The Only Roman Pasta Recommendation You'll Ever Need

Once the Caput Mundi (capital of the world) and now the capital of Italy, Rome has received credit for many Italian things that originated elsewhere but were made famous in the city, including four iconic pasta dishes: cacio e pepe, gricia, amatriciana, and carbonara. These dishes share many of the same essential ingredients combined in slightly different ways but are each unique in their own ways. These ingredients are pecorino Romano cheese (often substituted or combined with Parmesan), guanciale (salt-cured pork jowl), pepper, pasta and pasta water, tomatoes, and egg.

Leaning on Italian cuisine's hallmark of making masterpieces out of only a few things, these four Roman dishes showcase how starting with simple, high-quality ingredients and making just a few tweaks can completely change the look and taste of a dish. Even more evident, these pasta recipes prove how much technique matters. Emulsification, the blending of fat and water, is a crucial skill to master if you want to make these dishes successfully and authentically. In these cases, the process occurs while cooking, requiring rapid mixing over heat, making it the most challenging element. But if you can prepare a creamy sauce from cheese, pasta water, and sometimes an egg, you can cook a pasta dish that will make you feel like you're in a Roman trattoria.

Creamy cacio e pepe

Cacio e pepe, which translates to cheese and pepper, is said to be named after Roman shepherds who traveled the fields on long journeys with sustenance made from what was available, which included dried pasta, aged sheep's cheese, and pepper. The original peasant's dish is today's ultimate comfort food; the cheesier, the better. It is somewhat similar to America's mac and cheese, except it's made with spaghetti or bucatini instead of elbow pasta, and it has a healthy dose of black pepper. 

The number of ingredients in the sauce — just pecorino Romano, pepper, and leftover water from boiling the pasta (the starch is key) — is fewer than those used for the other classic Roman pastas worth trying. The trick is to emulsify the three ingredients together into a super creamy sauce, avoiding clumpy or congealed cheese. As difficult as it is to get right, cacio e pepe may be the most basic of the four pastas.

Pasta alla gricia adds guanciale into the mix

Another foundational Roman pasta dish, pasta alla gricia is also known as amatriciana bianca (white amatriciana) because it is so closely related to amatriciana, which adds a couple of extra ingredients to this savory creation. It's even believed to originate from a town, Griciano, just a few minutes from Amatrice, where amatriciana was first made. 

Gricia is a simple blend of guanciale sautéed with olive oil, emulsified with starchy pasta water, and combined with spaghetti or rigatoni and topped with pecorino Romano and black pepper. Interestingly, the dish is essentially cacio e pepe with guanciale and a bit less cheese. The only difference between gricia and amatriciana is that the latter incorporates tomatoes and spice.

Believed to have been served in Roman taverns around the 5th century, gricia has an older history than any of the other three pastas. While it's not as well known around the world, ask any Roman about it and you'll see how popular it is among the locals.

Pasta all'amatriciana features a spicy tomato sauce

Centuries after pasta alla gricia made its mark on Italian society and tomatoes found their way to Italy, a cook for Pope Pius VII, Francesco Leonardi, published a recipe for pasta all'amatriciana. The dish was created in Amatrice, a hill town northeast of Rome that was struck by a devastating earthquake in 2016.

Amatriciana uses gricia as a base and features an emulsion of tomato sauce, red pepper flakes, pecorino Romano, and fatty guanciale. The emulsified ingredients meld the sauce's tangy, spicy flavors and bind it to the pasta, which in amatriciana's case is typically rigatoni, spaghetti, or bucatini, which goes great with tomato sauce. Take pasta all'amatriciana, remove the tomatoes and substitute red pepper for black pepper, and you have gricia — no wonder the simpler dish is nicknamed after it.

Carbonara includes an egg

Carbonara is known worldwide but is most famously served in Rome. The dish's name possibly derives from the word carbone (coal), but the reason for this could be because it was cooked over a charcoal fire, served to coal miners, or the cracked pepper resembles coal. Adding one ingredient to gricia produces carbonara. It is made with three familiar ingredients — pecorino Romano cheese, guanciale, and black pepper — but also includes the crucial addition of a beaten egg. (You can also try Giada de Laurentiis' seasoning tip for carbonara and add a little cinnamon for more flavor depth.)

While it may look like it's made with cream, the sauce is all egg, cheese, and pasta water emulsified to a creamy texture. Of course, the trick is to avoid making scrambled eggs when preparing the sauce. The right amount of heat, vigorous mixing, and the inclusion of pasta water and cheese bring all the ingredients together for a hearty dish often made with spaghetti or rigatoni.

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