The Best Mac and Cheese You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101

I'm Lish styling I'm a professional chef and today I'm going to show you how to make restaurant style macaroni and cheese at home we'll be going over techniques Pros use to make cheesy ooey gooey comforting mac and cheese this is mac and cheese 101 the perfect mac and cheese should have enough sauce to coat the pasta plenty of cheese to make it Ooey and gooey and I like a little crunch on top so now we're going to move on to making our Bechamel for the mac and cheese a bechamel is basically a thickened cream sauce and that's going to be the base of our cheese sauce for this mac and cheese let's start with the onion shall we I like to use onion in a mac and cheese because I think that it just gives it a little bit of character and backbone it's a Savory element so we're just gonna dice these up any size is fine smaller the better because nobody wants to bite into a huge onion this is a medium cheddar cheese the cheddar adds a nice creamy richness to the dish pre-shredded cheese sometimes has anti-caking agents on it so it doesn't melt into the sauce as easily as if you take a block and just put some elbow grease into it and we're also using gruyere rare is like a Swiss style cheese so it has a little bit of Tang a little bit of nuttiness voila look at that just like that we have our cheeses we're gonna butter our pan because you can never have enough butter right this also prevents the pasta from actually sticking to the pan it lands itself to a nice golden Edge I'm gonna get to work on my Bechamel I'm starting with a heavy bottom Dutch oven here we're gonna add one whole stick of butter which is a half a cup unsalted butter because you want full control over the seasoning it's fully melted at this point it's starting to sizzle which lets you know that it's ready for the next thing so we are going to add in our onion we're gonna season it with a little bit of salt because season as you go all the layers that way everything has the opportunity to become as flavorful as it can possibly become when the onions become super fragrant and are beginning to turn a little translucent then you know it's ready to go so right there I'm going to sprinkle in our half a cup of all-purpose flour so the flour is going to absorb all of that flavorful fat now and we're just gonna cook this out for about maybe two minutes it's gonna thicken our sauce to a nice consistency but it also adds flavor at this point it's very important that you can continue to stir constantly and I think we are there so next thing we're going to do is we're going to add the cayenne pepper cayenne pepper is just there to wake up the senses it adds a little bit of warmth we're going to start adding four and three quarters cup milk this is not for the faint of heart for the dairy free and once you have a nice smooth sauce in here continue to add the rest of the milk at this point we're going to season it with a little bit more salt keeping in mind that you're going to be adding salty cheeses to this so you don't want to over season at this point because you can always adjust later on once the cheeses are in and now we sit and wait and we let the roux do its magic it's important to let it fully cook for those five minutes because you want to cook out the raw flour taste sometimes if you rush it you're left with that everybody knows that like flower coating on their tongue this baby is thickened sexy and begging for cheese you can tell that it's done by the back of the spoon if it holds its line that means it's done so we are going to reserve about a third of our cheeses for our topping but add in two-thirds of our cheeses into this beautiful Bechamel this is this Wisconsin girl's happy place right here just stir these guys in oh yes this is the kind of cheese sauce that dreams are made of let's give it a taste foreign needs more salt but holy cheesy goodness my water is boiling for our elbow macaroni if we're gonna do mac and cheese we might as well go classic right so you bring a pot of water to a boil and then you season it aggressively with salt this is your only opportunity to season the pasta so you want to make sure that it's seasoned properly in goes our pasta I often go by taste when cooking pasta but in this situation because it's going to cook longer in the sauce afterward I normally reduce the cook time by like two to three minutes according to package directions this one says five minutes so we're gonna cook it for about three my pasta is just before Al Dente so I'm gonna grab my sauce so that I can add it directly from the pasta pot into the sauce it's actually delightful if some of that pasta water gets in there don't be afraid of it it has the starch from the pasta it has seasoning it's actually going to be very helpful in this case and now we are just gonna give this guy a stir now here's the beauty of this dish if you didn't want to go the extra step and actually bake it you could just finish the pasta to perfect Al Dente in this creamy sauce right now and eat it just as is we're gonna take this mac and cheese up a notch and we're gonna bake it so it gets crispy and golden and bubbly it's gonna be good it is time to put this thing together so I am going to take a ladle here because we're going the extra mile we're just going to Ladle all of this cheesy goodness right into our baking dish maybe one more scoop then to double down on our cheese I'm gonna take that leftover gruyere and the leftover cheddar I'm just gonna sprinkle that right over the top all the way to the edges don't skimp and then we're gonna make our crunchy topping so we have some Panko bread crumbs here about a cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano a little pinch of salt and just a little bit of olive oil stir that together this is for texture this is the Crunch and here we go right over the top oh hello lover yes now that the top is completely covered in our breadcrumbs I'm gonna put it in our preheated 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes until it's golden brown and bubbly yes golden and delicious you can hear that it's nice and crispy on top I know it's hard but let it rest for five minutes I did I had to like put up with it but it's worth it because you get all of those good flavors just kind of resting settling down a little bit let's give it a taste shall we yes I mean you see the sauce is clinging to the noodles there's the little crunchy bits on top who need some of that that is so good the two cheeses you get the tanginess it's Rich because of the acid of the cheeses my mouth just wants more like cuts through the richness the crunchy topping few ingredients but well thought out just take your time be patient and it pays off

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 480,282

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Id: EMcN2ZzEXGQ

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023