In episode 073 we are making a rich and delicious Shrimp Carbonara Pasta for dinner. Susie shares the full audio recipe for this Italian shrimp pasta that has a parmesan, egg, and butter sauce that is full of garlic and bacon! Serve it up with a green side salad and garlic bread for a great dinner.
Transcript
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Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: I’ve got such a luxurious, but still pretty easy recipe for you to make for dinner tonight. We are making a Shrimp Carbonara Pasta recipe today that is so rich and luxurious and delicious, but it’s full of super simple, easy to find ingredients which we love here at Let’s Make Dinner and Mom’s Dinner Kitchens. Also, if you believe in the statement bacon makes everything better, then this is going to be your jam, 100%. Also, before we get started, I will say that I’m a little nasally. I’m a little nasally right now. I just got over being sick for about a week, and so I’m still a little bit nasally, so I apologize for the sound.
All right, so this recipe is actually super easy, like I said before. The one thing that you want to do is do something called mise en place. In cooking or baking, mise en place is basically just the French word for getting all of your things together in the kitchen. Making sure that you have everything measured, you’ve got all of the equipment that you need and when you do that, when you get all of your things in place, it just makes the recipe run a little bit smoother. So make sure that all of your spices are measured, that you have your water on to boil for your pasta. That your cheese is grated and that your eggs are at room temperature. Then it’s just going to run smoothly and dinner’s going to come together really, really quickly.
Tips and Tricks: So let’s go over a few tips for this Shrimp Carbonara Pasta recipe before you get started making it for dinner. So to bring your eggs to room temperature, the tip here is to take your eggs out, put them in a little dish of warm water while you get your mise en place ready, and your eggs will come right up to room temperature and be ready to use. The reason we do this is because the warmer egg is actually going to break down a little bit better in the sauce. So when you warm that egg up, the yolk I’m sorry, not the yolk, the egg white actually starts to get kind of runny and soft. When it’s cold, it’s really firm and it sets up like when you crack it into a skillet to make over easy eggs, and the egg white stays together, and that’s because it’s really nice and cold.
All right, so let’s also talk about the Parmesan cheese because that is one of the main components of the sauce for this pasta. I recommend using the best quality Parmesan cheese that you can buy. If you can find one that comes off of a large wheel that has the stamped rind, absolutely use that. But if not, just try to find the very best quality Parmesan cheese you can. It seems to me that the more you’re paying for Parmesan cheese, the higher quality and more true Parmesan flavor it has. Now if you don’t want to use Parmesan, you can absolutely sub some other cheese options. You could do a gruyere and it would be beautiful. Grana Padano or you could use a Pecorino Romano. The Pecorino Romano is going to be a little bit tangier in taste, but if you like that, it would work perfectly.
All right. This is another kitchen tip that you can use all the time. I love this tip. I think I first read it in my Cook’s Country magazine or maybe Cook’s Illustrated. But if you ever have a recipe that calls for reserved pasta cooking water, what you want to do is, you know, take your colander, put it in the sink, so it’s waiting for your pasta. But put a glass measuring cup into the bottom of the colander, and even if you forget to reserve your pasta water, it will catch some of the water as you start to pour your pasta in. That’s a great tip to keep in your back pocket for any time you’re in the kitchen.
Okay, one more tip. This recipe also calls for bacon. You need six slices of diced bacon. And so if you’ve ever tried to cut raw bacon, it can be kind of hard to cut. What I like to do is just peel six strips off of the package and use sharp kitchen shears to just clip chunks of bacon off and just leave it in those strips put together and just clip right through it. It works really, really well. Those are all of my tips for this recipe.
Shrimp Carbonara Recipe: So let’s go ahead and get started making your Shrimp Carbonara pasta recipe. Like I said at the beginning, you want to do your mise en place. So you want to get everything prepped before you actually get started with this recipe. So what you’ll want to do is put your egg in a little bowl of warm water and let that sit. Then make sure that you have a third cup of Parmesan cheese grated. Crack opened six garlic cloves. Measure out a half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. Get your bacon out. Make sure you’ve got three quarters of a pound of large shrimp that’s peeled and deveined. 12 ounces of a linguini. Then put your colander in the sink with the glass measuring cup in the bottom. Then chop up a third of a cup of Italian parsley. Now you’ll also want to put some water on to boil on the stove and just salt it generously. Then also get out either a really strong blender or a food processor.
Then to start, in that food processor or blender. You’re going to add your one egg, your six garlic cloves, and six is a lot of garlic cloves, I know. But it goes really, really well with all of the other flavors in this dish. But if you’re really sensitive to garlic, you can absolutely dial that back to four cloves or two cloves, or you could leave it out completely. So you’ll also add red pepper flakes, the kosher salt, six tablespoons of room temperature butter, and that third a cup of the grated Parmesan cheese. Then you’ll blend that for about 15 seconds until it comes together and is nice and creamy. You may need to stop a few times and scrape the sides down to make sure that everything gets blended up together. Once that’s ready to go, you can just pop that to the side and let it sit and we will turn our attention to the pasta.
You want to make sure that you boil your pasta salted water for as long as it takes for your pasta shape to become al dente. It should tell you that right on the package. Now when you go to strain your pasta, make sure you reserve at least a half a cup of that starchy pasta cooking water.
In a really large skillet, you’re going to saute your bacon pieces over medium heat until it is nice and crispy and brown. Then with a slotted spoon, you’ll just remove those bacon pieces to a paper towel lined plate and set those aside. Now you want to use that bacon grease that’s in the pan, but you only want to use about two tablespoons of it. So if you have more than two tablespoons in there, then go ahead and remove and discard some of that grease until you have about two tablespoons left in the pan. You’re going to go ahead and add that shrimp to the bacon grease and cook that over medium heat for about three minutes until they’re a nice pink color. Then you’re going to remove the shrimp and you can just put it on that same plate with the bacon. Then in that empty skillet, you’re going to pour a quarter cup of that reserved starchy pasta cooking water, and that’s going to deglaze the bottom of the pan. De glazing is basically when you use heat and a liquid to remove any flavored bits that get on the bottom of the pan. So the flavored bits that you have down there right now are going to be all of those bacon pieces and maybe even some shrimp pieces. So you want to release those from the pan and include them in your sauce.
So then you’re going to stir in the pasta, the cooked pasta. Scrape in that butter egg mixture from the blender or the food processor. Add in the third cup of chopped parsley and then add in that bacon and shrimp from that plate. You’ll give everything a really good toss with a pair of tongs and it’s ready to go.
Now, if you want it to be just a little bit creamier, you can absolutely add a little bit more Parmesan cheese and a little bit more pasta water, and just keep tossing and it will get creamier and creamier.
So you definitely want to serve this right away. This is not a make ahead dish. Serve it right away and you can top it with extra Parmesan cheese, with red pepper flakes or plenty of cracked black pepper.
I will say this is definitely a five star recipe on Mom’s Dinner. It has over 20 5 star ratings, and I believe this recipe was also featured in the magazine L, their France edition. It’s a very, very popular recipe and I think you’ll be very happy with your dinner.
As far as side dishes go, this is a pretty hearty recipe, so you could just do a really delicate green side salad or Caesar salad or some garlic bread or breadsticks on the side would be perfect. Then of course, maybe a big glass of cold white wine. That’s what I would have with it for sure.
All right, so that does it for the recipe for today. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. As always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you. If you are loving these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you subscribe or follow or rate or review this show in your preferred podcast player.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.
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