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00:02Mac and cheese is the ultimate comfort food. Today I'm making a classic macaroni and cheese
00:07completely from scratch. There are no boxes, no shortcuts, no Velveeta cheese. My mac and cheese
00:12starts off with a blend of five different cheeses that all work together in harmony to give you that
00:16perfect balance of creaminess and sharpness. Right away I'm already breaking the basic rules of mac
00:22and cheese by using cavatappi instead of elbow macaroni and I'll tell you why. This little piece
00:27of pasta right here is basically just a longer version of your typical elbow macaroni. Most
00:31important is that it also has these nice little ridges and what that does is allows all that nice
00:36mac and cheesy goodness to stick to it once you've made that sauce. As a first step I'm going to
00:40boil
00:40a big pot of water. When making a mac and cheese it's good to use a nice heavy bottomed pot
00:45like
00:45this one because we'll be building our full mac and cheese in here before we eventually pour it off
00:49into the final dish that we'll be broiling it in. You know what they say, a watch pot never boils.
00:54Oh there it is. They were wrong. A very important step anytime you're cooking pasta is to make sure
01:01you salt it and typically I say salt it even a little more than you think you need. The basic
01:05rule of thumb is to salt it until it tastes like the ocean and the reason for that is that
01:09as it
01:09cooks that salt is going to go into the pasta and you'll end up with a much more flavorful mac
01:13and
01:14cheese. Because our pasta will continue cooking throughout some of the other stages of the mac and
01:18cheese process, take a look at the package instructions for whatever pasta you're using and cook just a few
01:22minutes under that. So mine here says to cook for six minutes. I'm just going to cook for about four.
01:28Every time I cook pasta I always give it a nice little quick stir just to loosen everything up
01:32in the pot so nothing sticks together. And then we'll let this cook until it's super al dente. If
01:37your pot ever starts to boil over when you're making pasta or anything you can always try the old wooden
01:41spoon trick which supposedly stops it from going. I guess we'll have to see because I feel like it works
01:46sometimes and other times just doesn't work. And while this is going we'll grab the rest of the
01:50things we need to prep the mac and cheese. So I need a grater. I need my strainer. It's not
01:55boiling
01:56over so that's good. You should never blindly trust the cook time instructions for anything. Make sure
02:00you taste it yourself. Everybody's oven is different. Everybody's burners are different.
02:06I would say about another 60 seconds and we're good. What we're basically looking for here is a bit
02:10chewier than al dente. Since we're cooking this pasta a little bit more throughout the process it'll
02:15eventually come to that perfect doneness level. One more taste. It's done. That happened super fast.
02:23Now work quickly because once your pasta is done it's going to keep cooking every second that you wait.
02:28Same pot. Bring it back. We're not saving the pasta water this time and that's on purpose. Put this
02:33over a bowl. Bring it back. We'll hit this with a nice quick drizzle of olive oil just so the
02:38pasta
02:39doesn't stick together. Remember you don't want to put too much olive oil. Just enough to make sure it
02:43doesn't stick. And then I'll give it a nice gentle mix just to make sure everything is evenly coated.
02:47Done. Move this off to the side. Now before the cheese time to build the sauce. First we're going
02:53to go in with some heavy cream. Beautiful. Then some whole milk. With our milk and cream we'll want
02:59to add in tons of flavor and to do that we'll use some garlic and a little bit of thyme.
03:03So first
03:04the garlic. I actually have a nice little trick to peeling all those clothes. I just put them in a
03:10bowl
03:10and then I just shake. See if it worked. There's one peeled. There's another peeled. There's another
03:20peeled. And once we've got a few cloves peeled I'll go ahead once more and smash just to open
03:25them up a little bit. Get out a little bit more of that flavor and in they go. And then
03:29a lot of
03:30thyme which again will give off some of the flavor into the fat that's inside all this milk and cream.
03:35And finally a nice sprinkle of dry mustard. Just enough to get that flavor. Then a bit of smoked
03:40paprika. One of my favorite ingredients to put in a mac and cheese. And finally fresh cracked black
03:45pepper. We'll put this over super low heat. You really never want milk or cream to boil. Basically
03:51that heat is just going to help pull out some of the flavor from those different aromatics. So we did
03:55the mac and now we're going to move on to the cheese. For each of the five cheeses in this
03:59mac and
04:00cheese I have a reason for why I picked them. First is cheddar. I always use cheddar because it's going
04:04to give you that sharpness that you need and also that classic mac and cheese flavor. And also
04:09because cheddar just happens to be my favorite cheese. Depending on how aged the cheddar you
04:13choose is it'll also have different levels of sharpness. So if you like a sharper more bitter
04:17mac and cheese then choose an older cheddar. Ooh now that we have our mountain of cheddar we can move
04:23on to our gouda. I'll just need to trim off the edges of that red cheese casing. And what the
04:27gouda is
04:27going to do is give us a nice mild nutty creaminess while also giving us all that melty goodness that
04:32we want in our mac and cheese. You need to make sure that you use some cheeses that are going
04:36to give
04:36you that stringiness if you want to get that nice gooey cheese bowl at the end. All right let's look
04:41at our gouda mountain. Mountain gouda. Just a whole lot of cheese. And the very last cheese we'll grate
04:47is this mozzarella which will give us stretchiness and a very nice gooey mac and cheese texture. This
04:52one can be a little harder to grate so if you leave it in the fridge or even toss it
04:55in the freezer for
04:56a few minutes before you grate it it can help a lot. As you can tell I forgot to do
05:00that. And there is
05:01our mozzarella. Sometimes when I'm making mac and cheese I do step back and look at how much cheese
05:06there really is. And this isn't even all our cheese. There's still two more. I just need a bowl
05:10and into that bowl I'll add my mozzarella then my gouda and finally my cheddar. And once it's all in
05:16there I'll give it a nice mix to make sure everything is evenly combined. This is the time
05:20to just really get in there with your hands but be gentle. You do want to keep the cheese intact
05:24as much
05:24as possible. That'll help you get that nice stringiness at the end. And now that this is fully mixed I'll
05:29move
05:29it off to the side and it's time to come back over to this cream. First quick taste. Remember this
05:35is
05:35not going to be salty yet. You're not looking for salt. We're just looking to make sure that the time
05:39and the garlic actually infused. At this point in the process use your best judgment on how much of
05:44that flavor that you want. I'm happy with where it is now so I'll use a slotted spoon to carefully
05:48take out all those extra bits that we don't want in our final mac and cheese. If it's easier you
05:53can
05:53also strain it but this is a slightly faster way of doing this part. I'm also okay with a few
05:57extra bits of
05:58the actual thyme leaves being left in there but nobody wants to chomp down on a whole clove of
06:02garlic in a mac and cheese. Now it's time for the fun part. Putting half of our cheese into that
06:08really well seasoned creamy milk mixture here to let it all melt down. The rest of this cheese will
06:13be set off to the side and we can use that to layer our mac and cheese when we build
06:16it later.
06:17You can see that at a really nice low temperature that cheese should start melting right away and we're
06:21already going to get some of that nice stringiness from the cheese which is a really good sign here.
06:25Also don't forget your goat cheese at this stage in the process. I'm just going to crumble all of
06:29that up into here and that goat cheese will melt quickly and easily. And remember if you want
06:34different types of cheese you should use different types of cheese. Some Gruyere, some Monterey Jack,
06:38some Havarti, really whatever you want. But I would urge you to think about the reason for using each
06:43one. Make sure all that cheese works together and make sure it's all balanced. Once we've given it a
06:48nice stir and we can start to see some of that stringy cheesiness falling down from our spoon,
06:52we are ready to add in all of our pasta. And now I think this is my favorite part. Just
06:57the mixing
06:57process here. Layering that cheese, that gooeyness through all of that mac and cheese and just
07:02listening to all the sounds. Oh my arm's tired. I think I could probably stir this for 15 maybe 20
07:13minutes without getting bored because it's that perfect mixture of smell, of sound, and you just
07:18know when you're looking at it that it's going to be good. Now for the layering process I don't want
07:22to tell you how to do it because you should really do it however you want. But the way I
07:26like to do it
07:26is to take about half the pasta and just cover the bottom of your dish. Oh my god it's just
07:31shimmering
07:32in the light. It's so silky. And once you feel like you've gotten nice coverage of that bottom first
07:37layer make sure you gently pat it down just to make sure you're giving equal love to every little
07:41corner here. And this right here is why we save all that cheese. We'll go ahead with a nice
07:45big layer of cheese all across the center of our whole dish making sure you spread it out nice and
07:51even. And one last little tip while I'm layering is that if you can grate your cheese the longer way
07:55like this this will help to give you those longer stringier cheese poles when you go to eventually
07:59serve your mac and cheese. It's not going to change the flavor but it might make you and your guests
08:03a
08:03little bit more excited. And then go on with that second layer of macaroni. I like to pick a serving
08:08dish that'll be the proper size to really get filled out with your mac and cheese. I think it's nice
08:12to have
08:12it almost bubbling over the top. In a way it almost sort of looks more inviting. Oh man this looks
08:17so
08:18good. I want to eat a piece right now so bad. I'm not gonna I'm gonna wait. So some of
08:23you might be
08:23watching right now and saying wait a second you're not really quite filling the top of it. That's
08:27because we're not done yet. Parmesan cheese. This beautiful little pyramid of cheese is how we finish
08:32off our mac and cheese and that's because it's nice and salty so it gives that nice kick right off
08:36the
08:36top but also it's gonna brown as we broil it and give us this really really nice crispy delicious golden
08:42topping. I'm getting it all over the cutting board. I don't even care. I just want more and more and
08:47more parmesan cheese. It's snowing parmesan cheese. You are ready to go into the oven. We're gonna put
08:52this at a nice medium high broil. What that's gonna do is kind of melt that cheese through the center
08:57of
08:57our macaroni and also give us a nice golden brown top. One other thing that's nice to do here is
09:01to
09:01make sure that you put something under the mac and cheese so that if it spills over or bubbles over
09:05at
09:05all you're not gonna ruin your oven. When your oven is preheated to a nice high broil you can go
09:09ahead
09:10and toss it in. Watch it carefully. You don't want to mess this up. It's a lot of cheese to
09:16burn.
09:21Oh listen to that.
09:26Visually what I love here is that on the tops of some of the bits of pasta that are peeking
09:30out
09:30from all the cheese they've gotten really nice and golden and crispy and that's going to give a nice
09:34little crunch for some of those bites which again is a different texture that just makes every bite
09:38more exciting. You hear that crisp? This now is the moment where my heart starts beating a little
09:44bit faster because everybody wants that really nice gooey cheese pull. So let's see what we get.
09:49Oh my god. That's incredible. Look at all the steam. Why am I whispering? Sometimes when I get really excited
09:56I get quieter instead of louder. This is amazing. There are some foods in this world that are worth burning
10:00your mouth for. This is one of them. Ow. Oh god. Oh it hurts so bad. But it's so good.
10:08Disclaimer. If your stomach
10:09gets hurt from cheese I would skip this one. I've thought so much about the different cheeses that work
10:14together in this mac and cheese. And it's unlike any mac and cheese you've ever had.
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