Food Network veteran Giada De Laurentiis loves making Italy's carbonara for weeknight dinners and uses bits of crispy bacon to add flavor and texture. She mixes eggs, egg yolks, Parmigiano Reggiano, and salt and pepper. Her pasta of choice is an unspecified tubular pasta with some curve and indentations that looks a lot like busiate.

With a pot of pasta is bubbling on the stove, and De Laurentiis puts some of the starchy pasta water to use — a trick she picked up from her grandfather. She removes the bacon from its pan and adds some pasta water to the bacon fat, where the cooked pasta gets tossed, and adds a few ladles of pasta water to the beaten egg mixture.

De Laurentiis says, "The hot water makes the eggs the same temperature as the pasta you just cooked.” She completes her weeknight supper prep by adding in the crisped bacon, along with more Parmigiano for creaminess.