World's Best Macaroni and Cheese | Cooking Italian with Joe

the good life full of fun seems to be the idea guys welcome to my kitchen welcome back to my kitchen kind of sad we got back from Italy a little bit ago so this is our first video back here in the kitchen and Cazenove in New York but we had such a wonderful time thanks for the great emails I got some great messages today we've got a great recipe for you we're going to make macaroni and cheese so it's comfort food Sunday we're going to make macaroni and cheese Italian style cooking in town with Joe stop how's that sound so that's going to be exciting before we get going though I just want to do a quick shout out to Hugh's on the Cazenovia cup block good friend of mine has a shop right here in Casanova if you guys are looking for any cutting boards or bowls some of the beautiful wood products if you guys get a chance to watch them in our videos and even in Italy oh we've got some great pictures but I brought back a beautiful piece of olive wood from an olive tree obviously out in out in Italy right in Puglia and I gave it to Tim Hughes and he just milled it just made it beautiful and that it's just a absolutely gorgeous cutting board to get the eye and then obviously put a beautiful marking on there just absolutely great still smells like olive oil absolutely fantastic so quick shout out you guys looking for a great wooden product Kazon only a couple I asked for Tim who specifically or Mackenzie a sister they do a beautiful job so that being said I want to share with you just a phenomenal recipe for macaroni cheese it's absolutely delicious so we're going to start with a lot of stuff here so you know if you like mac in the box you know where you buy macaroni and cheese and you put the little packet in there with butter and stir it in and that's what you think macaroni and cheese which is great I totally get that you could shut this video up because that's not what this is about this is about making real true authentic macaroni cheese really good thick awesome cheese's we're going to use four cheese's so we're going to start with four cups of half-and-half obviously this is a low-cal low fat macaroni and cheese dish and then what I did here is I did two cloves of garlic and I make garlic paste so if you guys want to learn how to do that real simple we got a nice video on that just punching cooking in town with Joe garlic paste and then I made some onion paste so I took a small chunk of onion I would say like 1/16 or even smaller piece of onion and I just cut that up and then mushed it up okay mashed it up we're going to need 8 tablespoons of butter 1 stick of butter and then equal we're going to make a partial mell sauce if you will a rule a roux which we'll start with so we're going to do 8 tablespoons of flowers when 8 tablespoons of flour so something if you guys aren't familiar with how to make a roux you always do equal portions of butter or fat it could be a lard so equal portions of fat and flour ok we're always going to use a little bit of nutmeg oh I love nutmeg and we're going to use nutmeg to season ok it's not going to give it a flavoring it's just going to give it a backdrop right well certainly going to use salt pepper we're going to use some of the great olive oil from my farm in the area in which my home is in Italy Beto and Jose I had a few people ask you where you can get it you know right on Facebook and you punch a shop and you can grab a bottle right there we're actually listed on Amazon as well or you go right to our website cooking in town with Joe so I'd love for you guys to have a bottle of the real true authentic olive oil all we've got right here a little bit of a heavy cup of breadcrumbs that we're going to put on top of the on top of the mac cheese and I've got about 3 tablespoons of butter here so we're going to melt the butter mix that with in the bread crumbs and then we're going to mix some of those cheese's in there as well it's going to be absolutely great there's a great Sinatra song on by the way if you guys can hear it and then we're going to use four cheese's now this is macaroni and cheese how you doing Italian style ok so that being said we've got one heavy cup of fresh grated Nutella we've got Romano we've got Parmesan one of my favorite cheese's is fontina absolutely delicious and it's like a creamy cheddar I think it's how I would word so what we're going to do is we're going to certainly start with a roux we're going to make our bottle Mel sauce then we're going to melt the cheese in there when that's all done we're going to mix it with in our pasta and what I've got here is 1 pound of cooked elbow pasta ok and I cool that after you cook it down you want to pre cook it right and you're going to cool it so run some water over it which will wash the starch off and then I just drizzle a little olive oil over it with it just a pinch of salt and stir it all up that way it won't stick together we're going to add the pasta to the cheese sauce put it back in the pan hit it with some bread crumbs that are flavored bake it in the oven about 300 to 400 degrees 20 minutes because everything is essentially cooked already oh my god multiple de letra it's gonna be absolutely delicious you guys ready to get started I know I am come on right over the stove Oh get going all right guys here we go so I've got my 8 tablespoons of butter I'm gonna pop those in there and what we're gonna do is we're going to melt the butter down now what I want to do also to flavor the sauce is I want to add a little bit of garlic and a little bit of the onion paste we're going to use some of that for the topping as well so I'm going to put some of that in with the butter to kind of just get it a little head-on cooking before I add the you know make the full rule okay alright so I've got a little bit of the whole so I'm going to take you know maybe a half of a teaspoon okay cause I want to save the rest for the topic okay and then I'm going to take about half of that onion okay so I'm going to take about a full tablespoon and I'm going to put that in with the butter now some recipes to make it you know perfect as a fashion all you're going to use a clarified butter because you don't want any of the the moisture and the butter is a lot of water and butter so they're going to serve for the full larder with if you will to full fat but in this case most of it will burn off if you do it like I'm doing right here and you'll have a little bit of the milk solids in there but it won't be a problem so I'm going to cook this down and I just want to just begin the cooking process of like I said the garlic and the onion the rest of it will cook obviously when you continue to cook the roux as well as when you bake it so all right Kay so well now I've got the butter cooking all right with my onion and garlic and can you zoom in really quick here I just want to show you so some of that bubbling is the moisture coming out of the butter and remember the butter can't handle a lot of heat so you don't want to get it too hot and I've got that garlic and onion that's cooking some of that moisture out you can already see it start to get translucent which is great okay so now I'm going to start adding flour and the key here this is your roux what you call a roux okay the key here is to give it a good stir now if you're making a true what they call white sauce because the box will Mel is essentially the foundation it's one of the five sauces not to get too picky here on on French cooking okay but if you want to make a white sauce you'd use if you use a salt or pepper you traditionally would use like a white pepper obviously you wouldn't use anything to season it it's going to have any dark flake to it or a lot of it okay and you don't want to cook it down because you want it to stay white when you mix it in with the milk and so forth ok so that's the general rule but today we're making a mac and cheese and I'll tell you one of the best ways to make a BAS from out my opinion is to cook it down a little bit so you cook the flour in the fat and it gets a little bit of a brown flavor I'm sorry brown color and gives you a great flavor which is what I was trying to say it gives it like a nutty nutty flavor when you cook down so you can see it right here it's bubbling now the key here is keep your you got to control your heat and just cook it down okay that's it you don't want it now right around now right around now I'm going to bring it down on that low setting okay you want to make sure you got every little lump out of there and make it nice and creamy okay so essentially what do we got we've got onion garlic and we've got our Oh like I tell you it smells good ooh good onion garlic butter and flour and you can see how nice and smooth is there isn't a bit of lump it in there okay and once that gets down and you get a nice and warm you got it like there's a little lump right there just for it to come don't worry about it once it gets down and starts to brown which it is right now now we're going to add our milk now one of the general rules if you're making a sauce like this basha Mel is the French name one of our jokes here in upstate New York is if you're if you're from upstate New York and or the South's you call it like you call it milk gravy because that's essentially what you're peaking so your thickening milk okay but the reality is it's beautiful the reality is a lot of times you want to temper them out to you heat the milk up the milk before you add it in this case just add it slow you'll be fine if you add a lot of it it'll stop the process of cooking so that's the that's the reason usually heat the milk up beforehand but you can temper it this way just by adding it nice and slow to your pan okay and I want to make this too complicated I want to scare you if you've never done this before it's really easy this is kind of one of the ways you make something to thicken like a gravy if you will or something of that nature okay so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go ahead and grab my half-and-half so right there right there's my half-and-half so again this is pretty warm so I'm just going to add a little bit see how nice and warm it is and then add a little bit more you're going to see it start to get solid and then stop and get that incorporated you're going to see it kind of lump a little that's fine and keep it really low the heat okay and then just add a little bit more and it's getting warm right away right you're just going to add a little bit in don't worry about how it's looking because all that's going to get really well incorporated it'll dissolve right in there the fat which is great and then you're going to add a little bit more if you take the milk right out of your half-and-half or cream and you take a right now that refrigerator probably not a great idea though to add it so you can let either let that kind of warm a little to room temp or not quite or again you can heat it up ahead of time so and we're just going to keep stirring this in and get this well incorporated it's going to take a few minutes so let me do this you guys relax think about how good this is going to taste I'll talk to you guys in comments all right guys it's been about five minutes so what I want to show you is when you make that you see how it coats the spoon nice right so it's like a syrup like a thick syrup right and it's really out I'd love to taste that oh it smells good you can smell the onion the butter of the garlic hmm that's good so I'm going to add a little bit of nutmeg and again we're just adding a little bit yes just to give it that beautiful background seasoned not flavor right so I'm going to stir that in you hook you out you won't really even taste it I'm going to add a little bit of salt and pepper now I'm going to use black pepper one I like to flavor a black pepper butter too we don't necessarily need a white sauce because I'm going to add different colors to the to the mac and cheese so you know it doesn't matter if you've got little flakes in there okay so let me grab some salt and pepper on the season this up alright so we're going to add you know a pinch of salt here and maybe two pinches you don't want it really salty we're going to be adding some cheese's which the salts within the cheese so don't get too heavy with your soul okay and then we're going to add some fresh ground black pepper so and hit that a little bit and again you'll see those flakes in there but that's great and while it's one I'll get to heat barely on like the lowest setting I can get it you're going to see how nice and creamy that is okay that just came out absolutely perfect so now what we're going to do is we're going to want to add those cheese's okay all right guys here we go we're going to add some cheese's alright so I've got the Romano we're going to leave back just a little bit of cheese of each of the cheese's because we want to incorporate that within our breadcrumbs so we got parmesan i shredded all this earlier we got parmesan we got Romano we've got mozzarella and that's just going to give you that nice black brown crispy top and it just flavors that that that breadcrumb just absolutely fantastic something to hit a little bit more and now we're just going to let the heat do its magic okay you're going to lose mix all that in keep stirring you know anything to burn and you don't want to heat it up too much because sometimes what will happen is it will denature the protein within the cheese and a lot of times you'll see that when they make cheese to separate it you know you heat the milk so you don't want to do that here you want to basically mix it and then the heat of the bottle Mel sauce already will melt the cheese and that's really what you want to do you want to melt it okay so I'm going to get that melted beautifully stir that in I got to tell you the smell in here is unbelievable fully macro and there's our four cheese's Quattro formaggio and italiana okay absolutely and I love to taste it but it's so hot with the cheese in there it's going to burn my time so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to shut the heat off because everything is melted you see how nice and smooth that is I mean there's nothing that's not melted it okay so I'm going to stir it up and I've got a little bit of the cheese left for the top alright so now what I want to do is I want to take my pasta I want to put that inside there and I want to fully incorporate it and I'm going to put it back on the pan that's the that's kind of our end step and then I want to make the topping for okay pre-heat your oven like I said 350 to 400 so let me grab the pasta hold on one sec Imagi cat TV look at that okay so there's our pasta so I'm just going to go in nice and easy now this will cool it a little bit because the pasta is cooled a little bit on the table alright a little bit of oil on there so some recipes will say you know make the pot with a little oil on there we already did that because they drizzled it with olive oil okay and real easy this is fresh pasta so some of them are jumping out of the dish ha ha ha real easy you're just going to fold it in the pan okay the Heat's off you see how it's starting to thicken already because we're cooling it which is fine and the goal here real simple you just want to get everything fully incorporated a 1 pound of pasta okay and then we're gonna work on that topping takes a couple minutes to write back with you guys hey guys look at that whoo I'm not going to tell you I haven't tasted a little bit of it it's really good all right so I'm going to set this aside now we want to make the top now the tops got to be awesome okay so I'm going to take some butter and I told you like a three tablespoons or there abouts okay and I want to throw a little bit olive oil in this not a lot just to splash so about two to three tablespoons okay beautiful and now what we do is going to let that melt down all right and then what we want to do is we want to put in the rest of our onion and the rest of our garlic okay and that's going to be in the topping with the breadcrumbs I'm gonna pop those in alright and the cheese we're going to add the last so what we're going to do is we're going to take this get it off the heat and then we'll add in the cheeses that's gonna be the last thing we do okay now I use salted water and remember the cheeses have salt in it so we're going to add just a hint of salt because we've already got salt at it okay so I'm going to do that right now I'm gonna add a little bit of salt a little bit of pepper peppers my favorite you guys haven't figured that out yet gives you a flavor you just cannot match anywhere okay so got some pepper literally a pinch of salt because remember your Romano and your parmesan especially your Romano has a lot of salt and it's a sheep a sheep cheese milk from milk and all that's perfect okay now we want to warm this up a little bit because we've got the garlic in there it's raw right we got the onion in there now I made a paste out of it so you don't need to cook it very long and we don't want to cook it all the way down we just want to begin that process and then the topping with the oven being hot for 20 or 30 minutes that's going to heat it up really nice all right guys here we go so I've got this cooked down so I've got onion garlic salt pepper butter and olive oil okay and I just started to cook down the onion in the garlic okay and again you're not cooking them all the way down but just start to get that cooking process going now you want to pull it off the heat okay now I've got the butter in there and this goes real easy I'm gonna take my bread crumbs pop them in there right and I'm going to mix them in so we're not trying to cook them you're just trying to get them a little bit coated with that butter and that will give them a nice flavor the oil within the butter along with the milk solids in there gives them a different flavor but it also allows them to cook differently if I just put them in there dry you won't cook down the way it does okay so there's is a richness of flavor that you wouldn't be able to get all right so I'm kind of cleaning the bottom here this thing's warm but it's not what I would call hot okay so see how now you're all coated with some kind of butter ready to roll coated with some fat so you want to make sure they're fully incorporated as soon as you got that done now just so you don't melt anything on the pan if it's still hot what I do is I just make a little pile of bread crumbs okay and then I'm going to add my cheese's so I got my Romano like parmesan remember your parmesan is going to add a creamy consistency this way I was headed to like a risotto which is great okay cover my fontina cheese and I've got my fresh mozzarella okay I've got all that in there now I just want to incorporate everything really well with the cheese's right this thing is cooled down and you want to make the cheese you want any lumps of cheese you want to get all the cheese what I'm making a mess and you just want all the cheese just keep pushing it down take your time get all the cheese incorporate so almost looks like bread crumbs so you almost can't tell the difference okay because if now you're going to get about a hunk of cheese and you won't be able to mix it as well okay perfect okay look at that is that beautiful or as I do all right so we're nice we're mixed really well all right that's beautiful now I'm going to take my bread my breakfast I know how to take my mac and cheese and I'm going to just slowly put my crumbs on there okay and you want to just get a nice even spread right so let me get this heavy pan out of the way holy mackerel making a mess okay so you want to just try to get it as evenly spaced as you can one so it cooks properly too because I have a house full of babies and if they don't get the perfect bite they get all upset so I I got to make sure I got an even spread that came my camera person is probably the biggest baby I got in the house here so all right so here we go that right wasn't a very dense thing wasn't no sorry it's true though alright so there we go we got a nice spread right so it's nice in a while even now here's my little trick I'm going to take a piece of aluminum foil I got it about 375 degrees in the oven right now I'm going to take a piece of aluminum foil I'm gonna do a light covering okay I'll show you what I mean so I don't want to seal it because there's gonna be a lot of moisture that comes from this right but if I don't cover at the top might start to brown a little faster than I want because I want the inside to get nice and melted okay so I'm going to do a tight seal and then make sure moisture can get out okay and that's the way to do it so they call it like a tent just make sure that's it okay and then we're going to go about ten minutes fifteen minutes with the tent on we're going to take it off and then we'll cook it again if you don't get that brown on the top you want don't panic just put it on broil for five minutes on the top royal the top will broil and I'll give it that nice brown crunch we might have to do that today so we'll see how it goes all right so I'm going to pop it in the oven 375 I'm going to put it right in the middle and we're going to let goodness and time take its place right the magic if you pop it right in get that in ovens perfect I'll tune back with you guys in about 15 minutes all right guys you ready cuckoo perfect all right so I put that foil back on because the top was brown and perfect but I didn't get that bulb so I got the bubble so I put it back on just guys you know what I'm doing I'm going to pull that off now this baby is hot but now I got that nice bubble in there so I know that it's really oh yeah so it's exactly what you want you got a nice bubble coming in so you know the inside is really hot and that's what you want when you make the inside hot all the cheese's melt together and everything becomes one and you got that beautiful crunch right on top oh is that just absolutely perfect or what I want to bite into it so bad right now but I can because it's too hot so I'm not just cool for a few minutes and then we're gonna do our favorite part of the video taste time I'm a great taster I'll talk to you guys a minute all right guys oh the heat on this thing is so temperature-wise was hot so we had to let this thing cool down but does that look awesome so you got all those flavors you can smell you can smell the pasta you can smell the olive oil the bosco mal you know there's a there's just a hint of seasoning which is the which is the Nutmeg the cream the garlic the breadcrumbs oh my god that's good that's hot homeboy they're talking about comfort food mmm perfect you know I love textures you got that crunch the chew the pastas perfect al Dante hmm oh my god now that ladies and gentlemen is mac and cheese cooking and telling the Joe Italian style that is good let me have one more of these vegetable oh I can assure you one thing when the camera goes off the rest of that plate will be right here in my stomach muffled Alessio hmm guys thanks so much for joining me and let me share one of my favorite family recipes with you cooking in town with Jill Italian style macaroni and cheese absolutely delicious multiple D'Alessio have a great week - till next week bone Appetit talk to you guys next week the good luck

Channel: Cooking Italian with Joe

Views: 117,615

Rating: 4.8766861 out of 5

Keywords: www.cookingitalianwithjoe.com, vito and joe's italian extra virgin olive oil, Joe Borio, Cheese (Food), Macaroni (Food), Italian Food (Industry), Cooking (Interest), Macaroni And Cheese (Food), Spaghetti (Food), Pasta (Food), comfort food, Meatloaf (Dish), Pizza (Cuisine), mac and cheese, Linguine (Food), Mashed Potato (Food), dinner, lunch, Brunch (Event), Rachael Ray (Chef), Giada De Laurentiis (Chef), Mario Batali (Chef), elbow Pasta, italian food recipe, recipe

Id: ovHkHPnCPMk

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2015