Perfectly Baked Mac & Cheese
Does it deserve to be called [erfect?
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
Difficulty: 1/5
I’ve made a few Mac & Cheese recipes for this blog. So far, Rodney Scott’s recipe takes the cake. Mac & Cheese is something that people take pretty seriously, so when you put the word perfect in the name of your recipe, this recipe from Texture Over Taste will definitely have some high expectations.
Key Ingredients & Omissions:
This is one of the simplest baked Mac & Cheese recipes I can remember. It’s just about as close as you can get to just pasta and cheese as it gets. The only seasoning is salt, which I would say is a key ingredient. You definitely need to season it to taste with salt so that you can get the most out of your cheese. I think you should get the best quality cheese that you can afford, but don’t sweat it too much.
Tools:
Grater
Large Pot
Cooking Review:
Shred Cheese: 10 minutes
To save myself some time, I used my food processor to shred most of the cheese. Of course, some pieces broke up into large chunks before getting shredded, so I used another manual grater on those pieces.
Boil Pasta: 22 minutes
It took about 17 minutes for the salted water to come to a boil. In the mean time, I measured out some of the other ingredients. Once the water was boiling, I added the macaroni and cooked it for 5 minutes before straining it in a colander. I set it aside while I worked on the rest of the recipe.
Making Cheese sauce: 15 minutes
After melting the cheese in the same pot that I cooked the pasta in, I added the flour and whisked it in for about a minute. I whisked in half of the milk until the mixture was smooth, followed by the rest of the cheese and cream. I let it thicken up for about 6 minutes, then added half of the shredded cheese, stirring constantly to melt it. After 5 minutes, most of the cheese was melted, but there were some pretty stubborn strands that seemingly wouldn’t melt. I removed what I could before seasoning with salt to taste and moving on.
Transfer to pan and Bake: 33 minutes
I poured the macaroni into the cheese sauce and stirred to coat the noodles completely. I poured half of the macaroni into a baking pan that I sprayed with cooking spray. I topped it with about half of the remaining cheese and then the rest of the macaroni. Finally, I topped the dish with the remaining cheese and baked it for 20 minutes. Once the cheese had melted and begun to bubble around the edges, I placed it under the broiler for about 4 minutes to finish it off.
Analysis:
Just like the ingredients list would suggest, this is a very simple tasting Mac and Cheese. The noodles were perfectly cooked, and are well coated by the very cheesy sauce. Speaking of the sauce, the flavor is really just that of the two cheeses that go into it with the gruyere being more prevalent. Without the additional salt, I feel like this would be an even more flat Mac & Cheese. I like that some of the cheese gets crispy on top, with the rest of bit becoming chewy, adding some textural contrast to somewhat makeup for the one-note flavor experience. I suppose if you strictly look at how the Mac & Cheese is baked, I guess you could say it’s perfect. Nothing was under or over cooked. Like I said, the noodles were cooked perfectly. However, the flavors are so simple and basic, as there are no seasonings added besides salt, that it’s somewhat disappointing. If you really just like cheese and nothing else when it comes to your Mac & cheese, you’ll probably really enjoy this. If you like something more than that, this falls short. I’m going to give this recipe a 7/10. It’s a great starting point for a Mac & Cheese. Now, just add some seasonings to it to make it your own.
