For a pancetta pasta with tomato basil sauce, take a look at our Tagliatelle with Pancetta and Mozzarella. One of the most popular recipes I’ve ever put out is for a basic pasta cream sauce. The recipe that is the foundation of all sorts of creamy pasta dishes. The benefit of mastering a basic sauce like that one is that it means you can add many delicious things to that recipe to make it more interesting. And that is the basis for this creamy pasta. I’ve used the creamy, cheesy sauce as a base and added a perfect combination of other ingredients. Together they add fresh and smokey flavours that link up to make this a recipe you’ll want on rotation!
Pancetta pasta
As I’ve hinted, this is one of my favourite pasta recipes and one that my kids took to from an early age. I bring you creamy pasta with pancetta, peas and mint. That’s right I said mint. Mint is a herb that is used quite a bit in pastas in Italy but doesn’t show up much elsewhere. It lifts the rich, creamy and cheesy sauce and brightens this pasta with pancetta dish in the way basil and oregano just can’t do. Any time I serve this creamy pasta to my guests, I am guaranteed to hear how much they were surprised and delighted by the addition of mint…and PANCETTA.
What is pancetta?
Here is the short answer. Pancetta is Italian bacon. The long answer is pancetta is made slightly differently than bacon. Both are made from pork belly. And while bacon is smoked, pancetta is cured with salt. You can easily substitute pancetta with bacon but make sure you go for high quality, meaty, thickly sliced bacon. I didn’t end up with a lot of fat from pancetta. So if you do use bacon, discard excess fat to prevent your pasta from becoming too greasy.
Ingredients
As with many Italian dishes, this pasta recipe is not overloaded with ingredients. Italians really love it simple! So the key players here are…
short pasta Parmesan cream sauce pancetta or bacon peas fresh mint
This pasta is quite mild and could be accused of lacking flavour. However, if prepared properly, it is a complete knockout! Trust me. One of my secret weapons for upping a flavour a little is to throw in a clove of garlic into the pan with pancetta. I don’t slice it or mince it because I don’t want a full on garlic flavour in my pasta with pancetta but I want it to be slightly perfumed with it. When the pancetta is cooked I simply discard the garlic clove and move on to the next step of the recipe.
Storage and leftovers
If you have any leftovers, keep them in the fridge for up to three days. I don’t find that pasta responds well to freezing. To reheat, use a microwave. The time will depended on the microwave you are using, but in most cases it will take 2-2.5 minutes.
