In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to make the best mac and cheese at home. From the perfect melty sauce to a delicious toasted crust, follow Frank’s guide and never make a dry mac and cheese again.
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00:00I'm Frank, professional chef and culinary instructor, and today I'm going to show you
00:03how to make the perfect mac and cheese.
00:05You'll learn all the techniques to make a perfectly melty sauce, pick just the right
00:09pasta, and a crunchy topping that takes it over the top.
00:12This is mac and cheese 101.
00:16Mac and cheese should be creamy, cheesy, and comforting.
00:18And I'm going to show you a method that skips the flour, skips the baking, using one special
00:22secret ingredient.
00:23That's how we're going to take this comforting side dish and make it the star of the show.
00:28When it comes to cheese for my mac and cheese, I like to choose three different types.
00:36Cheddar for sharpness, Gouda for flavor and creaminess, and then I'm going to use some
00:40grated Parmesan to give it a little bit of zinc.
00:43Something sharp, something creamy, and something really flavorful.
00:47By following that basic formula, you're going to solve a lot of the problems that people
00:51usually make when they make mac and cheese.
00:53If you don't choose the right cheeses, you're going to end up with kind of an oily sauce
00:57that's broken.
00:58My Parmesan here is freshly grated.
01:01I'm going to put this aside.
01:02I don't need to do anything with it, but I do want to grate my other two cheeses.
01:05Now, first of all, with the Gouda, I'm going to take some of this brown skin off.
01:09It really doesn't melt well, and because it has that smokiness to it, it kind of dries
01:13out and gets rubbery.
01:15So what I do is I cut into manageable pieces, and then I get my grater, put the grater flat,
01:22and push.
01:23This way, I'm kind of using my body weight to push the cheese.
01:26I feel like it takes a little less time.
01:28It actually takes a little less effort as far as I'm concerned.
01:31Once the cheese grater gets full, you can push it and dump it to the side.
01:36So there's my shredded Gouda.
01:37I'm going to take the block of cheddar, make it manageable.
01:41The grater's on its side, and we push.
01:44For mac and cheese, I feel it's super important that you buy a block of cheese and shred it
01:48yourself.
01:49The shredded cheeses have anti-caking agents and cellulose in them.
01:52I find that that lends to a gritty sauce.
01:55So buy the block cheese, take a minute or two, and grate your own cheese.
01:58And I promise you, if you use my method here, it's going to be quicker and easier.
02:05Ideally, with mac and cheese, you want a cheesy bite every time.
02:09Basically, the pasta is the sauce delivery vehicle.
02:13The ideal pasta for mac and cheese has holes, ridges, curves, and this pasta delivers.
02:18Today, I'm using elbows.
02:20So when we cook our pasta, we're basically going to do it the same way we do every other
02:24pasta.
02:25We have a boiling pot of water.
02:26We're going to add a fair amount of salt.
02:28Not quite sea salty, but salty enough.
02:31Make sure the pasta goes in when it's boiling.
02:33For the most part, this just keeps the pasta from sticking.
02:36If you don't have this piece of equipment in your house, you should get one.
02:38It's called a spider.
02:39I'm going to give it a stir, but we don't want to constantly stir the pasta because that's
02:43going to break it up.
02:44I just want to make sure the pasta is not sticking to the bottom of the pot or to the
02:47other pasta.
02:48I'm cooking this al dente because the pasta is going to absorb some of the moisture from
02:52the sauce and it's going to make our pasta softer.
02:55So if I go al dente, my pasta is going to have a little bit of bite to it and not be mushy.
03:00When I add the sauce, the pasta is going to be the perfect consistency.
03:03The pasta is ready.
03:04And how do I know that?
03:05Because I took a piece and I put it in my mouth and tasted it.
03:08That's pretty much the only way you know that the pasta is where you want it and it's
03:12the right texture.
03:13I'm putting it onto this flat tray so that it cools fairly quickly.
03:16I like to use the spider just in case I want to save some of the pasta water.
03:21So there's my cooked pasta.
03:23You'll notice that I did not rinse my pasta off.
03:25The starch on the pasta is going to help the sauce stick.
03:27You're also going to rinse away a lot of the salt that you put in there in the season.
03:31If you like a dried out brick where the sauce is kind of iffy, please, by all means, put it in the oven.
03:39What I like to do is make a crunchy topping that kind of hits those notes of that crispy cheese on top
03:46without it going in the oven.
03:48Putting your mac and cheese in the oven tends to dry it out.
03:50And this method kind of avoids all that.
03:52My topping is straightforward.
03:54It's pretty easy.
03:55We're going to put our pan on medium heat.
03:57We're not going to go too high.
03:59I'm going to add my butter.
04:00The butteriness kind of mirrors that creaminess of the cheeses.
04:03It's going to coat those breadcrumbs and let them brown.
04:06I'm going to add my garlic while the butter is melting.
04:09Fresh garlic is going to give us a little crispiness because they're going to get crispy with the breadcrumbs.
04:13It's also going to give you a cleaner flavor than, say, a garlic powder.
04:17Once I start smelling that fragrant garlic, I'm going to add my breadcrumbs.
04:21They are panko breadcrumbs, which are just dried out Japanese breadcrumbs.
04:25It's not super fine.
04:26They have some chunkiness to them.
04:27So I'm going to add some salt, add some black pepper, a little bit of paprika, and then a little bit of cayenne.
04:34Stir this all up, giving it a little shake.
04:37We're going to get a nice color from that paprika, a little bit of heat from our cayenne.
04:43Give it a shake so it doesn't burn.
04:46I think we're good.
04:47Shut it off.
04:48Let's get it onto our tray.
04:51By putting it on a tray, it's going to basically stop and arrest that cooking.
04:55And what I'm going to do is just spread these out so they cool quickly.
04:58Put them aside for when we're ready to top our mac and cheese.
05:02Using toasted breadcrumbs is a great alternative to get that crispy top without putting your mac and cheese in the oven.
05:07So now it's time to make my sauce.
05:12And if there's one special ingredient here that I use that is possibly out of the norm, it's this magic little powder here.
05:21This is sodium citrate.
05:22It's a type of salt that will bind the fat and the proteins of the cheese together and make a super creamy sauce.
05:29So it's an emulsifier.
05:30An emulsifier is something that takes two things that don't normally stick together and it sticks them together.
05:34In our case here, it is fat and protein.
05:37This is the modern chef's secret weapon for creamy mac and cheese or cheese sauces in general.
05:42Sodium citrate is not only going to add a little bit of seasoning because it has salt in it or sodium.
05:47The citrate part is derived from citric acid.
05:49So it's going to add a little tang as well.
05:51If I don't have sodium citrate, I will just add some American cheese that has sodium citrate in it.
05:57And that's going to carry some of the sodium citrate properties to your finished sauce.
06:01Let's start with medium heat, butter in the pan.
06:04I'm going to add my onions in and I'm going to add a pinch of salt on those onions just to dry out some of that moisture.
06:10And I'm just going to let these cook until they are translucent, not brown.
06:14I'm starting to see a little sizzle there.
06:16I'm going to add my garlic.
06:18And I always add garlic second just because onions take longer to cook and we don't want to burn the garlic.
06:24So onions are starting to get there, starting to smell really good.
06:28And like I said, this adds a nice savory background to our dish.
06:31So my onions are getting translucent.
06:34And at this point I'm going to take my milk.
06:36All the milk goes in.
06:38So the milk here is just the base of our sauce.
06:41I usually do more sauce than I need.
06:43This sauce holds really well in the fridge.
06:46Plus when I add it to the pasta, I like to have extra sauce.
06:50My milk is in there and then I'm going to take my sodium citrate and I'm going to let that dissolve.
06:55I'm going to hit this with a little black pepper right now.
06:57And I'm going to just bring it to a light simmer.
06:59I want my sodium citrate to dissolve and I want my milk to get hot.
07:04If our milk isn't hot, our cheese is not going to melt.
07:07My milk is hot now.
07:08And what I'm going to start to do is whisk some of my cheese in.
07:11So a common mistake people will make at this point is they'll add all the cheese at once.
07:15And what that's going to do is it's going to cool our milk down and the cheese is not going to melt.
07:20So just sprinkle it in and whisk as you go.
07:22Just add slowly.
07:24Add a little bit of my parm.
07:29A little more cheddar.
07:31So my sauce is thickened up with the cheese, but as a final step, I'm going to add a stick blender in.
07:36I'm going to add my cream and I'm going to add the last of my butter.
07:42And this is really going to smooth it out.
07:49All right.
07:50It's looking pretty good there.
07:51It's smooth.
07:52It's creamy.
07:53I don't mind if it's a little dense right now.
07:55If I think it's too thick, I can always add a little milk.
07:57But I like this density here because the denser it is, the less liquids in there and the less liquid that's going to go into my pasta.
08:03And it's going to stay as a sauce.
08:05Look, we have a nice flowy sauce, right?
08:09I want you to listen.
08:11What do you hear?
08:13Nothing.
08:14Silence.
08:15That's what we want.
08:16No plopping.
08:17Silence.
08:18We don't want ploppiness in our sauce.
08:23Time to assemble this.
08:24I have my nice cheesy sauce.
08:26I'm going to lower it down.
08:27I don't want it to scorch.
08:29And now it's time to add the pasta.
08:30It's really simple at this point.
08:32You notice I have a lot of sauce for the amount of pasta.
08:35Like I said, I like double the amount of sauce.
08:38I do think it makes it extra creamy and delicious.
08:41So all I'm going to do now is stir in my pasta and make sure I get it hot.
08:45Look at that.
08:46Some of the sauce is going to get soaked up by the pasta as it heats.
08:50So we could eat it just out of the pot, but I'm going to put it into a serving container.
08:55Just so that I can serve it with my delicious crispy topping.
08:58So the elbows that we used, the cheese is getting into all the cracks and crevices.
09:03And then I have my prepared bread crumbs from earlier.
09:05We want to get some crunchiness in every bite without drying out our pasta.
09:10And done.
09:11Easy peasy.
09:12So my mac and cheese is ready to go.
09:14I think it looks spectacular.
09:16There's only really one more thing to do right now is to taste.
09:19So I'm going to take a little here.
09:22Yes, look at it.
09:23It is not dry.
09:24Onto my plate.
09:29The sauce is super rich, really cheesy.
09:31You can taste a little bit of the garlic and onions in the sauce as well as the garlic in the topping.
09:36It gives it just the right amount of crunch with the maximum amount of saucy creaminess.
09:41That there is the ultimate mac and cheese.
09:46If your mac and cheese is stressing you out, you're doing it the wrong way.
09:49You don't have to be an expert to bring it to the next level.
09:51Mac and cheese is comfort food.
09:53Use simple ingredients.
09:55Use good technique.
09:56And it's going to come out beautiful every time.