🍝 Pasta all'amatriciana
Amatriciana is a Roman-style pasta sauce of guanciale (cured pork cheek) fried until crisp, simmered with tomato and a little chilli, then tossed with pasta and finished with sharp grated pecorino romano. The rendered pork fat gives the sauce its depth, so only a handful of ingredients are needed. It is usually made with bucatini or spaghetti.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 320 g bucatini or spaghetti
- 150 g guanciale, cut into strips
- 400 g canned peeled tomatoes, crushed
- 1 small dried chilli, crumbled
- 60 g pecorino romano, grated
- Salt
Method
- Cook the guanciale in a dry pan over medium heat for 6–8 minutes until the fat renders and the strips turn crisp. Lift out a few pieces for the top.
- Add the tomatoes and chilli and simmer for 10 minutes. Salt sparingly — guanciale and pecorino are salty.
- Boil the pasta until al dente and toss it in the sauce with a splash of the cooking water.
- Take off the heat, stir in most of the pecorino and serve topped with the reserved guanciale and the rest of the cheese.
How to make it lighter
- A smaller 250 g plate with a green salad is a much lighter meal than a 350 g bowl.
- Spoon off part of the rendered fat before the tomatoes go in.
- Use half the pecorino and grate it finely — it spreads further and the flavour stays strong.
History
The sauce is named after Amatrice, a mountain town in northern Lazio. A tomato-free version made with guanciale and pecorino, known today as pasta alla gricia, is often described as its forerunner; with tomato, the dish became a fixture of Roman trattorias. After the 2016 earthquake in Amatrice, restaurants in Italy and abroad served amatriciana to raise money for the town.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →