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Our Homemade Mac & Cheese Recipe Will Have You Putting The Box Back On The Shelf
Delish
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9/18/2023
Our easy, best-ever macaroni and cheese recipe accomplishes three key requirements: It's extra creamy, plenty cheesy, and baked with a crunchy, golden topping.
Category
🛠️
Lifestyle
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Hey everyone, it's Tia in the Delish Kitchen,
00:02
and I'm gonna show you how to make
00:04
the creamiest, dreamiest baked mac and cheese
00:08
you've ever tasted.
00:09
Baked mac and cheese is not like
00:11
the out-of-the-box mac and cheese.
00:14
It's rich, it's gooey, and it's got this crispy
00:18
Parmesan breadcrumb topping that's just to die for.
00:21
If you've never made a baked mac and cheese,
00:24
today is the day to start.
00:26
The key to the most flavorful cheese sauce
00:28
is not one, but three different types of cheese.
00:32
Each cheese fills a specific role in our cheese sauce.
00:36
So, you start with the base cheese.
00:38
Here we've got cheddar.
00:40
You could use sharp, you could use mild,
00:42
any variety of cheddar.
00:44
You could also maybe include a little Monterey
00:46
or Colby Jack if you wanted to.
00:48
Anything that's gonna give you a nice, subtle cheese flavor,
00:51
a nice, rich base flavor for your sauce.
00:55
Then, you have the funk cheese, as I like to call it.
00:59
This is Gruyere, but you could also use Fontina.
01:03
Anything with just a little bit of, huh, what is that,
01:07
to give your sauce some extra interest.
01:10
Then you've got Parmesan.
01:12
Parmesan is that nutty, sharp cheese.
01:15
And here you could also use Asiago,
01:17
you could use Parmigiano-Reggiano.
01:19
You're not gonna use much of this 'cause it's very strong,
01:22
but you do want it to give your cheese sauce
01:24
that little bit of zip.
01:26
Speaking of our cheeses, you may have noticed
01:29
that they are all solid blocks.
01:32
You should use a solid block.
01:33
You should not use pre-shredded cheese for this.
01:36
Pre-shredded cheese has this stuff, this preservatives,
01:40
like potato starch, some other type of starch
01:43
that coats the outside of it
01:45
so it doesn't stick together in the bag.
01:47
That does not make for a good mac and cheese sauce ever.
01:50
So, please, please, please,
01:51
if you only do one extra out-of-the-box thing for this,
01:55
please get your cheese and grate it fresh.
01:58
I'm gonna go ahead and start grating my cheese.
02:00
I like to use a box grater,
02:01
and I'm just gonna use a medium shred.
02:03
(upbeat music)
02:06
So, at this point,
02:12
you're gonna make sure to split your Parm.
02:14
You want 2/3 or about a cup of it in one bowl,
02:18
and then you want 1/2 a cup in another bowl.
02:21
You're gonna set that 1/2 a cup aside.
02:23
That's gonna go in the panko breadcrumb topping.
02:26
Before we start our cheese sauce,
02:28
we are going to cook our pasta.
02:30
Let's talk a little bit about the pasta for mac and cheese.
02:33
A lot of people think elbow macaroni.
02:36
That's fine.
02:38
However, I like a pasta
02:40
with a little bit more corkscrew action going on,
02:43
like cavatappi.
02:44
What I love about cavatappi
02:46
is that it has all of those corkscrews
02:48
that really catch and hold that cheese sauce,
02:51
and in particular, in a baked mac and cheese,
02:54
it's really what you want.
02:55
We are going to be boiling it in super salty water,
02:59
and when I say super salty,
03:01
I mean it should taste like the ocean.
03:04
You're gonna get your water to a boil.
03:05
You're gonna put your salt in.
03:07
You're gonna add your pasta,
03:08
and you're gonna cook your pasta
03:10
until it is just al dente.
03:13
Remember, this pasta is gonna go bake in the oven,
03:15
so it's gonna get more soft.
03:17
You don't want it super soft
03:18
when it comes out of the water already.
03:20
Now we're ready to make our cheese sauce.
03:24
The way to get the creamiest, dreamiest cheese sauce
03:27
for a baked mac and cheese
03:29
is to start with a bechamel.
03:31
Now let's demystify bechamel for a minute.
03:33
Bechamel is simply a milk sauce
03:37
that is thickened with a roux,
03:40
and a roux is just butter and flour whisked together
03:43
until it gets kind of blonde and bubbly, all right?
03:47
It's really not that difficult.
03:49
It's pretty simple.
03:50
It's easier to show than to tell, so let's get started.
03:54
We're gonna start by melting our butter
03:56
in our pan over medium heat,
03:58
and then we're gonna add our flour
04:00
and cook it all together
04:02
until it starts to bubble away from the pan
04:05
just a little bit.
04:06
You'll see it'll turn slightly blonde
04:09
and become less pale.
04:11
You don't want it super dark,
04:13
but you definitely don't want it as white as it was.
04:16
Then you are going to put your milk in slowly,
04:21
stirring constantly so you don't get big lumps.
04:24
If you wanna shortcut this process a little bit,
04:28
you can make sure that your milk is at room temperature
04:31
or even heat it slightly.
04:32
That will help get everything up to temp
04:36
because you're gonna cook it and continue to stir
04:38
until it becomes thick and bubbly.
04:43
Then you'll season with your mustard powder
04:46
and your salt and your pepper.
04:48
So as you can see, our sauce has thickened.
04:53
It's been bubbling for about two minutes,
04:56
and it's just slightly thicker.
04:58
It's gonna get a lot thicker when we add our cheese sauce,
05:00
so if it still looks a little loose, that's okay too.
05:03
At this point, we're gonna get it off the heat,
05:06
and then we're gonna add our cheeses.
05:07
It's very important to take it off the heat.
05:10
Do not try to add your cheese with the heat on the pot.
05:14
We're whisking in all of our cheeses
05:16
just until it's smooth and combined,
05:18
and then while it's still warm,
05:20
we are gonna fold in our pasta.
05:22
So the last thing we do
05:38
before we put our mac and cheeses in the oven
05:40
is make our crunchy, crispy bread crumb topping.
05:44
So we are gonna mix together our Parmesan and our panko,
05:47
and then we're gonna drizzle the olive oil on top
05:49
and stir it all together.
05:51
We're gonna butter our baking dish,
05:57
get our mac in,
06:01
top with our crispy bread crumb topping,
06:10
a little bit more black pepper,
06:11
and then get it into the oven.
06:13
We're gonna get this in the oven at 375
06:19
and cook it for 25 minutes,
06:21
just until it's golden brown on the top and bubbling.
06:24
(laughs)
06:36
It's rich, it's creamy, it's gooey,
06:39
it's oh so comforting.
06:41
You can really taste all of the different things
06:44
that those cheeses brought to the party,
06:46
and the fact that we started with that bechamel base
06:48
makes this that much richer and creamy and delicious.
06:53
This is the best mac and cheese I have ever tasted,
06:55
and by the way, all of the rest of the Delish team
06:58
thought so too.
06:59
For this and other recipes, stick around on delish.com.
07:04
(upbeat music)
07:07
(upbeat music)
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