Creamy Dairy-free Carbonara

Confession: I had never made carbonara before I started experimenting with this recipe. Even before my coeliac, dairy free diagnosis, carbonara was saved for special occasions in restaurants. WHY?!!! Mental!!! It’s actually mega quick & easy, and not as disgracefully full of cream as I’d imagined so it has become a firm fav in my weekly menu.
Takes as long as it tastes boil & drain pasta…

Creamy Dairy-Free Carbonara
Ingredients
- 45 grams parmesan-style cheese – I use Violife
- 170 grams pasta
- 4 tbsp Alpro single cream – fresh or long life – or even regular cream if you can tolerate dairy!
- 2 whole eggs
- 1 yolk
- Few leaves of parsley or basil
Optional
- 4 mushrooms – any type
- 1-2 servings of pancetta/bacon lardons
Instructions
- Boil a pan of water & add the pasta once it is boiling>Top tip: use double the amount of water for gluten free pasta as you would for "normal pasta"
- Whilst that’s cooking, fry the bacon for 5 mins and then add the mushrooms. Once cooked, turn the pan to a very low heat.
- In a bowl/mug, beat the eggs, cream & parsley together until fully mixed. Season well with salt and loads of pepper – even if you don’t usually like pepper – trust me!!
- Once the pasta is cooked, drain the pasta – sounds strange but don’t drain it thoroughly, leave a little bit of water sitting in the sieve with your pasta. Also, save the drained water for later. >I just sieve my pasta over another saucepan to collect the water.
- Tip the contents of the pasta and its little bit of water into the bacon/mushroom pan.
- Quickly add the cheese and stir stir stir until it’s completely melted. >If its struggling to melt, add a few tbsp of the pasta water you've set aside and keep stirring!
- Take it completely off the heat and add the egg mix. Stir continually until the sauce has thickened to your desired consistency.
>too thick? add a spoonful or two of pasta water>too thin? return to a very very low heat for 20-30 seconds, stirring continually. It must be a very low heat to stop the eggs scrambling. >too yellow/orange? nothing wrong with this (it just depends on the brightness of your yolks) but I like my carbonara to be quite white in colour – add a little more cream if you do too! - Serve with extra pepper (do it, trust me) and eat!!
Notes
**Want some more pasta recipes? 5 pasta tips and 5 of my favourite recipes here!**