Meals · Pasta & noodle bakes

Spaghetti carbonara

Name: Spaghetti carbonara
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 400 g dry spaghetti pasta, cooked al dente, water saved; 8 slices bacon, cut in batons, crisped; 2 egg; 2 yolks egg yolk; 1 cup, plus more grated parmesan; 1 1/2 tsp, coarse black pepper

Rome's four-ingredient miracle: pasta, cured pork, egg and cheese, emulsified into silk with nothing but starchy water and technique. No cream — never cream.

Time: 25 min (10 prep + 15 cook)
Servings: 4
Per serving: 672 kcal
Protein: 36 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

400 g dry spaghetti pasta, cooked al dente, water saved944 g
8 slices bacon, cut in batons, crisped120 g
2 egg100 g
2 yolks egg yolk34 g
1 cup, plus more grated parmesan80 g
1 1/2 tsp, coarse black pepper3 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Crisp the bacon slowly so the fat renders; keep both. Toast the pepper in that fat for 30 seconds.
Whisk the eggs, yolks and parmesan into a paste.
Toss the hot drained pasta with the bacon and fat off the heat, wait 30 seconds — residual heat, not flame, is what cooks carbonara.
Add the egg paste and a splash of hot pasta water, tossing constantly until it turns to glossy sauce. Too hot = scrambled eggs; off-heat with pasta water = silk. More cheese and pepper on top.

Guanciale, pancetta or bacon?

Guanciale is canonical, pancetta is close, and bacon is what's in most kitchens — it adds smoke the Roman version doesn't have, and dinner still gets made. The technique matters more than the pork: it's the emulsion that is carbonara.

Why this score

easy to overeat

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

22% of kcal

55% water

7 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2688 kcal goes into the pot, 1281 g of ingredients comes out as ~1234 g of food → 218 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 218
Protein: (22%); 12 g
Fat: (32%); 8 g
Carbohydrates: (46%); 25 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 402 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More meals

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.