Grilling aficionados and vegetarian recipe seekers, I’m vibing with you. Carbonara can be the best of these two, and I have a feeling you might keep this recipe on your weekly summer dinner rotation. Grilled zucchini carbonara is a combination of cheesy, lemony egg yolk-enriched sauce, al dente spaghetti, and charred zucchini bits that melt into the dish. To be clear, this is a variation of carbonara and not classic like my other carbonara recipe that includes pork. This is meatless territory and includes miso for a deep dive into salty umami flavor so you won’t be missing out on pancetta.
The sauce:
As soon as you begin grilling and boiling the spaghetti, you can make the sauce quickly. In my experience, carbonara sauces benefit from being tossed with hot pasta off heat in a metal bowl. Metal is a great conductor of heat, so it will retain residual heat around the bottom and sides as you gently but swiftly toss the pasta. Ultimately, you don’t want your eggs to scramble.
The grilling:
If you don’t have a gas or charcoal grill at home, default to a grill pan. The nice thing about using a grill pan is that you can cook your spaghetti and zucchini simultaneously without running between the grill and stove. Zucchini contains lots of water, so allowing it to sit for a few minutes after salting and before cooking helps expel some of the water.
Recipe Tips
- Use 1 whole egg to 6 egg yolks: The egg white and yolks bind to the sauce and create a glossy velvety sheen against the pasta. The egg yolks are the reason for the rich creamy mouthfeel, so don’t be afraid to use lots of them. The heat from the pasta will indirectly “cook” the eggs.
- White miso is fermented soybean and rice. It has a deeply rich and salty flavor, which pairs nicely with creamy yolks, funky Pecorino, and bright lemon zest and basil.
- I didn’t use additional pasta water in the sauce other than any remaining water coating the spaghetti strands. If you prefer an even saucier carbonara, cook the pasta in a skillet with less water than you think. This will create a thicker, starchier liquid, which is useful for the carbonara sauce later on.
- So you have 4 ounces of leftover spaghetti: It’s not a huge deal! Save it to make yourself a little leftover side of pasta for lunch or dinner on a night you’re eating solo.
Storage
Carbonara is best eaten right away, as the egg will congeal and the pasta will clump. But if you must, store any leftovers in an airtight container and refrigerate up to 1 day. Reheat with a little reserved pasta water over medium-low heat.
Did you try making this? Let us know how it went in the comments!
