Baked Mac and Cheese

Baked Mac and Cheese

Recipe:

• Boil four cups of noodles until just softened (they’ll cook more in the oven)

• Prepare three cups of grated cheese. I prefer mozzarella and some kind of cheddar, but maybe you prefer something with more heat or a different texture. The choice of cheese is up to you.

• Whisk together two tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of flour in a large saucepan over heat. Continue whisking for at least three minutes.

• Whisk in two cups of milk (any kind will do but whole milk is prefered), a bay leaf, and a couple sprinkles of paprika. Bring this mixture to a simmer and continue whisking and simmering for fifteen minutes until it’s reduced, and remove it from heat. For a less saucy and more reduced mixture, simmer for eighteen minutes. Then season with salt and pepper to taste.

• Whisk in about two thirds of your cheese and continue whisking until the mixture is as chunky/smooth as you would like. Remember that this will continue to cook as it sits and as it cooks in the oven.

• Pour your noodles into the saucepan and mix until thoroughly combined. The noodles should be coated in the cheesey saucey mixture. Move half of these noodles to a pan or bowl (one that is oven-proof).

• Pour the rest of your grated cheese into the pan or bowl, over the noodles, to serve as a cheesey center for your mac and cheese dish. Then pour the rest of your noodles on top. All of your grated cheese and noodle/cheese mixture should be in the pan or bowl now.

• Extra tip: if you feel like you didn’t get enough cheese in there, you can grate more cheese into the mixture at any time. This recipe is very forgiving and the amount of cheese won’t damage the final product; the amount of cheese is really to taste.

• Finish by combining a cup of breadcrumbs with two tablespoons of butter in a pan or skillet, and combine and toast until the breadcrumbs are warm and buttery. Spread this mixture on top of your mac and cheese.

• Put your entire pan or bowl of mac and cheese into the oven at 350 degrees (you could preheat the oven if you liked, but again the recipe is forgiving). The meal is done after half an hour or until the top is as golden brown as you would like.

• Extra tip: you can remove the mac and cheese from the oven and serve it immediately, but you can also mix it together, or add more grated cheese. If at any point in the process you don’t like it, just adjust the amounts of cheese/breadcrumbs/milk/butter/whatever to taste.

• Extra tip: This mac and cheese isn’t as strong as I like it, but I prefer to season it once it’s on my plate and not in the bowl with everyone else’s. Some hot sauce, coarse kosher salt, and ground pepper can really improve the strength of the recipe and also bring out the other flavors. In addition to seasoning, you can also add grated cheese to your own plate to give a little bit of chunk to your saucey mac.

• The final step is to enjoy!

This dish is a home cooked, hearty, comfort food. I use this dish to serve in large portions, because small portions of mac and cheese just make me sad that I don’t have more, so I will be analyzing this from the perspective of two to four people served per bowl (when this could easily create twenty small appetizer dishes).

In the context of other comfort foods, this dish holds its own. It has a lot of variation, but if you use the right ingredients this dish can be all whole food. Using whole milk is, obviously, the first step, but also make sure you’re using organic AND all natural cheese (placing far more emphasis on the organic on the label than the all natural). The other key is to use the proper seasoning; fresh salt, pepper, bay leaves, and paprika (and hot sauce if you’re interested in that feature of the recipe) are much less likely to be processed. These small pieces of the recipe are what create the taste, whereas the noodles and cheese create the bulk of the meal, so investing in organic, fresh, and unprocessed seasonings is critical. The real issue with processed foods arises with the bulk of the meal. The noodles are the biggest problem, because they’re grains and not digestible by our bodies, so they have to be processed. You could use veggie noodles, or even actual vegetables cut into the shapes of noodles (zucchini is a popular choice), or whole grain noodles as a whole food alternative to the most processed brands of noodle. You can even find out about these noodle choices on the Whole Foods website, ironically enough. Cheeses are also a difficult option. Spend some time choosing the right cheese (both in taste and in ingredients) and make sure it isn’t just the cheese at the closest corner store. Farmer’s markets are a great way to find little to no process cheese, and you can even make your own at home with a fraction of the “processing” that even the most local of farmers uses. In the end, if you want a little to no process mac and cheese recipe, you can get it, but you can’t use the Kraft box that’s sitting in your cabinet.

I began to touch upon this in your choice of ingredients, but having a healthy whole food option isn’t the only benefit of purchasing from local and organically grown farms. Cheese, especially the homemade or farmmade and whole food kind, is very difficult to make. The process is arduous and time consuming, but in the end rewards the consumer with an amazing and deep flavor. Investing in farmer’s market cheese is good for the consumer, but more importantly is good for the farmer. Supporting local farmers is what keeps unprocessed food on people’s plates, so this mac and cheese recipe is a great opportunity to support farmers.

In my preparation of this food I admittedly didn’t use farmer’s market ingredients. I used relatively fresh seasoning bought from Trader Joe’s and my mozzarella cheddar blend was created using their cheese as well. Trader Joe’s in particular is a happy medium between corporations like Kraft which crank out low quality mac and cheese at a low price and a farmer’s market with high quality ingredients but equally high costs. Trader Joe’s also uses the profits from their foods for good causes and are reliably healthy and organic. My preparation of this meal was free, but the combined prices of the ingredients were $15, I would estimate. This amount of fast food mac and cheese, however, say from Wawa or Panera, would cost me even more (two family sized mac and cheese sides from Wawa cost the same $15 but wouldn’t fill the bowl that I filled). The fast food option of this meal would also be much less healthy, even if you opted for store bought cheese and processed pasta.