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

I'm Frank, professional chef and culinary instructor,

and today I'm gonna show you

how to make the perfect mac and cheese.

You'll learn all the techniques

to make a perfectly melty sauce,

pick just the right pasta

and a crunchy topping that takes it over the top.

This is Mac & Cheese 101. [smooth upbeat music]

Mac and cheese should be creamy, cheesy, and comforting.

And I'm gonna show you a method that skips the flour,

skips the baking using one special secret ingredient.

That's how we're gonna take this comforting side dish

and make it the star of the show.

[lively percussive music]

When it comes to cheese for my mac and cheese,

I like to choose three different types.

Cheddar for sharpness, Gouda for flavor and creaminess,

and then I'm gonna use some grated Parmesan

to give it a little bit of zing.

Something sharp, something creamy,

and something really flavorful.

By following that basic formula, you're gonna solve a lot

of the problems that people usually make

when they make mac and cheese.

If you don't choose the right cheeses, you're gonna end up

with kind of a oily sauce that's broken.

My Parmesan here is freshly grated.

I'm gonna put this aside.

I don't need to do anything with it,

but I do wanna grate my other two cheeses.

Now, first of all, with the Gouda,

I'm gonna take some of this brown skin off.

It really doesn't melt well

and because it has that smokiness to it,

it kinda dries out and gets rubbery.

So what I do is I cut it into manageable pieces

and then I get my grater.

I put the grater flat and push.

This way, I'm kinda using my body weight to push the cheese.

I feel like it takes a little less time.

It actually takes a little less effort,

as far as I'm concerned.

Once the cheese grater gets full,

you can push it and dump it to the side.

So there's my shredded Gouda.

I'm gonna take the block of cheddar, make it manageable.

The grater's on its side and we push.

For mac and cheese, I feel it's super important

that you buy a block of cheese and shred it yourself.

Pre-shredded cheeses have anticaking agents

and cellulose in them.

I find that that lends to a gritty sauce.

So buy the block cheese,

take a minute or two and grate your own cheese.

And I promise you, if you use my method here,

it's gonna be quicker and easier.

[lively percussive music]

Ideally, with mac and cheese,

you want a cheesy bite every time.

Basically, the pasta is the sauce delivery vehicle.

The ideal pasta for mac and cheese has holes,

ridges, curves, and this pasta delivers.

Today I'm using elbows.

So when we cook our pasta, we're basically gonna do it

the same way we do every other pasta.

We have a boiling pot of water.

We're gonna add a fair amount of salt.

Not quite sea salty, but salty enough.

Make sure the pasta goes in when it's boiling.

For the most part, this just keeps the pasta from sticking.

If you don't have this piece of equipment in your house,

you should get one.

It's called a spider. I'm gonna give it a stir.

But we don't wanna constantly stir the pasta

because that's gonna break it up.

We just wanna make sure the pasta's not sticking

to the bottom of the pot or to the other pasta.

I'm cooking this al dente because the pasta is gonna absorb

some of the moisture from the sauce,

and it's gonna make our pasta softer.

So if I go al dente, my pasta's gonna have a little bit

of bite to it and not be mushy.

When I add the sauce,

the pasta's gonna be the perfect consistency.

The pasta is ready. And how do I know that?

Because I took a piece

and I put it in my mouth and tasted it.

That's pretty much the only way you know that the pasta

is where you want it and it's the right texture.

I'm putting it onto this flat tray

so that it cools fairly quickly.

I like to use the spider

just in case I want to save some of the pasta water.

So there's my cooked pasta.

You'll notice that I did not rinse my pasta off.

The starch on the pasta is gonna help the sauce stick.

You're also going to rinse away a lot of the salt

that you put in there in the seasoning.

[lively percussive music]

If you like a dried-out brick

where the sauce is kind of iffy,

please, by all means, put it in the oven.

What I like to do is make a crunchy topping

that kinda hits those notes of that crispy cheese on top

without it going in the oven.

Putting a mac and cheese in the oven tends to dry it out,

and this method kind of avoids all that.

My topping is straightforward. It's pretty easy.

We're gonna put our pan on medium heat.

We're not gonna go too high. I'm gonna add my butter.

The butteriness kinda mirrors

that creaminess of the cheeses.

It's gonna coat those breadcrumbs and let them brown.

I'm gonna add my garlic while the butter is melting.

Fresh garlic is gonna give us a little crispiness

'cause they're gonna get crispy with the breadcrumbs.

It's also gonna give you a cleaner flavor

than, say, a garlic powder.

Once I start smelling that fragrant garlic,

I'm gonna add my breadcrumbs.

They are panko breadcrumbs,

which are just dried-out Japanese breadcrumbs.

It's not super fine. They have some chunkiness to 'em.

So I'm gonna add some salt, add some black pepper,

a little bit of paprika, and then a little bit of cayenne.

Stir this all up, giving it a little shake.

We're gonna get a nice color from that paprika,

a little bit of heat from our cayenne.

Give it a shake so it doesn't burn.

I think we're good, though.

Shut it off. Let's get it onto our tray.

By putting it on a tray,

it's gonna basically stop and arrest that cooking.

And what I'm gonna do is just spread these out

so they cool quickly.

Put them aside for when we're ready

to top our mac and cheese.

Using toasted breadcrumbs is a great alternative

to get that crispy top

without putting your mac and cheese in the oven.

[lively percussive music]

So now it's time to make my sauce.

And if there's one special ingredient here that I use

that is possibly out of the norm,

it's this magic little powder here.

This is sodium citrate.

It's a type of salt that will bind the fat and the proteins

of the cheese together and make a super creamy sauce.

So it's an emulsifier.

An emulsifier is something that takes two things

that don't normally stick together

and it sticks them together.

In our case here, it is fat and protein.

This is the modern chef's secret weapon

for creamy mac and cheese or cheese sauces in general.

Sodium citrate is not only gonna add a little bit

of seasoning because it has salt in it or sodium,

the citrate part is derived from citric acid,

so it's gonna add a little tang as well.

If I don't have sodium citrate,

I will just add some American cheese.

That has sodium citrate in it,

and that's gonna carry some of the sodium citrate properties

to your finished sauce.

Let's start with medium heat, butter in the pan.

I'm gonna add my onions in,

and I'm gonna add a pinch of salt on those onions

just to dry out some of that moisture.

And I'm just gonna let these cook

until they are translucent, not brown.

I'm starting to see a little sizzle there.

I'm gonna add my garlic.

And I always add garlic second

just because onions take longer to cook

and we don't wanna burn the garlic.

So onions are starting to get there,

starting to smell really good, and like I said,

this adds a nice savory background to our dish.

So my onions are getting translucent,

and at this point, I'm gonna take my milk.

All the milk goes in.

So the milk here is just the base of our sauce.

I usually do more sauce than I need.

This sauce holds really well in the fridge.

Plus, when I add it to the pasta,

I like to have extra sauce.

My milk is in there

and then I'm gonna take my sodium citrate.

I'm gonna let that dissolve.

I'm gonna hit this with a little black pepper right now

and I'm gonna just bring it to a light simmer.

I want my sodium citrate to dissolve

and I want my milk to get hot.

If our milk isn't hot, our cheese is not gonna melt.

My milk is hot now, and what I'm gonna start to do

is whisk some of my cheese in.

So common mistake people will make at this point

is they'll add all the cheese at once,

and what that's gonna do is it's going to cool our milk down

and the cheese is not gonna melt.

So just sprinkle it in and whisk as you go. Just add slowly.

I add a little bit of my Parm.

[smooth upbeat music]

A little more cheddar.

So my sauce is thickened up with the cheese,

but as a final step, I'm going to add a stick blender in.

I'm gonna add my cream

and I'm gonna add the last of my butter.

And this is really gonna smooth it out.

[blender whirring]

All right. It's looking pretty good there.

It's smooth, it's creamy.

I don't mind if it's a little dense right now.

If I think it's too thick, I can always add a little milk.

But I like this density here

because the denser it is, the less liquid's in there

and the less liquid that's gonna go into my pasta

and it's gonna stay as a sauce.

Look, we have a nice flowy sauce, right?

I want you to listen. What do you hear?

Nothing, silence. That's what we want.

No plopping. Silence.

We don't want ploppiness in our sauce.

[lively percussive music]

Time to assemble this. I have my nice cheesy sauce.

I'm gonna lower it down. I don't want it to scorch.

And now it's time to add the pasta.

It's really simple at this point.

You notice I have a lot of sauce for the amount of pasta.

Like I said, I like double the amount of sauce.

I do think it makes it extra creamy and delicious.

So all I'm gonna do now is stir in my pasta

and make sure I get it hot.

Look at that.

Some of the sauce is gonna get soaked up

by the pasta as it heats.

So we could eat it just out of the pot, but I'm gonna put it

into a serving container just so that I can serve it

with my delicious, crispy topping.

So the elbows that we used,

the cheese is getting into all the cracks and crevices.

And then I have my prepared breadcrumbs from earlier.

We wanna get some crunchiness in every bite

without drying out our pasta.

And done. Easy peasy.

So my mac and cheese is ready to go.

I think it looks spectacular.

There's only really one more thing to do right now

is to taste, so I'm gonna take a little here.

Just look at it. It is not dry.

Onto my plate.

[lively upbeat music]

Mm. The sauce is super rich, really cheesy.

You can taste a little bit of the garlic and onions

in the sauce as well as the garlic and the topping.

It gives it just the right amount of crunch

with the maximum amount of saucy creaminess.

Mm, that there is the ultimate mac and cheese.

If your mac and cheese is stressing you out,

you're doing it the wrong way.

You don't have to be an expert

to bring it to the next level.

Mac and cheese is comfort food.

Use simple ingredients, use good technique,

and it's gonna come out beautiful every time.