Traditional Carbonara Recipe – No Cream

Making this traditional carbonara, you can leave out the cream, garlic peas or any other colorful additions! All you need is a few key ingredients that work so perfectly together that they’ve stood the test of time in Italian cuisine.

You can make this dish regularly because it’s so simple and delicious. And it’s a nice break from the more common tomato sauce-based pasta.

The bottom line is that you absolutely don’t need cream to make an authentic carbonara dish. Instead, just rely on the combination of eggs, cream and grease from the pancetta (or guanciale if you can find it) to create the perfect creamy carbonara.

You don’t even need salt because the pancetta and the cheese add plenty of salt to the dish.

You can use pecorino Romano, which is the traditional cheese they use in Rome to make the dish. Pecorino Romano is actually easy to find at nearly any grocery store or small market.

Still, if you prefer parmesan, the experts say that’s a totally fine substitute! Get the block of parmesan and grate it yourself — avoid those cans of powder.

The traditional carbonara recipe with no cream here also calls for pancetta, which is salt-cured pork belly. However, if you can find guanciale, that would be even better. Now, if you have a hard time finding the blocks of pancetta, you can use precut pancetta. Ideally, you’d slice pancetta into cubes yourself, though.

Finally, pay special care when it comes to adding the egg cheese sauce. You want to do this both quickly and without a lot of heat. You need to move quickly because you want the hot pasta and the hot pan (which will not be on heat, but just removed from heat) to cook the eggs into a creamy sauce.

If you wait too long to add the egg and cheese sauce, you won’t get that nice cream sauce — it will be more runny because it won’t have a chance to heat up well from the pasta. On the other hand, if you keep the pan on too much heat as you stir in the egg sauce, it may result in eggs that are cooked too much, or scrambled. You want a creamy sauce, not thick eggs.

Consider the step where you add the egg and cream mixture to the pan and pasta to be “show time.”

Is Pecorino the Same as Parmesan?

Pecorino is not the same as Parmesan, although both are hard grating cheeses. The pecorino made in Italy is made from sheep’s milk, and parmesan is made from cow’s milk. Pecorino is a younger cheese, as parmesan is aged longer. Pecorino is also saltier than parmesan.

Which type of Pasta is Best for Carbonara?

The best type of pasta to use for carbonara is the traditional pasta used for this dish – spaghetti. You use either thicker or thin spaghetti, both of which do a great job of holding the sauce on the noodle.

Some people also substitute fettucine, which is the flatter long noodle, or bucatini, which is similar to spaghetti but has a hole in the middle.

Does Spaghetti Carbonara Have Raw Eggs?

Yes, spaghetti carbonara has raw eggs, and often extra egg yolks, which make the sauce creamy.

With a traditional carbonara recipe, the egg sauce cooks gently with the heat of the pasta as well as some residual heat from the pan that has cooked the pancetta or other meat. The risk of getting an illness from the raw egg sauce is extremely low.

Even so, this sauce is still considered to be raw eggs, so if you have restrictions on eating raw eggs (if you’re pregnant or elderly), you may want to avoid this dish.

Does Carbonara Have Cream?

Traditional carbonara spaghetti does not have cream. Instead, a carbonara recipes calls for a sauce glaze that is made of egg yolks, starch water, pecorino cheese and black pepper. Some restaurants may include cream in their carbonara dishes, but this is not authentic carbonara.