works too, it just takes longer.
    • A kitchen scale. Carbonara has so few ingredients that the ratios matter. 50 g of cheese to about 100 g of egg is what gives you a sauce instead of a paste or a soup.

    Not sure what tool you would use it repeatedly and what you would only use it for one time and put away? Check our 10 most underrated kitchen tools and see what tools are worth buying not just for only one recipe!

    How to make it

    1. Bring 2 litres of water to the boil in the large pot and add 12 g of salt.
    2. While it heats, mix the whole egg, the 2 yolks, the 50 g of grated cheese and 2 g of black pepper in a bowl with a fork. It should look like a thick yellow paste. Leave it next to the hob.
    3. Put the 100 g of bacon in the cold frying pan and turn the heat to medium. Cook it for about 6 to 8 minutes, until the fat has melted out and the edges are golden. Turn the heat off and leave the bacon and fat in the pan.
    4. Add the 200 g of spaghetti to the boiling water and cook it for 1 minute less than the packet says. Before draining, scoop out 150 ml of the cooking water and keep it.
    5. Move the spaghetti into the frying pan with the bacon, using a pasta fork or tongs. Add 50 ml of the cooking water and toss everything together for 30 seconds. The pan must be off the heat.
    6. Wait about 30 seconds so the pan cools slightly, then pour the egg mixture over the pasta. Toss and stir quickly for 1 to 2 minutes. Add more of the cooking water, 1 tablespoon (15 ml) at a time, until the sauce is glossy and coats every strand.
    7. Serve straight away with the 10 g of extra cheese and a little more pepper on top.
    carbonara_tossing_off_heat

    Why the pan has to be off the heat

    This is the step that decides everything. Egg starts to thicken at around 65°C and turns into scrambled egg a few degrees above that. A frying pan on a hob is far hotter than that.

    With the pan off the heat, the hot pasta and the warm fat cook the eggs just enough to thicken them into a sauce. The cooking water loosens it and the starch in the water helps it cling. If you leave the pan on the hob, you get pasta with bits of omelette in it.

    Wait 30 seconds after turning the heat off, then add the eggs. If you want to be sure, hold your hand over the pan. It should feel warm, not hot.

    Cooking Tips

    Start the pork in a cold pan. It is in step 3 and it is easy to skip. A cold pan lets the fat melt out slowly, which is where most of the flavour of this dish comes from. Drop bacon into an already hot pan and the outside seizes before the fat has a chance to render.

    Keep more pasta water than you think you need. 150 ml looks like far too much. You will use between 50 and 100 ml, and the day you only saved a splash is the day the sauce seizes up and there is nothing left to loosen it with.

    Warm the plates. Carbonara goes from silky to stiff in about a minute on a cold plate. Run two plates under the hot tap while the pasta cooks and dry them. It sounds fussy and it makes more difference than the choice between pecorino and parmesan.

    Take the eggs out of the fridge when you start. Cold eggs hitting hot pasta thicken unevenly, so you get a sauce with lumps in an otherwise smooth pan.

    If it starts to scramble, act immediately. The moment you see anything solid forming, throw in 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of pasta water and keep tossing. The water drops the temperature straight away and stops it going further. It will not be as smooth as it could have been, but it will still be a good plate of pasta.

    If the sauce is thick and clumpy, add 15 ml of pasta water and toss hard for 30 seconds. Clumps are almost always cheese that was grated too coarsely, and water plus movement will still melt most of it.

    If the sauce is runny, put the pan back on the lowest heat for 10 to 15 seconds while tossing, then take it off again. Short bursts only. Two of these are usually enough.

    If it is too salty, whisk one extra yolk with 15 ml of pasta water and stir it through. It dilutes the salt and makes the sauce richer at the same time. Next time cut the salt in the pasta water to 8 g.

    Interested in more recipes? Check our seafood paella recipe. Anything else you are interested in cooking? Leave your comments here!

  • Seafood Paella Recipe You Can Make in a Normal Frying Pan

    Paella looks like a dish you need special equipment for. But actually, you don’t! This seafood paella recipe is the version we make at home, in an ordinary pan, with whatever the fish counter had that day. It won’t be identical to one cooked over a wood fire in Valencia, but it gets close enough for you to try and enjoy at home. Now let’s get started!

    paella_recipe

    Ingredients you really need

    • 500 g seafood in total. We used 250 g mussels, 150 g raw prawns and 100 g squid rings.
    • 200 g short-grain rice
    • 600 ml hot fish or seafood stock, plus 100 ml extra in case the pan dries out
    • 40 ml olive oil (about 3 tablespoons)
    • 1 small onion, about 100 g, finely chopped
    • 2 garlic cloves, about 10 g, finely chopped
    • 1 ripe tomato, about 150 g, grated
    • 3 g sweet paprika (1 teaspoon)
    • 3 g salt (½ teaspoon), less if your stock is already salty
    paella_ingredients

    Ingredients that are nice to have

    • Saffron, 0.1 g (a pinch of about 15 threads). It gives paella its color and a mild, slightly floral perfume. Without it the rice is paler and plainer, but still good. 1 g of turmeric (a small pinch) will fix the color and not the flavor, so use it only if you don’t mind the difference. If you do buy saffron, a 0.5 g tube is enough for five paellas.
    • Bomba or Calasparra rice, 200 g. Spanish paella rice absorbs about a third more stock than normal rice and is much harder to overcook, which matters if this is your first attempt. If you use it, increase the stock to 750 ml. Both varieties come from protected growing regions in Spain, which is why they cost more than a supermarket short-grain. If you could only find short-grain rice it also works, but you need to keep an eye on it. Do not use long-grain or basmati, and do not use risotto rice, which is designed to go creamy.
    • Scallops in the shell, 4 pieces (about 120 g). Purely for looks, and they look very good.
    • White wine 50 ml, half a red pepper (about 80 g), frozen peas 50 g, 1 lemon cut into wedges. Each adds something. None of them decides whether the dish works.
    spanish_town

    Tools you really need

    • The widest, shallowest pan you own. This is the one thing that genuinely matters. Paella is not a deep dish. The rice should sit no more than two fingers deep, because it cooks by absorbing stock from below rather than by being stirred. A 28 cm frying pan feeds two people properly, which is what this recipe is written for. For four people, double everything and use a 36 cm pan or two 28 cm pans side by side. Anything deeper turns into a rice stew, which is nice but is not paella.
    • A small pot for heating the stock, and a spoon.

    Tools that are nice to have

    • A real paella pan. It is wider and shallower than a frying pan, so the rice layer is thinner and the bottom crisps more evenly. If you cook paella more than a few times a year it is worth it. Check which type your hob takes: a thin carbon steel pan works badly on induction, and on a gas ring a pan wider than the burner will cook unevenly in the middle.
    • A lid. It will be useful if your hob runs cool and the rice on top stays hard.
    • A mortar and pestle. Grinds saffron far more evenly than your fingers, which means the color spreads through the whole pan instead of sitting in streaks. It is one of the tools on our list of 10 most underrated kitchen tools.
    paella_pan_and_normal_pan

    How to make it

    • Heat 600 ml of stock in a small pot and drop the saffron in. Keep it at a gentle boil. It must be boiling when it goes into the rice.
    • Heat 40 ml of olive oil in the frying pan over medium-high heat. Fry the 150 g of prawns and 100 g of squid for about a minute, then take them out. They will finish cooking later and you don’t want them rubbery.
    • Turn the heat to medium. Cook the 100 g of onion and 10 g of garlic in the same oil for about 5 minutes, until soft. Add the 150 g of grated tomato and 3 g of paprika and cook for another 5 minutes, until it is thick and dark.
    • Add the 200 g of rice and stir it through the oil for a minute. Pour in the boiling stock, add 3 g of salt and shake the pan once so the rice lies flat.
    • Stop stirring. Simmer on medium heat for about 18 minutes without touching it.
    • For the last 5 minutes, push the 250 g of mussels into the rice with the hinge facing down and lay the prawns and squid on top. The mussels open in the steam. Take the pan off the heat, cover it with a clean tea towel and let it rest for 5 minutes before serving.
    carlos-baliache

    Useful tips:

    • Don’t stir in step 5. This is the one that decides whether this works. Stirring releases starch and released starch gives you risotto. Left alone, the bottom layer of rice sticks to the pan and caramelizes into socarrat, the crisp golden crust that people at the table quietly compete for.
    • The rice is still hard and the pan is dry. Pour 50 ml of the extra boiling stock around the edges, not in the middle, and give it another 3 to 4 minutes. Cold water stops the cooking, so keep the stock hot.
    • The rice is cooked but soupy. Too much stock, or the heat was too low. Turn it up and let the rest evaporate uncovered.
    • Everything stuck and it tastes burnt. The heat was too high for too long, or the pan is thin in the middle. Next time use a heavier pan or move it around the ring.
    • The seafood is tough. It went in too early. Mussels and prawns need five minutes, not twenty.

    Is it worth making your own stock?

    If you buy prawns with the heads on, you already have most of a stock. Fry the heads from your 150 g of prawns in 10 ml of oil for 2 minutes, press them with a spoon, add 750 ml of water and simmer for fifteen minutes. Strain it and you will have roughly the 600 to 700 ml you need. It takes almost no effort and the difference is bigger than the difference saffron makes.

    If you are using shop-bought stock, fish stock is better than chicken, and low-salt is better because the rice concentrates everything.

    How to serve with it

    Very little. Lemon wedges, bread, and aioli if you have it. Paella is already a full meal, and in Spain it is usually lunch rather than dinner. A green salad afterwards is the most it needs.

    Remember there is no single fixed paella recipe in this world. You can also replace seafood with chicken or pork or any other ingredients you like. Just explore the supermarket downstairs and keep trying. Maybe one day you will invent an exclusive one of your own!

    Want to try a classic Italian pasta? Check our spaghetti carbonara recipe. Happy cooking!