Mac and cheese is comfort food that is sure to make you obese and lead to your early demise. Like everything else, it will make your life more happy while you waddle your way into an over-sized casket at the ripe old age of 42.
Meagan posted our one pot mac and cheese recipe (that one is not ours, link to follow soon), and it has brought us much pleasure. But I want to fight about it. That recipe is soooo last week.
We have a new recipe, and it is all Hannah's. The problem with the one pot method is that we are not good cooks. We were having a problem with the mac and cheese coming out a sloppy mess. It was often like eating paste. This method is much more fool proof.
First, we make a roux (super easy, see the next post.) Add the milk (read the post on roux before you do this), bring to a low boil for 2 minutes, add the cheese and cook for 1 more minute. Add to cooked pasta (cook pasta in a separate pot.) Done. The sauce takes less time than boiling pasta. Dinner in less than 15 minutes.
This recipe will serve 2-4 people, depending on what else is being served. To serve more, just double it.
2 tbsp. olive oil or butter
2 tbsp. flour
1 1/4 cup milk
Salt and pepper to taste (for kids use less pepper, for adults more)
1 cup(ish) grated cheese
A few notes. First, cheese is important. Don't buy grated cheese in a bag. It has no flavor, and is expensive. Spend some money, buy good cheese, and grate it yourself. We use a mixture of cheddar (always), gruyere (always), parmesan, or whatever is in the fridge. Add 1/2 of the cheese and taste. Add more until it is cheesy enough for you, but not so much that you make it into paste.
Second, the pasta. Since this is not a proper recipe, I don't know the amount. I always make too much, but since pasta is so cheap I don't care to measure. Don't just pour all the pasta you cooked into the sauce. The way we do it is to put as much pasta as we want into a bowl, then add the amount of sauce we want. Stir and eat.
What type of pasta you use almost makes no difference. We used to buy elbow macaroni, then we got lazy. Now we just use whatever pasta we have in the freezer. Usually it is fettuccine, so I just cut it into bite sized pieces and boil it up.
There are multiple funny things about this fight.
ReplyDelete1) I was not aware I was even in a mac and cheese fight.
2) The new and improved recipe you posted is how I used to make mac and cheese before I visited you guys and you taught me that you can just make it in one pot and it's cheesy and delicious.
3) You went as far to veto my wanting to make mac and cheese what I thought was the normal way and said no, this is how we do it. It's so much better this way.
4) I then post your recipe because I'm trying to get on board the blog and I thought your method was surprisingly cool only to come to find a few months later than you're now shooting down your own recipe.
5) I eat mac & cheese approximately 1 - 2 times a year so the irony of me having a mac and cheese fight is in and of itself pretty entertaining.
Welcome to the Arndorfer Way. It seems to be genetic because Hannah is just as much of a spaz as I am.
ReplyDelete