How can you cook a Spaghetti Carbonara sous-vide?

Question

I'm looking to make my first sous-vide Spaghetti Carbonara. My thinking is that it would be impossible to cook everything in the same pouch together as the dried pasta would not rehydrate. The current plan is to cook the pasta and bacon as normal (boil the pasta and fry the meat etc.) and just sous-vide the cheese and egg yolk mixture.

1. What would be the optimum time and temperature combination for the egg-cheese mixture?
2. Alternatively, should I fry the bacon black pepper in olive oil, leave this to cool, then add this to the egg-cheese mixture before submersion?

I want to replicate as closely as possible a genuine Carbonara, while at the same time not abandoning my dinner guests while I cook.

Answer 1

The answer appears to be 63C for around 1 hour. You should never exceed 65C because the sauce will break.

---

Having answered your question, I want to point out some problems with doing Carbonara sous-vide. First, the necessary temperature is below the 68C "safe" temperature for holding undercooked eggs according to some authorities, so you're exposing yourself to some contamination risk that a regular recipe does not have. Second, unlike Cacio e Pepe, Carbonara is very reliable and easy. More importantly, tossing pasta with a sous vide sauce packet isn't any faster than doing it with the hot pasta and eggs.

Answer 2

In my understanding a traditional Carbonara recipe using no cooking of the egg yolks at all. The steps are

1. Fry the bacon
2. Boil the pasta
3. Mix the egg yolks and the grated cheese
4. Pour the egg yolk cheese mixture over the pasta and stir
5. Top off if the bacon

Of course you should only do this with very fresh high quality eggs from a source you trust. No need to sous-vide anything.