Guanciale

Crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, this smothered fried chicken with polenta and herb gremolata is perfect for a dinner party. 

Humble ingredients—eggs, pasta, cheese, and pork—combine to create glossy, glorious spaghetti carbonara that’s just as good at dinner as at 2 a.m.

The classic reconsidered: less pasta, more crispy-chewy strips of guanciale, and more silky creamy egg to hold it all together.

Think of this as carbonara minus the eggs but still with massive amounts of flavor from guanciale, black pepper, and Pecorino.

Is it necessary to blanch, then shock, the ramp greens? If you want a super-green (not khaki) pesto, it is.

Lemon makes the perfect foil for carbonara’s salty richness. You may never go back.

If you can’t find guanciale, use an equal amount of chopped bacon or pancetta in its place.

Both guanciale and Pecorino are quite salty; Leonardo Vignoli, the chef at Da Cesare al Casaletto, recommends undersalting the pasta water to give you more control.

To make addictively crispy chicken skin for this cobb salad recipe, turn it often in the skillet, until it looks like bacon.

Think of this pasta from Tosca as a carbonara, but with tomatoes in place of the eggs.

Chef Philip Krajeck, Rolf and Daughters, Nashville, says the key to this dish is getting a good char on the brussels sprouts, which helps balance the richness of the porky, eggy sauce. Salt draws moisture out of the leaves, which might make them soggy, so he doesn’t season them.

Named for Amatrice, a town northeast of Rome, this pasta is traditionally served with a long noodle like bucatini, but we like how shorter penne captures the spicy, meaty bits of sauce inside the tube.

In Rome, chef Barbara Lynch ate the perfect carbonara: The sauce was bright yellow from fresh eggs, and each rigatoni hid cubes of fatty guanciale. This is her recipe.

This classic sauce takes its spiciness from black pepper and dried chiles and its depth of flavor from guanciale.