STEP 2: CHOOSE THE RIGHT CHEESE.
Making a mac and cheese sauce with cheese is a creative endeavor. Although it’s perfectly acceptable to choose a time-honored recipe and stick with it—hello, all-cheddar cheese sauce!—the greatest macaroni and cheese frequently incorporates a variety of cheeses. The graphic below features a few of my favorites, but there are countless options!
A few tips for choosing cheeses:
Expensive cheese does not equal delicious cheese sauce. Spend less money on an ostentatious cheese that will eventually melt and cover a mountain of carbohydrates. Your favorite regular cheeses will work just fine! What you should look for in a cheese sauce is aged cheddar and parmesan (aged cheddar tastes a lot more like “BOOM! IM CHEDDAR!” than regular sandwich cheese).
Shred your own cheese. Ever look at the ingredients list on the back of pre-shredded cheese? Its usually “cheese,” (of course) followed by a whooooole bunch of other stuff. This is bad for two reasons: (1) preservative chemicals are gross and I dont like it when theyre all over my food and (2) the chemicals they put on pre-shredded cheese often prevent it from melting smoothly. Use a sturdy box grater to shred a block of cheese or go full cheese-ster with the shredding disc of a food processor (more details in the equipment section below!).
Taste as you go. When I first added blue cheese to mac and cheese sauce, I added an extremely large handful of the cheese. And it tasted horrible. (Thankfully, I was able to calculate the ratio and produced a rather delicious blue cheese mac and cheese, phew.) Start small when experimenting with new cheese pairings, particularly if you’re using a strong-flavored cheese like pepper jack or smoked gouda. Add a small handful of cheese to the sauce and taste it to gauge the development of flavors. You can always add more cheese!.
Balance strong flavors with mild ones. I adore the robust tastes of gruyere, pepper jack, blue cheese, and smoked gouda, but it’s easy to overdo it and ruin the unique flavor you’re trying for. To achieve the ideal taste combination, select a cheese that you want to draw attention to and pair it with subtle flavors that enhance the creaminess and depth of your sauce without overpowering the cheese that is on display. Havarti, fontina, and white cheddar are excellent mild cheeses to pair with those bolder flavors. My favorite pairings are Goat Cheese Havarti, Smoked Gouda Sharp Cheddar, Gruyere Fontina White Cheddar (like in our lobster mac and cheese), and Pepper Jack White Cheddar.
Dont be afraid to keep it simple. While creating new cheese blends is often enjoyable, there are instances when a simple sauce with just one cheese is exactly what the mac-doctor ordered. When I add layers of flavor to my sauce through other means, like adding proteins, vegetables, or mix-ins like pesto and squash puree, I usually use just one type of cheese. Similar to how you don’t want one cheese flavor to overpower another, you also don’t want an excessive amount of cheeses to overpower the other ingredients in your mac and cheese. A single cheese addition allows the other flavors to come through in dishes like Roasted Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese and Havarti Spinach Mac and Cheese, for example.
STEP 3: MASTER THE CHEESE SAUCE.
The sauce is frequently the main concern that people have when they ask me about macaroni and cheese. But do not worry, we are going to explain everything about this mac sauce situation.
Macaroni and Cheese sauce is really just a cheesed-up version of béchamel, one of the five French Mother Sauces. Béchamel is made by first making a roux – a paste made of melted butter and flour, whisked together and cooked until youve “cooked out” the taste of raw flour – and adding milk. (Totally Rad Roux Tip: You can tell the roux is done when it smells like toasted almonds).
When whisked into milk, the cooked roux then functions as a thickening agent, giving the béchamel its thick, creamy consistency. Although there are many different sauces that can be made with basic béchamel, my personal favorite is a rich macaroni and cheese sauce.
A delicious cheese sauce can be made by melting butter over medium heat and then whisking in flour. My preferred ratio for butter to flour is 1:1, meaning that if you use three tablespoons of butter, you would also need to use three tablespoons of flour. Once the roux has thickened and become fragrant, cook for a minute or two. Whisk continuously while gradually adding the liquid. (For a demo, view the video at the bottom of this article!)
Don’t let the roux cook for too long because it will darken significantly during cooking and you don’t want your sauce to have bits of dark brown color in it.
Change up the taste of your sauce by replacing some of the milk in your béchamel recipe with ⅔ cup of beer (my personal favorite!? ), chicken stock, or even coconut milk.
Add a small pinch of salt and pepper to the sauce, and simmer it over medium heat, whisking occasionally, until the milk thickens to the desired consistency for your cheese sauce. This generally takes 5-10 minutes. Once the heat is off, add the shredded cheese and stir until it melts and the sauce becomes smooth.
Assess the behavior of your sauce and make sure it holds together before adding the pasta or any other ingredients. Never fear if something seems strange; the most common issues can be easily fixed with these simple solutions:
If the sauce is too thick, add a small amount of milk and stir until it becomes more fluid. (This is also a great tip for reheating mac and cheese: stir a splash of milk or half-and-half into the pasta to revive the sauce if you’re microwaving leftovers and it seems to have dried out.)
If the sauce seems too thin, you can thicken it up by adding more cheese, but doing so may cause the cheese to separate. You can also put the sauce back over the heat and simmer until it thickens. Fortunately, theres a trick to fix that, too! ⬇.
Sauce separation or greasy texture? It happens to the best of us. Occasionally, the milk and cheese simply aren’t friends, and your sauce ends up a little gloopy. After taking the sauce off the stove, smooth it out and return it to the right creamy consistency by blending it in batches with a regular blender or zapping it with an immersion blender.
Once you’re satisfied with the sauce, add the cooked pasta and any desired vegetables or protein.
BOOM! You = MAC AND CHEESE CHAMPION.
How to Make One Pot Mac and Cheese
- Add milk, butter, and macaroni noodles to a large pot.
- Cook the noodles on medium for 15 to 18 minutes, stirring frequently, or until they are cooked.
- Add the cheese and salt, stirring until melted.
- Taste and adjust seasonings, adding more cheese if desired.
Though bow tie, fusilli, and penne pasta also work well, I personally like elbow macaroni.
Water is a substitute, but the texture of your mac & cheese will be less creamy.
Bring the mixture back to a boil and continue cooking until the desired consistency is achieved if your macaroni and cheese ends up being too liquid. To prevent the milk and cheese from burning at the bottom of the pot, stir frequently.
This is not the best stuff to use as leftovers from the blue box. The sauce gets powdery and has a weird texture. But this one-pot mac and cheese tastes SO good reheated. The flavors have an opportunity to meld together and you still get that creamy factor. I advise consuming leftovers within a day or two and keeping them refrigerated.
- You don’t need to drain the pasta in this recipe. When pasta is cooked in milk directly, it becomes exceptionally creamy and the sauce adheres to it more effectively.
- In order to obtain the entire creaminess factor, I suggest using whole milk or at least 2%
- Use either mild or sharp cheddar, and add extra cheese if necessary to get the desired level of cheesiness.
