If you're like me, you tend to prefer the mac n cheese from the box cause it tastes better than the weird stove-top recipes out there and the texture is usually better. But, I'd also rather not have it with all those little extras and in theory it's a simple recipe. So after a little fiddling around I realized that mac n cheese is really just a cheesy white sauce. And so it's now simpler and cheaper for me to make it from scratch. And it truly takes no more or less time than boiling the water for the noodles. So, here is my mac cheese from scratch recipe, sorry if you already know how to do this! It was a revelation to me :)
This is very adaptable to different sized portions. The following sauce recipe covered about a pound of pasta. For a single portion I would start the white sauce with just 2tsp or maybe 1Tbs of fat & flour. The trick with a white sauce is to keep your proportions of fat:flour equal, everything else is just added from there.
(White Sauce:)
3Tbs butter/oil
3Tbs flour
1/2- 1c milk (more for a thinner sauce, less makes a thicker sauce)
1c shredded cheddar. The better the cheese, the yummier the sauce.
salt & pepper to taste
~1lb noodles
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium high heat. Add flour and whisk all the lumps out. Cook for a minute or two til flour has whitened. Gradually add milk while whisking until you've got the consistency of sauce you want. The longer & hotter the sauce cooks, the thicker it gets so a little runny is not a problem. Once you've got the right consistency, remove pot from heat and stir in cheese, stirring til it's all melted. Mix with hot noodles and enjoy!
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3 comments:
I like to add a little mustard to a white-sauce based cheese sauce. Yum!
I am so glad you posted this! I have had the same experience with homemade vs. boxed mac and cheese. I always feel guilty/lazy making the overly-processed instant kind, but couldn't find a recipe I liked that was nearly as fast. We'll be trying this soon! Thanks! (And I second the mustard idea!)
I like how you came up with an equation for this sauce. Very clever of you! I have a mac n cheese recipe that uses dijon mustard, thyme, and celery salt to season it and it is so good.
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