Looking for a simple, easy and delicious recipe? Here’s one great option.
This is a recipe for “Bucatini alla carbonara”. It’s made with guanciale and cream.
Homemade bucatini with restaurant quality! Culinary chewy bucatini noodles are covered in a spicy, briney, smoky crimson sauce.
A delightfully chewy bucatini pasta is completely covered in a rich, spicy red sauce that is flecked with crunchy tiny pancetta pieces, flavorful Italian sausage, and slivers of briney, bite-sized pepperoncini.
This spaghetti was created as a tribute to a dish from Mucci’s, a legendary local Italian restaurant. Their version of arrabbiata sauce with fresh bucatini will make you drool. A fiery red sauce called “Arrabbiata,” which means “angry” in Italian, obtains its intensity by boiling with red pepper flakes. By adding pepperoncini for an increase in heat, Italian sausage, and pancetta for a smoky, savory swirl throughout, Mucci’s creates a kind of arrabiata+.
And the outcomes? Well, A++++++.
Everything You Need For This Bucatini Is Here
The Dining Spot That Started It All
The modest, unobtrusive Mucci’s Italian restaurant in St. Paul offers a limited menu with a variety of mouthwatering dishes, including outstanding pizzas (hello, quick-fried dough). There are sporadic “doughscuits,” which are only offered on weekends in the mornings until they run out. Now that there is a nice new terrace, we often get the house bucatini instead of the hungover kale, cacio e pepe, or Camilla pizza (which has FRIED CHICKEN, y’all!).
It’s a really adored local restaurant serving totally irresistible Italian cuisine that will linger in your hearts and make you desire it constantly, so what more could you possibly want? At fact, evidently enough people demanded “MUCCI’S ALL THE TIME NOW FOREVER PLZ” that some of their pizzas are now available in several neighborhood grocery shops here in the metro. too us. Thus, here we are.
Bringing you a little portion of Mucci’s love letter.
What Is The Not-So-Secret Sauce?
Most essential, love and patience are required for a red sauce. But listen, pepperoncini for a briney bite and pancetta for smoke Most definitely won’t do any harm. These are only the first two aspects of this particular sauce that we love.
Ingredients are crucial because they give tastes a chance to fully develop. Because San Marzano tomatoes’ inherent sweetness makes this sauce sing, we are utilizing hand-crushed San Marzano tomatoes. To ensure that the heat is there, make sure the red pepper flakes are fresh. After all, it is a parody of the arrabiata. Select a favorite Italian sausage since there won’t be anything to detract from it.
The pancetta foundation is incredible, and it’s crucial to make those first few small pieces very crispy. Not just to extract the most flavor, but also to ensure that they transform into lovely tiny salty chewy bursts in the sauce rather than horrifyingly ugly small globby chunks when you throw them back into the sauce later.
Although spicy Italian sausage may be used if you really wanted to ratchet up the heat in this dish, this recipe calls for mild Italian sausage. If not, the red pepper flakes boiling within will give you a deliciously heated kick.
The sliced pepperoncini that are abruptly folded into the sauce at the end is a pleasant surprise. Even just thinking about the brine and heat that cut through all of that rich, smokey, very flavorful sauce made me feel like I was floating on a cloud.
Bucatini: What Is It?
Bucatini resembles a cross between macaroni and spaghetti. All the excitement of a macaroni tube, but spaghetti-length and twirl-able. Additionally, it has a bit extra weight so that it can truly hold onto your sauce, and boy, will you want to hold onto every drop of this sauce.
If you’re the sort of person who makes fancy pasta and you want to be a boss like Mucci’s, then by all means, create your own. However, if you are more like us and that is just not possible, you may often get some in the grocery store. If there aren’t any noodles on the shop shelves where you are, you can get some here. (Referral link)
Because the sauce is such an important component of this dish, alternative pastas will obviously work just as well. The texture of an egg noodle, such as a tagliatelle, could be even more similar to the original dish. However, we were very interested in playing the chewy, small noodle straw game with the bucatini.
Making This Really Delicious Pasta
Fortunately, patience rather than difficulty is the crucial component here. So, without a lot of preparation, everything actually comes together.
- sausage and pancetta. For the flavor to fully come through, cook the pancetta until it is well-done and crispy. Drain and remove. Italian sausage is added, cooked completely, and then removed with some oil still in the pan.
- Garlic with onions. Once soft and aromatic, add tomato paste and continue to cook for a further couple of minutes, or until the paste is dark and rust-colored.
- spices and tomatoes. Add the San Marzano peppers that have been manually pulverized. Salt, oregano, and red pepper flakes are also included (we hope so!). Reintroduce the pancetta and sausage to the saucepan.
- Pepperoni and simmer. For at least 30 minutes, cover and let it sit. The pepperoncini should then be added and simmered for a few more minutes until tender. Add any more stock as required to get the desired consistency.
When you start tossing this spicy sauce magic over mountains of chewy noodle twirls and top it with grated Pecorino for a creamy, salty finish, you’ll realize that you’re eating a little bit of Mucci’s right in your own home.
This recipe creates enough sauce for one or two jars, depending on how many people you’re feeding. And by “next time,” we likely mean just after dinner, when everyone is staring at their empty plates and wondering why their fantasy is coming to an end. There isn’t.
We thus hope that this will bring a little amount of that delight to your table if you are unable to visit Mucci’s Italian (although we completely understand and encourage you scheduling your vacation to MN right now).
Frequently Asked Questions for Bucatini
Can I substitute anything else for the pancetta?
Bacon might be a suitable replacement for that lovely smokiness in this dish, albeit it wouldn’t be *quite* as nice.
How may I convert this to vegetarianism?
We’d probably choose a different recipe since the pancetta and sausage’s smokiness is what actually makes this one special. However, some smoked paprika can work well as a substitute. Although we haven’t tried, if you do, we’d love to know how it goes!
How hot is this dish?
It has some oomph! But you may easily make changes by leaving out the red pepper flakes. The red pepper flakes are what actually make the dish hot, however you could also cut down on the pepperoncini.
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Description
Homemade bucatini with restaurant quality! Culinary chewy bucatini noodles are covered in a spicy, briney, smoky crimson sauce. Inspired by Mucci’s Italian in St. Paul, MN.
- 4 ounces of pancetta, diced
- Ground sausage, 1 lb.
- 1 chopped tiny yellow onion
- 6 minced garlic cloves
- Tomato paste, two teaspoons
- I enjoy San Marzano tomatoes, so I smashed two 28-ounce cans of whole, peeled tomatoes by hand.
- 1 salt shakerful
- 1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano
- 1 teaspoon of flakes of red pepper
- To thin the sauce, use 1-2 cups of water or chicken broth.
- pepperoncini, 1 cup
- serving spaghetti bucatini
- pecorino cheese as a garnish
- Cook the pancetta until it is very well-browned over medium-high heat in a large, heavy pot, such as a Dutch oven. You want them well-done, which means browned, nearly crispy, and flavor-concentrated. Drain the pan’s oil before removing and setting aside the pancetta.
- Brown the Italian sausage in the same pan until it is cooked through and crumbles. While reserving a little amount of the pan’s oil, remove the sausage and put it aside.
- Add the onion and garlic to the same saucepan. (If more olive oil is required, add it.) Cook until tender and aromatic. For a further two to three minutes, add the tomato paste.
- Add salt, oregano, red pepper flakes, and smashed tomatoes. Reintroduce the pancetta and sausage to the saucepan. 30 minutes of simmering under cover.
- When the required consistency is obtained, add more broth.
- Pepperoni is optional. Continue to simmer for a further five minutes, or until the pepperoncini are extremely soft but not mushy.
- After cooking bucatini as directed on the box, drain it and put it back in the saucepan. To help the sauce and noodles combine, pour sauce over cooked bucatini and continue to simmer for a few minutes.
- Add pecorino cheese to bucatini! MWAH. What an occasion.
Notes
This quantity of sauce is sufficient to cover the whole package of bucatini. But I discover that we seldom ever prepare a whole box of bucatini. Ordinarily, I use half the sauce to cover half a package of bucatini. The remaining sauce may be frozen or kept in the fridge for a few days.
- 10 minutes for preparation
- forty-five minutes to cook
- Dinner is a category
- Approach: stovetop
- Food: Italian
Related Tags
- what is bucatini
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- perciatelli