In a large saucepan, melt butter over medium-high heat. Once the butter has melted, whisk in flour and cook until it begins to smell nutty and fragrant, about 45-60 seconds. Allow the sauce to simmer for 5-10 minutes and add a little salt or pepper to taste. Stir in the cheese, letting it melt gradually without boiling the sauce. When it is mixed and melted remove it from the heat. Baked Mac and Cheese: Once the pasta and cheese sauce are combined, add it to a baking dish and bake with a little more cheese and breadcrumbs sprinkled on top. We shared this Baked Macaroni and Cheese a while back. Garlic Mac and Cheese: Fresh garlic and roasted garlic are excellent in this recipe. Add either to the butter just before adding.
Creamy yet crunchy. Smooth yet chewy. Utterly cheesy. Mac and cheese is the one of the simplest — and most satisfying — comfort foods of all time. For anyone who grew up making macaroni and cheese out of a box (which is practically everybody), there comes a time when you might feel ready to take a big leap forward: making macaroni and cheese from scratch.
'I've got this,' you think to yourself. 'Pasta, cheese, milk. Three ingredients. How difficult can it be?'
Warning! It's precisely this overconfidence in one's mac-and-cheese making abilities — combined with an underestimation of mac and cheese itself — that leads to so many disastrous outcomes. It's stunning the ease with which you can produce a flabby, mushy, bland, and grainy mess, simply by failing to use the right ingredients, ignoring techniques, and overlooking essential details. To save you from such humiliation — and a potential mac-and-cheese meltdown — we've compiled a list of expert advice to follow and fatal mistakes to avoid.
Making mac and cheese out of a box
This irresistibly cheesy macaroni recipe comes together quick and easy. Not to mention the homemade cheese sauce is thick and creamy. Use your favorite cheese to make this a dish the whole family will love! Smooth and creamy, this Easy Homemade Mac and Cheese comes together in less than 30 minutes on the stovetop. This is the perfect family dinner! Before heating, add a splash of water or milk, which will loosen up the warmed cheese sauce and create the same creamy consistency as freshly made cheese sauce. Re-heat mac and cheese over low heat on the stovetop or in the microwave stirring every 30 seconds.
First and foremost, let's get the big macaroni elephant out of the room. At the risk of coming off as an elitist or purist, we need to state that the most egregious mac and cheese mistake you can make is to rely on industrialized, boxed (or packaged) mac and cheese.
Yes, it's a convenient shortcut that avoids the complications of a roux and cuts down on dishwashing. Yes, it's cheaper than investing in quality pasta and bonafide cheeses, the kind that don't come in powder form or some glorious, otherworldly, radioactive shade of orange. And yes, you may argue that there are more artisanal, environmentally friendly and supposedly gourmet versions out there than the classic Kraft version — not to mention versions that are less caloric, more nutritious, and decidedly gluten-free. And you won't be alone. Social and digital media arbiters are only too eager to sing the praises of the best boxed brands on the market and suggest ingenious, easy ways to 'upgrade' boxed mac and cheese.
But don't fall for these tactics. If you do, you'll be committing the original mac and cheese sin. Instead, stay on the true path by investing in honest ingredients and cooking from scratch. It's the only way you'll ever get to mac and cheese heaven.
Making terrible cheese choices for your mac and cheese
Mac and cheese is a marriage between two much-loved ingredients: pasta and cheese. For the union to succeed, both partners have to be simpatico. This can only happen if you choose the right cheese.
Right away, you can eliminate Velveeta. Although a fervent minority is partial to its undeniable creaminess, in the words of the FDA, it isn't a cheese, but a 'cheese product.' That said, dissing 'Liquid Gold' doesn't mean you should run out and invest in an exorbitantly priced Wyke Farms Cheddar. In a HuffPost article, cheese guru Janet Fletcher warned against using insanely expensive, refined, or unusual cheeses, the qualities of which will be lost when you melt them.
Instead of limiting yourself to a single cheese, opt for a carefully selected blend of cheeses that you can layer. Chef Danyelle Hudgins points out that successful mac and cheese 'needs loads of flavor and depth. Using different cheeses allows you to taste layers of flavor combos.'
Kitchn food editor Kelli Foster explains that some cheeses melt more easily and have a creamier texture and milder flavor. Popular choices in this camp included fontina, gouda, gruyère, and Monterey jack. Others are sharper and more pungent such as cheddar, parmesan, and even roquefort. The trick is to find a balanced mix of simple but good-quality cheeses. Author of American CheesesClark Wolf identifies three schools of thought on mac and cheese — in all schools, the common denominator is cheddar.
Skimping on the cheese in your mac and cheese
Assembling a stellar team of cheeses is key to earning accolades for your mac and cheese, but just as important as the type of cheeses you choose are the quantity and quality you use.
In terms of quantity, you need to be generous. By its very nature, mac and cheese is a cheese-heavy dish. If you want your mac to be lavishly coated in a thick, creamy blanket of cheese, you'll have to go heavy on the grater. Always grate more cheese than you think you're going to need (save any leftovers for other treats). Decadent? Yes. Then again, you're not going to be eating this every day (that's what Kraft mac and cheese is for). In the words of Kitchn editor Kelli Foster, 'There's a time and place to go light on the cheese, but this is certainly not that time.'
Moreover, make sure you actually do grate your own cheese. Sure, buying pre-shredded cheese is more convenient than doing it yourself. However, as Bon Appétit explains, any gains in efficiency will be offset by a loss in taste, texture, and quality. The truth is that pre-shredded cheese is frequently spiked with stabilizers and preservatives. While these ensure longer shelf life, the downsides include artificial flavors and frequently waxy textures combined with less melt-ability.
Using the wrong kind of mac for your mac and cheese
Having sorted out the cheese, there's still the mac side of the equation to be settled. One of the earliest forms of pasta known to humankind, macaroni is a narrow tube-shaped noodle. In America, it's become indissociable from what is actually a subset of macaroni, elbow macaroni, the name of which comes from its resemblance to a bent elbow.
In 'Macaroni cheese's mysterious origins,' pasta sleuth Adam H. Graham traces mac and cheese's probable beginnings to the Swiss Alps where shepherds often combined home-made cheeses with pasta. Known as hörni, these ancestors of elbow macaroni were shaped like the horns of Alpine ibex.
Mac and cheese arrived in America courtesy of Thomas Jefferson, who returned from a European jaunt laden down with pasta recipes — and a pasta-making machine. In 1802, he famously served mac and cheese at a state dinner. However, it was Kraft that truly popularized the dish made with elbow macaroni when it launched its boxed version in 1937.
Since then, elbow macaroni has remained the standard. More than a matter of tradition or aesthetics, it's a question of engineering. Cheese sauce is too heavy for many pastas, causing them to clump. Elbow macaroni is designed to hold thick, creamy sauces. Its curves and grooves catch and hold onto sauce, maximizing cheesiness with every bite. For similarly strategic reasons, alternatives include other small and groovy pasta shapes such as conchiglie (shells) and campanelle (bells).
Making mac and cheese mush
Choosing the right mac is essential, but it's all for naught if you don't cook it properly. First things first, make sure you only use (a decent brand) of dry pasta as opposed to fresh pasta, which, as explained in 'The Science of Dried Pasta,' will turn into a sticky clump.
Smithsonian Magazine's 'Guide to Making Perfect Pasta' recommends bringing your water to a rolling boil and then tossing in at least one heaping tablespoon of (preferably kosher) salt, a step that will ensure your mac possesses some fundamental seasoning from the start (chef Mario Batali decrees that the water should taste like the sea). Do not, as Lidia Bastianich has famously declared, add oil to the water, since doing so can prevent the cheese sauce from sticking to the pasta.
Because many recipes for macaroni are double-cooked — boiled and then baked — you'll want to drain your pasta when it's just a minute or two shy of al dente. Anything more will result in flabby noodles lacking in chewiness and unable to absorb the sauce, i.e. a mushy mess.
Finally, when you do drain your cooked pasta, don't rinse it. This will wash away all the noodles' coveted starch, which helps bind the cheese sauce to the macaroni.
Sabotaging your béchamel for your mac and cheese
One of the trickiest parts of the mac and cheese-making process is making the béchamel sauce. Considered one of the five classic mother sauces of French cooking, this thick white sauce was named after Louis de Béchamel, a steward of French king Louis XIV, who was also a noted gourmet. However, the sauce's origins can be traced to Tuscany, where it was evocatively known as salsa colla, or 'glue sauce.'
Béchamel sauce relies on a simple trio of ingredients: milk, butter, and flour. The combination of butter and flour cooked slowly over low heat is known as a roux. Despite the simplicity of the ingredients involved, béchamels are disaster-prone. For instance, the roux has a nasty habit of sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning while the béchamel is simmering. Chef's Notes recommends using a pot with a heavy bottom and stirring as if your life depends upon it (your mac and cheese certainly does).
Ina Garten's technique of warming the milk before adding it to the roux not only thickens the sauce in half the time but also reduces splattering that inevitably occurs when cold milk meets hot butter. Make sure you add the milk slowly, little by little. If you undercook your béchamel (ten minutes is a safe minimum), you risk giving it a gritty texture and raw-flour taste.
Using the wrong kind of milk for your mac and cheese
When it comes to milk, percentages are everything. As Chef's Notes observes, when making mac and cheese, many of us idealistically, and erroneously, assume that all milk is created equal. However, using anything more or less than whole milk — with a 3.25 percent fat content — is courting catastrophe.
The higher a milk's fat content, the more stable it will be during cooking. If you opt for reduced-fat (two percent), low-fat (one percent), or skim (zero percent) milk to make your béchamel sauce, there's a higher percentage chance of your mac and cheese acquiring an unpleasantly greasy texture and look.
If you don't have any whole milk on hand, Chef's Notes recommends substituting cream (whipping or heavy) at a ratio of one part cream to three parts two-percent milk. Then again, if you're investing in cream, you may want to go all out in terms of fat content and use either light cream (20 percent fat), whipping cream (35 percent fat) or heavy cream (38 percent fat) to make what Epicurious describes as the 'creamiest, dreamiest' mac and cheese sauce you can imagine.
Making a soup instead of a sauce for your mac and cheese
Almost as culinarily catastrophic as mushy mac and cheese is a soupy sauce. This major mishap can occur if you add too much liquid to what should ideally be a rich, thick, creamy cheese sauce.
Steer clear of disaster by adding liquids a little bit at a time, stirring them into the sauce until well-blended, and then taking stock of your sauce. If you find it to be a little on the sludgy side, you can always add a little more liquid, but subtracting is more difficult.
Similarly, never add your grated cheese all at once to your béchamel sauce. Whisk in each variety of cheese, little by little, stirring until the sauce is perfectly blended. Chef's Notes warns that if you add too much cheese, too quickly, your sauce can split or become unstable while cooking. This slow, steady method of blending also prevents cheese's natural oils from separating out from the sauce during cooking, creating unappetizing pools of grease.
Skimping on seasoning in your mac and cheese
You might think that a brilliant selection of zesty cheeses is all it takes to make a flavorful mac and cheese. In reality, however, the best versions of mac and cheese benefit significantly from a behind-the-scenes boost of spices that add subtle notes while pumping up the flavor.
While butter, flour, and milk make a great base for a sauce, the resulting flavor isn't going to tempt you to lick the mixing spoon. Adding a judicious sprinkling of spices will enhance the flavors both of your béchamel sauce and of the completed mac and cheese.
Aside from salt and ground black pepper, favorite options include dashes of nutmeg and cayenne pepper for warmth and spark. A sprinkling of mustard powder and/or a blob of Dijon mustard are also zingy antidotes to blandness, as are garlic powder and onion powder. A dusting of paprika or turmeric adds a tinge of pungency as well as a healthy golden tint to the final cheesy color scheme.
Failing to maximize the mac and cheese crunch ratio
Mac and cheese is more than just a marriage between pasta and cheese. It's also about the happy union of creaminess and crunchiness. Smooth macaroni in luscious cheese sauce truly comes into its own when paired with its culinary soul mate: a crackling browned topping.
Although creating a top crust of gratinéed cheese is one way of achieving such crunch, the consensus among mac and cheese experts is that you can't achieve maximum crunch without also using breadcrumbs for, what Bon Appétit's Rochelle Bilow describes as a 'one-two punch.'
On their own, hard, dry cheeses add sharp flavors but burn easily. Meanwhile, if left unaccompanied, soft, creamy cheeses will make a gooey mess without developing that desirable golden gratinéed look. Chef Vincent Menager recommends using a strategic mix of both types. Even though you're using cheese, make sure to season your breadcrumbs before tossing them into the mix. Melted butter, fresh parsley, crushed garlic, and onion powder are worthy additions that add welcome spice.
Guided by her belief that mac and cheese's crunch ratio should be an equitable 50:50 partnership, Food 52'sAmanda Hesser ups the crunch factor further by spreading her mac and cheese on a baking sheet and blitzing it under the broiler at the end of its bake. An alternative suggested by Bon Appétit's test kitchen is to use a wide, shallow casserole pan, preferably glassware, so you can monitor the browning of both bottom and top layers.
Refusing to let your mac and cheese take a rest
It takes a very strong-willed individual to remove a fragrant, crackling, bubbling pan of mac and cheese from the oven and not succumb to its lure by immediately helping yourself to a big heaping bowl full of cheesy deliciousness.
However, despite appearances to the contrary, mac and cheese is not unlike a slab of beautifully grilled or roasted meat. The flavors and textures of both meat and mac hit their peak if they're allowed to rest for ten to fifteen minutes upon being taken out of the oven. According to culinary director Damon Menapace, taking a short siesta gives the cheese sauce an opportunity to calmly settle around the macaroni, burrowing into its nooks and crannies. If you don't let your mac enjoy this rest, the sauce will literally be a hot (and runny) mess.
It may be hard, but try to stop yourself from digging into that dish as soon as it comes out from the oven.
Taking yourself — and your mac and cheese — too seriously
Yes, mac and cheese has been scientifically deconstructed and reconstructed by The Food Lab. But as every self-respecting toddler knows, at its essential level, mac and cheese is simple, gooey, delicious fun. To be true to the spirit of this classic comfort food, it's essential to keep its preparation as uncomplicated as possible.
Aside from seeking out arcane and expensive cheeses, such as the outrageously priced Wyke Farms Cheddar, this means stomping on any inner urge to fuss things up with foodie-friendly suggestions such as truffle oil and the ubiquitous lobster.
As part of our endless search for variety, the online universe is full of advice on how to 'jazz up', 'dress up,' 'spice up' 'kick up', 'amp up' and 'pimp up' mac and cheese by adding everything from chorizo and figs to leftover chili, not to mention guacamole and tortilla chips. Such hacks are not only misguided (and in a few cases mildly disgusting) but completely unnecessary. As Brad Leone, kitchen manager of Bon Appetit's test kitchen, puts it: 'Don't put a ton of crap in it.'
That said, we're not endorsing the other extreme, exemplified by the young Florida man featured in a Vice documentary, who ate nothing but pure and unadulterated mac and cheese for 17 years.
Not thinking outside the mac and cheese bowl
It may be considered culinary heresy to pollute a classic recipe with unnecessary bells and whistles. Yet once you've steered clear of all mistakes and followed all the steps required to make a perfect pan of mac and cheese, there's no rule that says you can only serve and consume it in a bowl.
As The Spruce Eats points out, since both mac and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches rely on two basic ingredients — pasta and cheese and bread and cheese — it seems only natural to amalgamate these two cheesy and chewy classics into a grilled mac and cheese sandwich.
Perhaps less natural but equally inspired is the addition of mac and cheese to other iconic comfort foods. Layer a generous helping of mac and cheese onto a pizza crust, add some extra cheese, and blast it in the oven to enjoy a mac and cheese pizza. Press mac and cheese into a bun alongside a freshly grilled hot dog for a mac and cheese dog. Make a chewier variation of a cheeseburger by topping, or even filling, a juicy burger with mac and cheese. And if you're a real starch fiend, use mac and cheese to stuff baked potatoes. Ultimately, in terms of its appetizing possibilities, mac and cheese is endlessly adaptable — the only limit is your imagination.
How To Make A Cheese Sauce For Macaroni And Cheese
There's nothing like a warm, gooey bowl of delicious mac and cheese, am I right? Mac and cheese is a comfort food if there ever was one, but if you don't make it right, you'll end up with a less-than-comforting bowl of dried out, not-cheesy-at-all noodles. Worse yet, you might end up with a gritty, mealy mess. That doesn't mean you should turn to that familiar blue box whenever a craving arrives — homemade mac and cheese is the best, by far (and you've got this!). To make the creamiest mac and cheese ever, you just have to do a couple of things differently than you might do them now. In fact, it's probably a lot less complicated than you might think. Armed with these tricks and ideas and a little know-how, you'll be well on your way to the creamiest mac and cheese ever. But be careful who you tell — once word gets out that you've mastered this dish, you'll have more dinner guests than you can handle!
Add cream
This one seems pretty obvious, but we're going to start with it anyway. To get creamy mac and cheese, you have to have a creamy sauce. Rather than making a more traditional béchamel with whole milk, up the ante with a partly or mostly cream base. According to Epicurious, using a combination of milk and cream instead of just milk, plus whisking your cheese into the base in three stages will make your sauce the creamiest it can be.
Add yogurt
Like cream, yogurt can give your sauce a little bit of oomph. Swirl some in for added depth of flavor and creaminess. Make sure you choose a yogurt with some fat content to it, rather than the fat-free kind. Also make sure you're using one that's not flavored (plain is best) and one without any added sugar. You don't want your cheese sauce to be sweet.
Add mascarpone
Mascarpone is a creamy Italian cheese that's the perfect secret ingredient if you're looking for an extra-creamy mac and cheese. Like cream cheese, even just a dollop of mascarpone will elevate the creaminess quotient of your favorite dish. Add a little or add a lot for the creamiest mac and cheese ever.
Add more salt
Salting pasta water is like a giant myth meatball of misleading and untrue 'scientific' facts. Salt does not make water boil faster — at least not to the degree of cooking just your basic Wednesday night dinner. For a tasty mac and cheese, you need to salt the daylights out of the water; somewhere around a tablespoon per every two quarts. If that seems too scary and salty, just do it the easy way: When you add salt, add more than that. It's pretty likely you're not putting in enough. Another important step is to salt the water as it comes to a boil. Don't just toss the salt in as soon as you pour the water into the pot. A nice kosher or sea salt will do, just skip the iodized salt unless you love the taste of metal.
The salt flavors the pasta, which will give you a tastier pasta; it's still called mac and cheese, not cheese and mac, despite what some people told you. The firm, tasty pasta will hold the cheese better, and make the dish much better. An easy way to ruin mac and cheese is with a frumpy pasta — and that's what you're going to get if you skip the salt.
Choose your cheeses thoughtfully
You might think you can just throw whatever cheeses you happen to have in the fridge into your mac and cheese, and, to a certain extent that's true. But if you're looking to make the creamiest mac and cheese you possibly can, you'll want to be a little more discerning. A cheese like Parmesan, for instance, isn't going to melt super well, meaning it's better for a topper than for your creamy cheese sauce. Cheddar and similar cheeses that melt well (Monterey Jack is a good one) will make your sauce the creamiest it can be.
Cook your noodles in milk instead of water
Cooking your noodles in milk instead of water makes your resulting mac and cheese creamier. According to The Kitchn, cooking your noodles in milk instead of water makes the sauce creamy before you even add the cheese sauce. The starches in the noodles get released as you cook them, helping to thicken the mixture from the start. That will ultimately help with the resulting creaminess.
Give cottage cheese a try
When you're considering which cheeses to use for your extra creamy mac and cheese, you might want to consider adding in some cottage cheese. It'll make the sauce extra creamy and extra cheesy without complicating the overall flavor profile too much. Again, you'll want some with a tiny bit of fat if possible for the creamiest, richest sauce, but if you can't swing cottage cheese with fat, the fat-free kind will work as well.
Be careful with the roux
Though a roux is important for thickening up your cheese sauce, you want to make sure that you don't add too much of your flour and butter mixture because otherwise the sauce can get too thick, which negatively impacts the creaminess. Too much butter and flour (otherwise known as roux when cooked) will make your sauce more like glue than a creamy, rich sauce.
Make the cheese sharp white cheddar
If you're looking for the smoothest, creamiest cheese sauce for the best macaroni and cheese ever, you'll want to use sharp white cheddar. This cheese, according to Martha Stewart Magazine, makes for the most luxurious sauce. Other kinds of cheeses can get gritty, stringy, or otherwise unappetizing, but not sharp white cheddar — that one stuns every time. Plus, the flavor is the perfect compliment to your otherwise rich, fatty dish. The sharpness of the cheese will cut through the butter and cream flavors to round things out.
Stick with the stovetop
All too often, baked macaroni and cheese takes on more of a casserole feel than the creaminess you're looking for here. To prevent that, cook it entirely on your stovetop rather than finishing it in the oven. The sauce (hopefully) won't get overly thick and clumpy on the stovetop, meaning the end result will be creamy and silky smooth — just what you're after.
Choose your noodles carefully
When making mac and cheese, you need to consider your desired ultimate outcome when choosing a noodle. You don't have to stick with macaroni every time just because that's the technical name of the dish. If you're going for the utmost creaminess, opt for a noodle that will hold a lot of sauce. Noodles with ridges are always a good choice: cavatappi, cavatell, rotini, and even penne are all good mac and cheese noodles.
Cook your pasta past al dente
Make sure you cook your noodles appropriately when making mac and cheese, especially if you want it to be the creamiest it can possibly be. You need to make sure that you cook the pasta you're using al dente, which is Italian for 'to the tooth,' because if you undercook it, your sauce can get gritty from the extra starch. You also may want to adjust the flour in the roux to accommodate how you're planning to cook your noodles. Using less flour in the roux might help to offset the undercooked noodles.
How To Make A Cheese Sauce For Mac And Cheese Without Flour
Try burrata
How To Make Cheese Sauce For Mac And Cheese With Velveeta
Looking for that salty, tangy bite to your mac and cheese but mozzarella isn't just breaking down the way you want? Try the cousin to mozzarella, burrata. The uncommon cheese is softer and silkier than mozzarella, almost oozing with deliciousness. Basically it looks like a standard mozzarella ball, but when you cut it open it's almost runny — like a poached egg, only instead of yolk it's just the tastiest mozzarella that isn't mozzarella you've ever had.
It usually carries a more hefty price tag than mozzarella, so rather than simply exchange your mac and cheese mozzarella with burrata, it's more economical to use both; just half your mozzarella amount and put burrata in its place. If you're looking for a white cheese mac and cheese, you simply cannot go wrong with burrata. Word to the wise: Once you crack opened a burrata, it goes dry pretty quickly, so if you use it, act fast and remember any leftover burrata needs to be gobbled up within 24 hours.
Mac And Cheese Sauce Recipe
Hack the box
Are you just cracking open a box of Mac and Cheese? We don't judge, that's perfectly fine. But it's also perfectly fine to sort of help the box flavor a bit with some steps (or fun add-ins) that will make it taste a whole lot better. Here's a basic rule that is almost 100 percent accurate; the cheaper the price, the more butter you need. Kraft suggests 1/4 cup of butter (or margarine) — if you want this creamy you need more than that. It's not exactly healthy but that's the price you pay for creamy mac and cheese.
As for the milk, a standard box will require 1/4 cup of milk. Sub out half of that for cream. After you get the butter and cream mixed in, hit it with a shot of your favorite hot sauce, just to round out the cheesy flavor, and you'll have the best 99 cent box of mac and cheese you've ever tasted.