Not who you asked, but I want to shill for spaghetti aglio e olio for a sec.
It has 3 ingredients. Pasta, olive oil, garlic. Fancy stuff will taste better, but the cheapest will taste fine. I use pre-minced garlic out of a tub when I’m really down bad and it’s still excellent. Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, maybe parmesan cheese if you have it, and sometimes I’ll throw in some frozen peas. It comes together in about 2 minutes longer than it takes to boil the pasta and can be really quite good.
For one real carbonara needs some pretty exotic ingredients (guanciale and pecorino). On top of that it’s relatively easy to scramble the egg yolks if you aren’t super careful. Or make it super salty if you use too much guanciale / cheese.
I cook every day for the last 20 years and still my success ratio with carbonara is like 80%.
Aglio olio is impossible to screw up unless you dump a cup of salt on it or something ridiculous.
My local ALDI has guanciale from time to time and when it doesn’t I just use bacon. I would say guanciale takes it from 8/10 to 9/10. There’s difference but bacon does the job. Same with parmesan. I’m sure pecorino would be better but you can still make correct carbonara with the things you can easily find in most stores (at least in Spain).
I don’t have issues with scrambling eggs. I add a bit of pasta water (as you should) and heat it up slowly. I don’t remember the last time I fucked it up. And I ate carbonara made but different people and I like mine to most :)
It’s definitely not a “throw ingredients into a pot” recipe but it’s still fairly quick and easy.
![Home Cooked Meal [Teddy]](https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/6c568f33-16a6-43f9-a043-8c760c83421b.webp){kind=link}
Not who you asked, but I want to shill for spaghetti aglio e olio for a sec.
It has 3 ingredients. Pasta, olive oil, garlic. Fancy stuff will taste better, but the cheapest will taste fine. I use pre-minced garlic out of a tub when I’m really down bad and it’s still excellent. Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, maybe parmesan cheese if you have it, and sometimes I’ll throw in some frozen peas. It comes together in about 2 minutes longer than it takes to boil the pasta and can be really quite good.
I do this but with olive oil, garlic and dried tomatoes :) Tried it in some restaurant one time. Dead simple and really tasty.
Another dead simple pasta: mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. Just let the mozzarella melt with cooked pasta, add tomatoes. Presto.
Carbonara is also not much harder.
speaking of carbonara…
i have a slightly modified version of this recipe somewhere. it is delicious. we just haven’t been eating pasta much lately.
Carbonara is hard as fuck.
For one real carbonara needs some pretty exotic ingredients (guanciale and pecorino). On top of that it’s relatively easy to scramble the egg yolks if you aren’t super careful. Or make it super salty if you use too much guanciale / cheese.
I cook every day for the last 20 years and still my success ratio with carbonara is like 80%.
Aglio olio is impossible to screw up unless you dump a cup of salt on it or something ridiculous.
My local ALDI has guanciale from time to time and when it doesn’t I just use bacon. I would say guanciale takes it from 8/10 to 9/10. There’s difference but bacon does the job. Same with parmesan. I’m sure pecorino would be better but you can still make correct carbonara with the things you can easily find in most stores (at least in Spain).
I don’t have issues with scrambling eggs. I add a bit of pasta water (as you should) and heat it up slowly. I don’t remember the last time I fucked it up. And I ate carbonara made but different people and I like mine to most :)
It’s definitely not a “throw ingredients into a pot” recipe but it’s still fairly quick and easy.