4 Levels of Mac and Cheese: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

I'm ADA and I'm a level 1 chef I'm Anthony and I'm a level 2 chef right here we go I'm Michael I'm a level 3 chef I've been cooking for 27 years I kind of know my way around a kitchen the last time I made the mac and cheese recipe was about two weeks ago I'd say I make this recipe once twice a month at least I made this recipe a couple days ago for my kids this recipe was inspired by my grandmother that I put together at Red Rooster where I was executive chef [Music] I'm gonna start with my pasta first thing I'm gonna do is pour a cap full of olive oil to make sure the macaroni don't stick I'm not gonna add olive oil I'm Italian I grew up adding a little bit of olive oil to the pot but then one time I tried not doing it and I realized it was just a complete waste of olive oil to do that my rule is that it should taste like the ocean we actually bring the water up to a rapid boil 212 degrees we're gonna add salt for every two gallons I like to add 1/2 a cup of salt this is elbow macaroni this is cavatappi we're going to use Gemelli pasta it's the easiest to cook and my grandma uses it all the time so it's my favorite pasta for mac and cheese because it's got so many ridges and squiggles all that surface area is perfect for cheese sauce to stick to and really that's all this thing is it's just a cheese sauce delivery vehicle Camela pasta allows for the cheese sauce to wrap around the pasta and it just gives great texture to your macaroni and cheese all right let's add the pasta once you add it in you want to get a quick stir now comes the moment of truth we're gonna taste test one of them to see if they're ready that's perfect very nice and al dente and this will hold up in the baking process when we go to make the nitrous now while d is still hot I like to season it with pepper and season salt then I add my butter before we bake the mac and cheese I like to toast up a little bit of panko just to add kind of a nice crispy texture on top my topping is actually a graham cracker and pepper streusel it has a little bit of bacon to give it a smoky quality to it we're gonna add in a little graham cracker we using a combination of white sugar and brown sugar the brown sugar has a little normal is in it and it lends for little more carmelization full salt for seasoning black pepper a little bit of vanilla and a little bit of melted butter mix it up till you get a nice crumb and then it's ready to go on top of the mac and cheese alright let's make the sauce I'm first gonna start with about 1/4 stick of butter to kind of simmer in the pan just a little bit I'm gonna add a cup of milk we're gonna start with half-and-half just over medium heat the technique for making the Bowie we're gonna add a little bit of cold milk and then we're gonna whisk in flour the Bowie won't separate and it allows for the mac and cheese to be a little more creamy we're gonna whisk in white pepper little bit of nutmeg roasted garlic mustard powder the four flavors that we add it in mint for a sweet spicy element to the mac and cheese we turn the buoy off and then basically we're gonna melt the cheese with the residual heat I'm going to add my different cheeses cheddar cheese American cheese and monster cheese you don't have to add these in in any particular order we're gonna go out the medical I'm going to add my hub party now before we have the next cheese we want to make sure that the first one is fully incorporated and goes the marscapone every last drop so into the buoy we had to agree air and cheddar the hardest cheese is first to allow time for them to melt I add quarter cup of flour [Music] rich parmigiano-reggiano and finally the white cheddar and then we're gonna add in our hard maestra cheese philadelphia cream cheese is gonna prevent the water and the fat from separating in the oven so the more moisture you have in a baking process the more stable your mapping cheese will be now we're gonna add the Cuban mozzarella I have one more ingredient for my sauce the egg the egg is what holds everything together it'll look really running but we're gonna depend on the starches in the pasta when we actually cook it and that'll help everything tighten up the cheese's don't need to be completely melted down at this point they'll melt down in the oven when you go to bake it all right now let's put it all together so first I'm going to put the macaroni into the pan I'm just taking room-temperature butter here we're just going to kind of paint the bottom and the sides of the cast-iron pan you don't need a whole lot here we're gonna add our pasta we're using a grit and baking dish it will hold all the heat and keep your pasta warm even well after you bake good any other I love using a cast-iron pan for my mac and cheese I like that country feeling you know then I take my cheese and I pour it all right we're just mixing the cheese sauce and the pasta together to make sure that every little piece the cavatappi is covered my mouth is watering I'm gonna fold in our cheese sauce it's okay that the cheese sauce is a little bit thick once you put it in the oven it'll melt and kind of fill in all of the crevices of the pasta then I'm going to add my teeth you know might as well just cover the whole thing with cheese spreading it around into one even layer and then we're gonna cover it with that toasted panko and now for the crumb topping so now we're gonna put this in the oven at 350 for 10 to 15 minutes and now we're gonna bake it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees at 325 degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes all right this looks cheesy this looks good looks perfect the color is good the texture is good this this is just perfect you're not a little bit of scallion on top at the toasty crunchy panko on top I can't wait to see how cheesy it is underneath all right this looks great creamy crunchy can smell the bacon now for the moment of truth let's try it mmm no wonder my kids love this this is good Mexicans as you just saw a macaroni and cheese can be very simple or more complex let's take a look and see what makes each one of these recipes different let's start with the cheese which is the most important part of mac and cheese ada used cheddar American and Munster American cheese is high in moisture as well as high in fat content so it's very smooth and melts nicely you can already see that she's starting to milk the cheese isn't aged or fermented for a very long time and it's got some additives that maybe you don't necessarily want in your mac and cheese Anthony added parmigiano-reggiano which isn't the best melting cheese but it gives a lot of really intense delicious cheese flavor everybody needs a little bit more parm in their life he paired it with mascarpone which is a cheese that has a really high moisture content so it kind of brings the melt ability of the parmigiano-reggiano along with it Michael added Philadelphia Cream Cheese to his sauce which adds a lot of creaminess then we're gonna add in our high maestra cheese that's Philadelphia Cream Cheese he paired it with mozzarella which adds a Streamy stretchy quality to his sauce and it really helps to coat the pasta very nicely and then we have a little bit of mozzarella for that stringy texture that everyone loves in the Matthews not all cheeses melt the same way cheeses with a higher moisture content not more readily than Jesus with a lower moisture content Jesus with a high moisture content also melt at a lower temperature we have the casings and the calcium start to split apart and they flow really nicely with the available water that's in the semi-hard and high moisture cheese's when you have a hard cheese that's been aged for a long time and the water is lost the calcium and the casein seized up and they form clumps you don't really want that in your mac and cheese to counteract that you can add other high moisture cheese's like we saw with Michael when he added the Philadelphia cream cheese or with Anthony when he added the mascarpone cheese so when you're choosing cheese for your mac and cheese it's important to balance the flavor of a hard cheese with the moisture of a soft cheese you get really nice melt ability and some delicious flavor another quality that adds creaminess to the mac and cheese is adding flour because it thickens your sauce in a de sauce she added her flour with all the other ingredients so it may have been a little bit unevenly distributed and it didn't coat all of the pasta Michael used to believe for his sauce it's a combination of milk and flour where the milk coats the flour particles so they don't clump together what you get is a really smooth creamy sauce on top of the variety of cheeses Michael also added some very interesting spices to his dish lens for a sweet spicy element to the mac and cheese he also added mustard powder which has some emulsifying properties that keeps the sauce nice and creamy and smooth and also adds a really nice layer of spice 80 used an elbow macaroni which doesn't have a lot of texture but the shape catches sauce really well Anthony used to cavatappi so you have a lot of surface area with that pasta the sauce really coats it very well because it's got so many ridges and squiggles all that surface area is perfect for cheese sauce to stick to so with every single bite you get a lot of pasta as well as a lot of sauce Michael used Gemelli which has a lot of surface area and some textures so it really soaks up the cheese sauce now let's talk about texture and we'll start with Ada she just added more cheese on top you know might as well just cover the whole thing with cheese it didn't add any structure or texture to the mac and cheese anthony added toasted panko to the top of his mac and cheese which not only gave it a delicious crunch just to add kind of a nice crispy texture on top but it also added some visual appeal this looks absolutely perfect Michael took it to another level he added crumbled up graham crackers black pepper and some smoked bacon which give a really nice robust flavor profile to that dish the chef's used three different dishes and got three different results ada used a glass dish and typically you want to lower the temperature about 25 degrees when you're baking anything in glass because once glass is hot it retains heat very well so you don't want to burn your macaroni and cheese it takes a lot of energy to heat up cast iron but once you get it hot it's a nice even heat I like that country feel you know and you get a really nice crunchy crispy macaroni Michael used a ceramic gratin dish to bake his macaroni which also just like the cast iron takes a little bit of energy to heat up but once it does it retains heat really well and here too you should get a nice crispy crunchy edge to your macaroni the Grattan dish is very traditional to use for mac and cheese see I mean it's just doesn't that's okay mm-hmm when you're making mac and cheese you're gonna want to balance the cheese's the texture the pasta other spices but at the end of the day everybody's gonna love mac and cheese nothing else needs to be said but wow we're back here

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 13,960,382

Rating: 4.8142023 out of 5

Keywords: amateur chef, mac and cheese, macaroni and cheese, food scientist, 4 levels, macaronia, macaroni and cheese 4 levels, 4 levels epicurious, 4 levels of, professional chef, homemade macaroni and cheese, macaroni, mac and cheese recipe, how to make macaroni and cheese, macaroni and cheese recipe, macaroni and cheese epicurious, make macaroni and cheese, making macaroni and cheese, how to make mac and cheese, make mac and cheese, mac and cheese epicurious, epicurious

Id: 605DPLl8Gqg

Length: 11min 28sec (688 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 20 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Yareaaeray]

The bacon, graham cracker, and brown sugar topping sounds nasty as hell.

[u/UniversalFarrago]

This series bugs me a lot, only because their concept of "amateur" is some basic bitch with a kitchen full of unitaskers and 0 knife skills who doesn't even know what a clove of garlic is.

Like, come on. That's not amateur. That's someone who doesn't know shit about cooking.

[u/WongJeremy]

Joke’s on these levels, as a professional I’m not even a home cook because I never cook at home.

[u/Trash782]

I just watched it the other day it all looked like crap

[u/meatpuppet79]

To be honest, as a non American, the whole mac and cheese thing has always been weird to me... It's not like it's bad or anything, but it's the amongst the most basic and uninspiring things I've tasted, even when it's dolled up with a dozen different cheeses and bacon and a kitchen sink, I just don't understand what you guys see in it.

[u/SVAuspicious]

I find it an interesting set of contrasts.

[u/nathanjshaffer]

Gotta love a good 72 ingredient dish