With Thanksgiving this week, I am excited to make my baked mac & cheese. I’ve always enjoyed making mac and cheese and I’ve really enjoyed evolving my recipe over the years. I recently partnered with Amazon Home to bring you guys my favorite holiday recipes.
PHOTOGRAPHY // Erica J. Simmons
VIDEOGRAPHY // Eric Bates
To make your mac & cheese flavorful I always suggest two things: making a rue and salting your water beyond generously. A rue is simply a fancy name for sauce. And you don’t want to let your rue overcook or burn. Be sure to keep stirring with a silicone cooking utensil so you don’t scratch your saucepan. And I love baking mine in a ceramic baking dish.
It needs to be like sea water. SALTY salty. Use a large pot – this recipe calls for 32 oz of pasta. Also, you don’t want your noodles to be fully cooked. You want them to be 2-3 minutes undercooked as they’ll continue to cook in the oven when you add your cheese and rue. To make things easy, I like using a sink strainer like this one.
Let’s talk cheese. First things first, avoid buying the prepackaged shredded cheese. It doesn’t melt MELT. If you can, buy your cheese from a local deli (we get ours from our local meat market). Then I buy a 3 lb block of cheese (I get a 1 lb block of three types of cheese; get more if you need it) and then I shred it at home. I know, this calls for a little more work but when you taste it, it’s worth it. Use a good grater like this one and it’ll literally measure what you’ve grated.
You can choose your preference of cheese here obviously. For this recipe I kept it simple and stuck with cheddar, but you can jazz it up with some colby, smoked Gouda, Gruyere or even mozzarella. The choice is yours. Depending on my mood and whether or not more than just my immediate family is eating it determines what cheese I use.
Level your mac and cheese up with some seasoning. I like paprika and onion powder personally. Just a couple of teaspoons of each or season to your taste.
Fair warning, I’m not great at measurements when it comes to this recipe. I usually eyeball the creaminess and determine if I need to add more or not.
Here’s how I make my baked mac and cheese. Watch above.
INGREDIENTS
1 32oz box of elbow macaroni
2 lb block of white sharp cheddar cheese
1 lb block of medium cheddar cheese
1 cup of butter
1 cup of milk
½ cup of flour
1 tsp of paprika
1 tsp of onion powder
Salt and pepper to taste
DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. Add 3 tablespoons of salt to water. Shred your cheese in a bowl. Keep cheeses separate if using more than one kind of cheese.
Add pasta to boiling water. Cook for 6-7 minutes. Stir occasionally to avoid sticking.
On medium or medium-high heat, in a saucepan, add milk, ½ cup of butter and seasoning. Stir for 1 minute and then add 1 cup of cheese to the rue. The goal of your rue is to be creamy (not watery) so add more cheese to it to increase the creaminess.
Drain pasta. Put drained pasta back in the pot and add rue. Stir to make sure the pasta is generously covered in rue.
Add half of pasta to ceramic baking dish. Sprinkle ½ cup of shredded cheese on top of pasta. Add remaining pasta and top with remaining shredded cheese.
Bake for 20-30 minutes; until cheese is brown and bubbly. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.
