4 Levels of Mac and Cheese: Amateur to Food Scientist

[water boiling]

[upbeat drums]

I'm Ada and I'm a level one chef.

I'm Anthony and I'm a level two chef.

Great, here we go.

I'm Michael.

I'm a level three chef.

I've been cooking for 27 years.

I kind of know my way around a kitchen.

[upbeat drums]

The last time I made a 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.

Gonna start with my pasta.

First thing I'm gonna do is pour a capful of olive oil

to make sure the macaronis 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 half a cup of salt.

This is elbow macaroni.

This is cavatappi.

We're gonna 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.

Gemelli pasta allows for the cheese sauce

to wrap around the pasta.

And it just gives great texture to your macaroni and cheese.

Alright, let's add the pasta.

Once you add it in, you want to give it a quick stir.

Now comes the moment of truth.

We're gonna taste test one of them and see if they're ready.

Hm, that's perfect. Yeah.

Very nice and al dente.

This will hold up in the baking process

when we go to bake the mac and cheese.

Now while the macaroni is still hot,

I like to season it with pepper and seasoned 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 smokey quality to it.

We're gonna add in a little graham cracker.

I'm using a combination of white sugar and brown sugar.

The brown sugar has a little more molasses in it

and it lends for a little more caramelization.

Little salt for seasoning, black pepper,

little bit of vanilla.

We're gonna add a little bit of malted 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 a fourth 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 bouillie,

we're gonna add a little bit of cold milk.

And then we're gonna whisk in flour.

The bouillie won't separate and allows for the mac

and cheese to be a little more creamier.

We're gonna whisk in white pepper,

a little bit of nutmeg, roasted garlic, mustard powder.

The four flavors that we added in

lends for a sweet spicy element to the mac and cheese.

We turn the bouillie off.

And then basically we're gonna melt the cheese

with the residual heat.

Then I'm gonna add my different cheeses.

cheddar cheese, american cheese, and muenster cheese.

Smells amazing.

You don't have to add these in in any particular order.

We're gonna go alphabetical.

So I'm gonna add my havarti.

Now before we add the next cheese,

we wanna make sure that the first one is fully incorporated.

In goes the mascarpone.

Every last drop.

So into the bouillie we add the gruyere and cheddar.

The hardest cheeses first

which will allow time for them to melt.

I add a quarter cup of flour.

Now the sauce is nice and rich.

The parmigiana regiono and finally the white cheddar.

And then we're gonna add in our high moisture cheese

which is gonna help in the baking.

That's Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

Philadelphia Cream Cheese is gonna prevent the water

and the fat from separating in the oven.

So the more moisture you have in the baking process,

the more stable your mac and cheese will be.

Now we're gonna add the cubes of mozzarella.

I have one more ingredient for my sauce, the egg.

The egg is what holds everything together.

It'll look really runny.

But we're gonna depend on the starches in the pasta

when we actually cook it

and that'll help everything tighten up.

The cheeses don't need

to be completely melted down at this point.

They'll melt down in the oven when you go to bake it.

Alright, now let's put it all together.

So first I'm gonna put the macaroni into the pan.

I'm just taking room temperature butter here.

We're just gonna 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 gratin baking dish.

It will hold all the heat and keep your pasta warm

even well after you bake it in the oven.

I love using a cast iron pan for my mac and cheese.

I don't know, I like that country feel you know?

Then I take my cheese and I pour it.

Alright we're just mixing the cheese sauce

and the pasta together to make sure that every little piece

of the cavatappi is covered.

My mouth is watering.

We're 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 the crevices of the pasta.

Then I'm going to add my cheese.

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.

Alright this looks cheesy.

This looks good.

Looks perfect.

The color is good, the texture is good.

This, this is just perfect.

We're gonna add a little bit of scallion on top.

Get the toasty, crunchy Panko on top.

I can't wait to see how cheesy it is underneath.

[sighing and laughing]

Alright, this looks great.

Creamy, crunchy, can smell the bacon.

Now for the moment of truth.

Let's try it.

No wonder my kids love this.

This is good mac and cheese.

That's perfect.

As you just saw, 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 muenster.

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 the cheese starting to melt.

The cheese isn't aged or fermented for a very long time

and its got some additives that

maybe you don't necessarily want in your mac and cheese.

Anthony added parmigiano regiono

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 meltability

of the parmesano regiono along with it.

Michael added Philadelphia Cream Cheese to his sauce

which adds a lot of creaminess.

And then we're gonna add in our high moisture cheese.

That's Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

He paired it with mozzarella which adds a stringy,

stretchy quality to his sauce

and it really helps to coat the pasta very nicely.

And then we add a little bit of mozzarella

for that stringy texture that everybody loves

in a mac and cheese.

Now all cheeses melt the same way.

Cheeses with a higher moisture content melt more readily

than cheese with a lower moisture content.

Cheeses with a high moisture content

also melt at a lower temperature.

We have the caseins 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 cheeses.

When you have a hard cheese that's been aged for a long time

and the water is lost,

the calcium and the caseins seize 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 cheeses

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 meltability and some delicious flavor.

Another quality that adds creaminess to the mac and cheese

is adding flour because it thickens your sauce.

In Ada's 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 a bouillie 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.

Lends 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.

Ada used an elbow macaroni

which doesn't have a lot of texture

but the shape catches the sauce really well.

Anthony used a cavatappi so you have a lot

of surface area with that pasta.

The sauce really coats it very well.

'Cause 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 texture 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 smoke bacon

which give a really nice robust flavor profile to that dish.

The chefs 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 don't know 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 gratin dish is very traditional

to use for mac and cheese.

See, I mean it's just.

Doesn't this look good?

Mm, this is really good.

When you're making mac and cheese,

you're gonna wanna balance the cheeses,

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.

It's warm back here.