Deary me, I hate "light" in food, my body's never tricked by "light" anyway, it just gets hungry again quickly. This is not my month, is it?

I like to lighten things up as much as the next person but unless you are using a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs, I really don't see an issue with this particular dish. A few slices of bacon, a couple of eggs and a good sprinkling of parmesan is all this needs to be flavorful and not a fat or calorie bomb. If nothing else, use whole grain spaghetti.

Agreed with above comments. I don't fool with this perfect dish. I'd much rather make carbonara healthier by reducing the portion size to a side dish and accompanying it with other veggie dishes or a salad.

Have to agree with those above. Rather than making pasta carbonara a weekly dish, indulge every once in a while with the good stuff. I'm doing a cleanse right now, and I've been making meals that are naturally light (kale slaw, cauliflower curry, steamed broccoli with tahini sauce, etc.) AND delicious. That's how I eat light. If I want carbonara, I want bacon and eggs, not a pale imitation.

I"ve made what I call "Pacific Northwest" carbonarra by using small diced dried indian smoked salmon instead of the bacon lightly sauteed in olive oil. It's not a carbon copy or a pale imitation but a riff on it. The smoky, salmony flavor complements the rich eggs and cheese.

Does everyone make their carbonara with bacon? I usually use pancetta and if I can find it, I use guanciale. My regular grocery store doesn't sell either pancetta or guanciale so that is sort of my method for ensuring carbonara doesn't become a weekly thing.

HEYPIELADY - I always use pancetta too. And I definitely don't make this on a weekly basis; maybe monthly at the max (usually when I haven't grocery shopped, and I just have eggs and parmesan in the fridge, pasta in the pantry, and chopped up pancetta in the freezer).

Bleh. Don't mess with a perfect dish. Guanciale or pancetta, eggs, and you want to cheat a little, a splash of cream.

Start with a salad or a big plate of veg but please, eat the real thing. Bacon is just wrong but smoked tofu, SERIOUSLY?

"My regular grocery store doesn't sell either pancetta or guanciale."

A lot of people think that, but almost every grocery store carries guanciale. The store clerks probably don't know they do, because most shoppers don't ask for items in Italian. Look for "pork jowl bacon" near the ham hocks and the salt pork. It'll probably be vacuum-sealed, and maybe even shelf-stable. The shelf-stable version tastes a little waxy and gets really hard when you fry it, so opt for the refrigerated brand. Dice it really small and it'll come out great.

People might argue that there's a difference between pork jowl meat and traditional guanciale, but that's just foodie snobbery. Carbonara was invented with American GI rations in the late WWII and in the rebuilding effort, despite what some of the Italians cooks say to the contrary.

For the record, I usually use pancetta in my carbonara, but just because I can leave the diced cubes bigger than with the jowl bacon.

Thanks for the guanciale tip, great to know! I just made this last night and was joking with my boyfriend about how unhealthy it is but he reminded me that it wasn't much worse than an average breakfast plate at a diner. I think we just feel guilty because it tastes SO good!

What a coincidence, I just got home from the grocery store with some yellow summer squash to make a pasta free version of carbonara. You can go half and half squash "noodles" & pasta, or replace the pasta entirely. I was thinking of adding spinach, but I'll definitely keep the pancetta and parmesan!

I echo most of the comments above. I'm much happier to cut down on portion size than to go "light" with any recipe. I eat pretty healthy to begin with (or at least I have for the first 10 days of 2012) so if I indulge every now and then with a bowl of carbonara, I want it to be the real deal.

I much prefer if a recipe tastes good and then happens to be "light" rather than taking a classic and revamping to make it lighter. I find I'm always left unsatisfied.

Thanks for this article, I followed the recipe exactly as it was posted. I made this last Christmas. One of our family favorite and its totally great. I also found more amazing recipes in this site, gourmandia.com. I learn a lot on this site.

Oh, for the love of…

Did any of you read the recipes before automatically launching into the "don't mess with carbonara / I don't like 'light' recipes" formula?

The first one is by Frances Lam and starts out explaining that he agrees with you on those things, but that he finds lightly sautéed hearty greens with a bit of fish sauce or good soy sauce for deep flavor and pimentón for smokiness are really good things, and even better when combined with traditional carbonara ingredients. He says, "I’m not going to go with the diet-book clichés about how 'you’ll never miss the bacon!' because that’s…a lie. But you might just find yourself wondering if it’s normal to become obsessed with hearty greens."

The Oprah recipe does leave out the eggs, but uses 2 oz of pancetta and 1½ of parmesan, combined with low-fat milk combined with the pasta water to finish the sauce.

The third recipe is, I think, Canadian, because it calls for "6 rashers of back bacon" as well as "5 tbsp low-fat fromage frais," which I guarantee I cannot find in my small-town grocery store. I can't exactly tell where the savings are here other than maybe using canadian bacon instead of bacon (or guancale or pancetta), so I'll ignore it.

The fourth one is for vegetarians, who just might reject the idea of "don't mess with carbonara" because they like the other tastes. What replaces the traditional smoked pork? Smoked sun-dried tomatoes, which "add an amazing savory quality to this rich dish." The recipe includes 3 eggs, pecorino romano, ¼ cup cream (or milk) -- to serve two people. This is not exactly light in any sense.

And the final one, from "weekday vegetarian," takes a similar tack but uses smoked tofu instead of smoked pork, again because they're vegetarians who might like to have a carbonara-style dish even if you don't think it's worth doing, but think it's worth looking down on those who do. And yes, it includes both eggs and "two handfuls" of parmesan, or parmigiano reggiano if you have it, of course.

Some of us have dietary restrictions, and some of those aren't exactly voluntary. And some of that subset likes to have these flavors and textures more often than "never" or "annually." If you prefer to eat the real thing in small portions less often, more power to you. But for those who can't, these kinds of posts are good idea factories for improving the food in our lives and deserve better than the scorn of people who are lucky enough not to have such issues.

I wasn't thinking about pasta carbonara...until I saw this post. Thanks a lot.

Carbonara in the grand scheme of things is not all that bad for you. It's about portion control. When I make mine I use whole grain pasta and add in a whole bag of baby spinach. We also start off eating a huge salad so we fill up on greens and veggies and eat less of the carbonara.