Macaroni & Cheese
 

I've officially had it with macaroni & cheese recipes. I have tried, I really have. I don't want to make "food" from a box, I want to make relatively healthy meals with real ingredients that did not have to be hydrogenated to any degree. But thus far, every time I have tried it has come out grainy and bland. I know that a smooth, cheesy cheese sauce is possible; it must be. And every couple of months I get suckered in by a new recipe that claims to be "the creamiest," not to mention the kids' favorite, deluxe, incredibly rich, or some other combination of accolades which all inevitably turn out to be lies.

Just this weekend I tried one that included sour cream and cottage cheese, once again fooled into thinking this one could be different, that somehow these smoother dairy products were the key that I'd been missing. Not so. It was the foulest and grainiest of them yet. I even used that halfway-house of cheeses, American, rather than have my trust betrayed by cheddar once agan.

So screw you, real cheese, in all your varieties. It's a shame to let Velveeta win, but there's nothing I can do about it when the rest of you persist in sucking so hard.

Oh that's just bizarre. I just finished posting in the Whats Cooking thread where I mentioned i was cooking up a tin of macaroni cheese....clicked New Posts and this thread appears :P

Ohhh, how I wish I were tucking into proper macaroni and cheese.

I usually find that plain old cheddar makes the best cheese sauce.

[eta] though this isn't where I got the recipe, this BBC cookery recipe pretty much matches what I did last time I made macaroni cheese. It was lovely, very cheesy and smooth. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/da...se_83521.shtml

There's another recipe on there that's designed for kids and which adds 1/2 a tea spoon of nutmeg, a bayleaf and parsley, amongst other things. Personally, I think the plainer the better, but I can see a bit of fresh parsley working a treat.

Clod, do you know how to make a beschemell sauce (cheese sauce for the rest of us)?

Melt about 4 tablespoons of butter. Remove the pan from the heat then add in about 2 tablespoons of plain flour. whisk it till it becomes a paste. If you need a little more flour it's ok to add it after you've started mixing. Return the pan to the heat and add a couple of cups of milk. (you can use water, but milk or even full cream if you want a really creamy sauce) Continue to stir with the whisk till the sauce starts to thicken. At this point you should add whatever cheese/s you like.

I usually use mainly cheddar and then sometimes I use a pecorino or parmesan. Any kind of cheese that you like the taste of. Then just keep adding cheese until the sauce tastes as cheesy as you like it. You should keep the heat low at this point. Don't allow the sauce to boil at any point. Just keep it hot enough to melt the cheese.

A tip I often use is to add a chicken stock cube. It just adds a bit of zing to the sauce.

So then, you've boiled your macaroni and drained it. You simply pour the sauce over the top. You can then sprinkle a bit more cheese over and bake it if you like too.

Simple as and tastier than anything you'll get out of a can.

The only new thing I notice in that recipe is that it says to cook the roux-plus-milk mixture for 10-15 minutes before adding the cheese. And already I feel that tiny temptation to try again. I really do suspect that it's something I'm doing wrong, because pretty much all my kitchen failures are, and I'm not very good at accepting defeat. But my bitterness can still hold out a few more weeks, at the very least. If I do break, I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out. :)

Ali, yes, that's my general understanding of a bechamel sauce, although all the ones I've seen usually add equal parts butter and flour. But it's still entirely possible I'm screwing it up, even when following instructions closely. My ineptitude in the kitchen cannot be quantified.

gee, I usually don't have any problem with cooking mac & cheese from scratch. You do have to spice it up quite a bit, with mustard, cayenne, and white pepper, though, as well as using very sharp cheddar, to make it come out not bland.

I don't have any problem with making the cheese sauce come out creamy, though.

Is it just cheese sauce, Clod, or is it all roux-based sauces you are having a problem with?

on a side note, you can make a great tasting, quick, if untraditional mac and cheese in the skillet. With Velvetta, yep, and --soy sauce!

I don't usually measure the ingredients too much. Maybe that's why I always have to add a little more flour. lol

You should try it though. It's really not hard at all, and believe me, you'll love it and so will the kids. I really don't think it's any harder than the packet mixes for mac and cheese (which my husband swore by till I got sick of the stink of it and made him a propper one. Now he doesn't buy packets anymore.)

The uncountable number of bechamel-plus-cheese sauces I have attempted that the kids have bitched about has me convinced otherwise. :) It's not a question of being willing to put forth the effort, it's the inexplicable failure upon failure upon failure. For all I know, the graininess is the flour, because I'm not cooking it long enough with the milk like Dana's recipe said. Or maybe I'm using the wrong flour (though I do know enough not to use self-rising flour,) or maybe I'm not letting the cheese sauce sit long enough to truly melt (though all my baked versions come out terrible too.) Or maybe my cheese comes from sad cows. I dunno.

I don't know why it'd be grainy. Perhaps you're not using a low enough ratio of flour paste to milk? Are you using white plain flour? Also, you need to put in plenty of cheese and if you like, other spices or it will be quite bland. Plenty of salt too. If I were making a 2 cup of milk cheese sauce, I'd be using 2 cups of grated cheese at the least.

Uuugh velveeta.

I quite like the three cheese macaroni that does not include velveeta or american. You call it grainy, I call it awesome! mmmm......

Have you tried habanero cheese? Or pepper jack with it? Awesome.

I always put crushed potato chips on the top, with extra cheese, as a topping. yum.

I need a cheese-eating smiley! I very much hope the situation improves for 'fobble. Mac'n'cheese just shouldn't be that kind of trouble.

alternatively, you can always buy Stouffers and stop stressing over it. It's good stuff.

Here's a recipe which I have used (I think) by Martha Stewart (tho' I always add dry mustard to mine). You will note it says:

perfect macaroni and cheese

do NOT listen to ali. she's some sort of kitchen witch.

just make Kraft.

When I've ended up with grainy mac & cheese, I think it's because I didn't get the flour brown enough.

As a former professional cook, you should have asked me when you had the chance!

I use either three or four cheeses, Fontina, Velveeta (no shame in that), Parmesan and Mozzarella. To make a roux is simple yet tough for the uninitiated. You heat the heavy cream (only way IMO) to just before boiling, add all-purpose flour and cook to thicken (boiling point). When you smell nutty aromas coming from the pan, that's it! Do NOT heat past that point or you will ruin it.

When the roux is ready, add the cheese and melt, stirring constantly until smooth and blended. THEN add the cheese to the already-cooked (Al Dente) pasta and toss to coat. Bake at 350 for 30 mins. Add toppings as you desire.

I use lightly crushed Corn Flakes, french-fried onions, or similar crunchy things. You may also add to the M&C as you desire...ham cubes, peas, carrots, chopped chicken, crumbled ground beef, tomatoes etc.

Once you master Mac and Cheese, experiment to taste.

Brian

I cheat. Buy a bottle of three cheese sauce (in the spagetti sauce section), boil some ziti, dice up a 1/2 lb of sharp cheddar cheese and a ham steak, then mix it all together. Sprinkle some more grated cheddar on top along with a light feathering of bread crumbs and bake at 375 degrees for 20 mins.

Presto!

My most recent recipe doesn't even include making a roux. You throw all of the ingredients in the baking dish and presto! The sauce makes itself!!! :) Yea! I am a fan of that.


Splash the milk, butter and egg in there (the baking dish) and it ends up creamy. I like that much better than labouring over the sauce. I like 3 cheeses but again, they usually don't include velveeta. Why when you don't have to? Of course I don't eat anything that contains velveeta anymore...I've seen that stuff harden, and I don't want whatever that is, happening to my guts.

I was wondering if that kind of cheese actually had any usefulness. Now I know it makes a good base?

Corn starch is your friend.

Forget all that Bechemel and roux business (Bechemel is not actually a cheese sauce -it's a white sauce, adding cheese makes it Mornay or something like that)

Heat milk in a pan until just starting to boil. While it's heating, dissolve some corn starch into some cold milk in a cup. Remove the pan from the heat, gently pour in the cold milk/corn starch mix stiriing all the time. Return to heat, keep stirring and bring back to boil. If you don't stir enough it can get a bit lumpy, but that's easily countered with the use of a balloon whisk. It will not be grainy. When it's thickened and is making volcano-like bubbles, turn off the heat and add grated cheese af any type that takes your fancy. Sharp cheddar is good for a really cheesy taste. You can season at any point. And if the kids want it Kraft day-glo orange, add food color at this point ;)

Mix with cooked mac.

To get really fancy, sprinkle more grated cheese and home-made breadcrubs on top, and a little black pepper and shove it under the broiler until it starts to bubble and brown.

To get really really fancy, mix in precooked bacon, peas, onions lightly fried in butter......anything.

Gee Monster can you ship me a plate of that? I'm hungry now!

If bechamel sauce is not a cheese sauce, I'd like to know what it is.

alfredo?

Monster shoots and scores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9chamel

Béchamel sauce is also known as white sauce, is a basic sauce that is used as the base for other sauces, such as Mornay sauce, which is Béchamel and cheese. This basic sauce, one of the mother sauces of French cuisine, is usually made today by whisking scalded milk gradually into a white flour-butter roux (equal part butter and flour), though it can also be made by whisking a kneaded flour-butter beurre manié into scalded milk. The thickness of the final sauce depends on the proportions of milk and flour.

So the french call it bechamel with cheese, or mornay or whatever. What about bechamel sauce with mustard for corned beef?

The recipe I supplied was what is commonly known as bechamel sauce. adding cheese makes it what is commonly known as cheese sauce or mornay if that's your preference.

Just because you choose not to make yourself a cheese sauce that way because it's too hard, although I can't see the difficulty, doesn't mean you have to denegrate other suggestions. You don't need to tell everyone else they're wrong all the time.

What they said. It's very bland, though, so not suprisingly most people add stuff. The lasagna recipes I have all call for bechamel sauce -the only cheese is on the top at the end. I notice that when you google lasgna recipes, may come up with alternate layers of cheese, meat sauce and noodles rather than bechamel sauce, meat sauce and noodles. Maybe a continental difference?

btw, the main reason for using corn starch is that it's much more forgiving than regular flour -you can slosh it all in in one go and if it does go a little lumpy, it's easily rescuable with a balloon whisk. My method makes a mac and cheese all my kids will eat and takes less than 20 mins. It's not fancy but it's real food.

hmm. seems I take way to long composing my posts. I wouldn't have bothered with the second one if I'd known the effect of the first one. Denigrate? Or were you perchance not referring to me? get over yourself and stop being such a silly twerp. I don't give a shit about you, I was trying to help clobble and it's no help if you're given -albeit well-meaning- incorrect information. You are not the only one who mentioned roux. It really isn't all about you. there are just easier ways to make a cheese sauce. Not necessarily better, but easier.

Well I don't think there's much difference in the cooking time for yours or any of the others.

Mac and cheese is traditionally a quick fix meal, and from what I can see, all the recipes supplied offer about the same level of nutrition (which is not a lot lol) and preparation time, again, not a lot.

I would have thought everyone would use a whisk to make a white sauce anyway. I know I do.

People will make whatever they like to make and cook how they like to cook. I guess if Clod likes one or the other recipe that's good, but it doesn't make one any better than the other. I reckon they probably all taste pretty good. That's why people have offered their own recipes. Because they and their families like them.

Must be. All the lasagne I see around here use meat sauce and ricotta between the layers.

Oh yeah, and I realise other people offered similar suggestions to mine.

I know you don't give a shit about me. That's pretty clear. Has been for quite some time now. :)

I used to, though.

mornay is with swiss cheese. My mom used to make "eggs mornay" which is sliced hard cooked eggs over toast and ham with mornay sauce. There are very few savory things which aren't improved by a good cheese sauce. Too bad it's bad for you.

Just eat the holes :)

silly girl. I only do that with mackerel.

I don't. I use a fork.

Yeah, that's what my Mum used to do too, and what I did also till I tried using a whisk one day. I've never had lumpy sauce ever since I started using a whisk.

I must admit that the reason I tried using a whisk was because I saw it on a cooking show, but I'm glad I did. It just makes the whole process so much easier.

I just use a wooden spoon and stir gently. beest uses a whisk, but I really don't think you need to with the corn starch and that's why I like it and recommend it. More room for distraction by evil offspring.

i got some white sauce for ya's

does it need whisking?

good Cellar tag line: passionate about the mac n'cheez

:eek: :whip:

This is done.

awesome!

(so, I'm a little slow on the uptake)

Cloud, that means you're quite the inexpensive date at the drugstore "one chocolate malt and two straws" kind of thing. ;)

oooookay! ifn you say so!

I hear ya honey!!

I like Annies.. Its organic and tastes delicious.......

I add a teaspoon of sugar when I make it,otherwise it tastes aweful (Not enough sugar) and I add a tab bit of salt.... (Too much salt and it will taste aweful also)

I get Annies CLASSIC CHEDDER from Whole foods.......


Mac and cheese is probably one of my favourite things to have!!