Mark. [snapping clapper board]
I just ate a piping hot mushroom
and it's currently stuck right here, burning my lungs.
[upbeat music]
here we are, about to make mushroom carbonara
which is a meatless version of the classic dish
which normally would call for guanciale,
pancetta or sometimes bacon
but we've taken the meat out of it.
Don't worry, there's still plenty of cheese and eggs
and instead we're using mushrooms
which have a ton of depth of flavor.
I don't want to call them a meat substitute
but they can certainly hold their own in this dish.
So, I'm starting with a good amount of mushrooms.
These are Cremini
and I'm gonna take all these tough stems off
and save them for stock.
And then any of them that are large?
We will tear into quarters.
And any of them that are smaller, we'll just tear in half.
The most important part of this recipe
is waiting patiently to develop good color
on the mushrooms.
So you guys have probably all heard
about the fear of overcrowding your pan
when you cook mushrooms and that's not not a thing,
but, you actually don't have to cook mushrooms in batches
and worry about overcrowding the pan
as long as you cook them for a long time
and allow all of the moisture to evaporate off.
So, I'm not gonna cook these in three different batches,
making sure that none of them are touching
the way you'll see in some recipes.
I'm gonna add them all at once
and we're gonna just be patient
and wait until all of the moisture within them
cooks off and they begin to brown.
And it will happen and it's a beautiful thing when it does.
You could use fancy mushrooms if you wanted to
but the thing that I like about this dish
is that these are just Cremini mushrooms.
They're widely available, they're not that expensive
and we're gonna coax a lot of flavor out of them.
Alright, so these are all relatively similar in size
so we'll set them aside.
And then there are some other aromatics
that are going into this as well
and that is a good amount of garlic and some shallots.
So the trifecta of these three ingredients together
is what creates a lot of depth of flavor
in the absence of meat.
I have two medium shallots.
So, finely chopping a shallot?
You do the exact same way you would an onion.
You make a bunch of small crosswise slits
and then perpendicular slits as well.
Avoiding the root end so that it all stays intact
and then you just cut across the same way you would
an onion to create that cross hatch pattern
that gives you a nice even dice.
[smashing garlic]
So.
Lightly smash and peel
six garlic cloves.
I'm gonna thinly slice these and that's because
I don't want to get a bit chunk of garlic
in my mouth as I'm eating a bite of pasta, so.
[chopping garlic]
And then I have a small bunch of parsley here.
And I'll pick all of the tender stems
and leaves off of it and then we'll chop that
and that'll be what we finish the dish with.
Okay and then I'm just gonna coarsely chop this.
So, I'm getting all of the ingredient prep
out of the way here in the beginning
because once we head over to the stove,
this dish comes together pretty quickly
so you want to have everything at the ready.
Okay, so the beauty of this sauce
comes from the eggs and the cheese and the pasta water
and how they all come together over heat
to create a really rich, yellow, thick, delicious sauce.
So, for a one pound box of pasta,
I'm gonna use five egg yolks and one whole egg.
The egg yolks are gonna help create that rich,
yellow, glossy sauce-y.
Four whole yolks, one egg, whisking,
just til it's hom*ogenous.
So this is four ounces of finely grated parm.
And you'll see it'll start to get nice and thick.
And to this I'm gonna add one and half teaspoons
of black pepper, which is a lot of black pepper
but that's what carbonara calls for,
so just keep at it.
We gotta get some color on our mushrooms
before anything else happens
so let's go over to the stove and get that going
first things first.
Our pasta water is boiling.
I'm going to throw a couple of handfuls of salt in there.
Ah, one more.
And then, I'm preheating this pot for about three minutes.
I want to make sure that the surface of this pot
is really ripping hot when I put those mushrooms in
because otherwise it's gonna take forever for them to brown
so just, put the time in here.
We are hot.
Three tablespoons of olive oil.
You'll be able to tell when it's really hot
when you first start to see wisps of smoke
coming off the oil and that's when you know
it's okay to put in the mushrooms.
Wait a moment.
Here we go, we're smoking.
In the pot.
I'm gonna stir to make sure they're all
getting nice and coated in that oil.
And then now you just gotta be patient
and let them cook.
This is a really key moment.
These have been cooking for about five minutes.
They are letting off a lot of water.
You can see it's bubbling, it's steaming.
I am not gonna touch these mushrooms right now
as much as I want to because that water needs to cook off
before they can start browning and I'm not stirring them
'til they brown, so we need to let these continue to cook.
Okay, we've finally arrived and the water has cooked off
and if you take a look in here you'll see
that now we're getting some good 'ole browning.
So now it's okay to stir.
So we keep on keepin' on.
Meanwhile, these have been cooking for about 10 minutes
and this is a good time to drop your pasta
so that it can cook simultaneously.
So I've chosen these orecchiette for this dish
but you could use any small pasta shape that you want.
I just happen to like how the little ears
scoop up the little shroomies.
Little ears, orecchiette.
And the mushrooms, the shrooms get stuck
in the little ears and, it's fun.
Alright, so, we'll just give that a stir.
I'm gonna set a timer for two minutes shy of al dente
because I want the pasta to finish cooking
in the pot later on, so that it can absorb
all of the flavor that we're developing in here.
I'm feeling pretty, pretty good
about the color of these shrooms.
Okay, so we're nice and roasty, toasty golden brown
and delicious and it's time to throw in
shallots and garlic. [scraping bowl]
These are gonna cook pretty quickly
because of how much heat there is going on in this pan
so keep an eye on things
because you don't necessarily want them to brown,
just to sweat out.
I'm gonna reduce the heat to medium low.
Stirring pretty constantly here
because they're cut so small
that they have a tendency to burn
so you want to keep them moving around in the pan.
These are at a good place now and our pasta
still has a couple of minutes on the timer
so I'm gonna turn the heat off
so that they don't over cook and burn.
I know I've said it a million times
but pasta water is liquid gold
and you should never let go of it.
So in this recipe, we call for pulling out two whole cups
of the pasta cooking liquid before we drain it.
This is your saving grace in creating
a really creamy, emulsified pasta sauce
so don't pour it all out.
So the pasta is now, has now been cooking for seven minutes.
It's very so slightly crunchy in the middle
but that's okay because we still got a couple minutes
of cooking to do over here.
So this is a good time to drain it.
You don't have to worry about draining off too much
of that water cause it's all going right back
into the pot anyway, so back we go.
So now I will return my mushrooms to medium heat
and I'm throwing the drained pasta in there.
Along with about one cup of this cooking liquid.
Adding the pasta liquid to this pot at this point
is gonna help de glaze the pan and pick up
all of that browned shallot, garlic
and mushroom bit that is stuck to the bottom of the pan
and it will then bring it into the sauce
so that you don't lose any of that flavor.
Pretty much all of that water is cooked off now.
So I will turn off the heat now
and let this cool for about three minutes.
So another way to prevent against scrambling the eggs
when they go from cold to hot is by tempering them.
So I'm gonna add a half a cup of this
pretty hot pasta water into my egg mixture
and that'll help loosen them up
and temper them a bit so that they don't go into shock
when they go back into the pan.
Don't rush it.
Action!
Okay, this has been cooling for two minutes.
As you can see, it's still really hot.
There's a little bit of steam coming off.
It's not cold, it's just not piping hot anymore.
So now, we can slowly stream in this egg mixture.
So I'm gonna go little by little,
working in circles as I go
to make sure that everything gets incorporated
and nothing gets stuck at the bottom of the pan scrambling.
The cheese is melting as the eggs are starting
to cook a bit.
And then here's where the reserved pasta sauce
comes in handy.
I feel like this is a little bit thick still
and so, I want to add a little pasta water
to thin it out.
Lastly I'll add that chopped parsley
which is nice and bright after all of that
deep caramelization that we've gotten on the mushrooms.
And then always be tasting.
It's great.
Just take my word for it.
I overheard Chris Morocco saying
even though he hates turnips he does not hate
a cooked mushroom, which I think was his way
of saying, can I have some of that pasta?
I feel like I'm like your pasta person.
You're always here.
Andy, do you want some? What kind is it?
Is this on your diet? Do you eat carbs on Fridays?
I eat carbs every day.
Yolked a whole egg- No, no, no!
Oh, oh my god, that's just a little too much parm
for him. I don't think
you should be putting cheese on your pasta
before you taste it. I tasted it.
Okay. So, take my word for it.
Geez. How much yolk
and how much whole egg? It's five yolks,
one whole egg. Mm.
And then, oh.
Did it need a sprinkle, sprinkle?
The sprinkle of shame.
It is so savory. Yeah.
Between the mushroom and the yolk?
And the cheese and the garlic.
I mean, wow.
[Molly] But are you missing the bacon?
No, you get good texture from the mushrooms.
You browned them well. Yeah.
Thank you, and there's something about the way
they belly up with the orecchiette that I quite like.
So, there ya have it.
Super simple mushroom carbonara.
It happens to be meatless but I'm not gonna go around
promoting that because that's not what it's about.
It's about celebrating these beautiful mushrooms.
It has seven ingredients and it's a cinch.
[Man] Great.
You can make a lovely meringue cookie out of that
or you could make a tasteless omelet out of that.
[laughing]
You what? Nothing.
Do you want my egg whites?
They were about to get a shirtless.
That was classic. But you guys didn't.
You didn't get that. We saw some like lower back.
You guys are pervs, all of you.
[laughing]
Oh please, you want it.
Obviously takes his shirt off, while I'm filming.
Typical Andy.
