Phil is in Yuma, AZ until next Friday – so Im going to try and keep myself busy with this blog. We generally try to eat somewhat healthy in this house but somehow macaroni and cheese has made it onto a weekly rotation. What can I say, baby likes cheese and carbs. I do use lowfat dairy and enriched pasta to *try* and make it a bit better than traditional recipes, but lets face it, this aint a salad.
Heres what we’ll need:
Pasta, flour, butter, garlic, onion powder, paprika, dijon mustard, milk and lots of cheeeeeeese.
So get some water on the stove and bring to a boil.
You’ll also want to throw about 2.5 tablespoons of butter into a sauce pan on low heat to start melting. Now, take about 3 cloves of garlic and give them a smash to get them out of the paper. Then throw them into your melting butter. This is where its going to start smelling really good.
Butter and garlic. Yum. Let the garlic infuse the butter for a few minutes, then remove the garlic cloves – but dont thrown them out yet!! Put them in your baking dish, we’ll use them later.
Now you’re going to make a roux. Which sounds fancy, but is just fat and flour together. Add 2.5 tablespoons of flour to your melted butter. It will make a bit of a paste.
Let this cook together for 2-3 minutes or ‘until it smells like pie crust’. I have no idea where I heard that tip, but it works for me. Oh yeah, at some point you’re going to want to throw your pasta into the boiling water.
I use about .75 lbs of pasta. If you like a really saucy mac and cheese, you might only want to use half a pound; If you like a more casserole style mac and cheese, you can use a a full pound. But .75 lbs seems juuuuuuust right to me. So now that your roux is ready, you will pour in your 2 cups of milk.
Stir or whisk rapidly while you add the milk, it will help make sure you break up any lumps in the roux. Keep stirring often and the roux will thicken up the milk to create a nice bechamel sauce. The milk and roux should cook about 3-4 minutes on low-medium heat (Low fat dairy doesnt handle heat as well as, say, cream. So be careful with your heat – you dont want to scald the milk. Heating low fat dairy at too high of a heat can cause a grainy sauce).
Ive heard that a bechamel should ‘coat the back of a spoon.’ Id say thats pretty good for using fat free milk? Now you are ready to start adding your cheese. I have about 8 oz of shredded cheese, total. Or one standard block of cheese from the grocery store. This yields about 2.25 cups of shredded cheese. Actually, for this batch of mac and cheese I have about 6 oz of cheddar and 2 oz of mozzarella. You can use any combination you want. Sometimes I even throw in a little blue cheese if Im feeling crazy. Though I always like to add at least a little bit of mozzarella, because nothing else I have found give me the stringyness I like in the sauce. I add about 1.75 cups of shredded cheese to the bechamel, reserving about .5 cups to sprinkle on top before putting it in the oven.
Melt in the cheese and cook sauce, stirring often, 3-4 minutes. Also, I highly recommend buying blocks of cheese and shredding them yourselves. The pre-shredded cheese in the store has a coating to prevent it from all clumping together and it really hinders the cheese from melting in nicely to the sauce. So roll up those sleeves and shred some cheese. I have a helper in case I drop any:
Also make sure you check your pasta at some point. You want to cook it pretty al dente because it will finish cooking in the cheese sauce in the oven. I think my pasta box said 10 – 12 minutes, but I only cooked it 8 mins before taking it off and draining. It still had a lot of bite to it, but I assure you it wont when you take it out of the oven. So lets prepare the baking dish! I havent forgot about that garlic. Take that buttery garlic and use it to grease up your baking dish. It will help add extra garlic flavor, too.
You can throw away your garlic now.
Youre almost done, I promise. You just want to add a few more things to that sauce to make it extra yummy. I add about 1/8 tsp of paprika, 1/4 tsp of onion powder, and 1/2 teaspoon of dijon mustard. Notice I havent even mentioned salt, yet?! Thats because you dont even want to touch the stuff until this point. The cheese and mustard will add quite a bit of salt – so wait until all of that is added before you taste and decide if you want any more.
Yes, even with all that cheese, its a pretty ‘white’ sauce. There is no yellow 5 dye in there! Once you stir in your spices, pour all that delicious sauce into your drained pasta.
See the stringyness!!! Now pour the whole thing into your garlic-butter-greased baking dish and top with the last .5 cups of cheese.
Now throw it in a 350 degree oven for like 20 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and bubbly on top.
Just so you know, my mac and cheese made it about 8 minutes in the oven before I decided to take it out to eat it.
I would say this recipe could serve about 4 people. Or 1 hungry pregnant lady. Either/Or.
Here is any easy copy/paste version of the recipe:
Ingredients:
.75 pounds of short cut pasta
2 cups of milk
8 oz ( ~2.25 cups) of cheese, any combination of cheddar, mozzarella, blue, parmesan, gruyere, fontina….
2.5 tablespoons of butter
2.5 tablespoons of flour
3 cloves of garlic
1/8 tsp of paprika
1/4 tsp of onion powder
1/2 tsp of dijon mustard
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bring large pot of water to a boil; cook .75 lbs of pasta al dente, drain. Melt 2.5 tablespoons of butter in sauce pan over low adding 3 smashed cloves of garlic to infuse. Remove garlic after 2 minutes. Use garlic to grease 8×8 baking dish. Add 2.5 tablespoons of flour to melted butter and cook together for 2-3 minutes to create a roux. Whisk in 2 cups of milk and cook over low heat for 3-4 minutes. Add in 1.75 cups of cheese, stirring occasionally, until all cheese is incorporated, about 3-4 minutes. Add in paprika, onion powder, and dijon. Pour cheese sauce over drained pasta and stir until well combined. Pour mac and cheese into baking dish and top with reserved .5 cups of cheese. Bake at 350 degrees until cheese is melted and bubbly, about 20 minutes.
I found myself start tapping my foot and biting my nails when I read this. I’M HUNGRY!!! Great recipe. I made a mac and cheese one time that had sauteed leeks in it. I think you sauteed the leeks first, then made your roux. Yum. Really good, simple explanation for a roux…they always scare me. I wish I had some macaroni right now!
amy i NEVER cook but your blog/recipes may inspire me to start! i just need to get some cooking tools first…my kitchen is very emtpy haha MISS YOU!
Thanks guys!!
Leigh – you can doooo it. I always joke with phil that he is the one who taught me to cook – making hamburger helper in grad school. But i had to start somewhere and now love it.
Amy and Phil,
Great website and huge congratulations to y’all! That’s great news and with these awesome recipes it looks like you’re thriving.
My wife, Sara, was due last Tuesday, so apparently the baby is really enjoying his time in utero and is not ready to say, “Goodbye.”
Great blog, y’all, and big hugs!
Thanks Matt! Ive been following you and Sara (and coconut!) on Sara’s blog, as well! I hope shes not too uncomfortable these last few days. Best of luck, you guys will be amazing parents!
Luke LOVES mac and cheese. Cheese is his fav food right now. Want to send some of this our way?
im sure nate can whip ya up a batch! you could leave out the mustard if you think it would be too strong of a flavor, too. Or if you dont like mustard… i forget. is it you and I that like mustard and the boys hate it? or andrew and I who like mustard and you and phil hate it? arent we always 2 and 2 on these sorts of things?
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