4 Levels of Mac and Cheese: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

I'm ADA and I'm a level 1 chef. I'm Anthony and I'm a level 2 chef. Here we go. I'm Michael. I am a level 3 chef. I have been cooking for 27 years. I know the kitchen the last time I made the macaroni and

cheese

recipe was about two weeks ago. I would say I make this recipe once at least twice a month. I made this recipe a couple of days ago for my kids. This recipe was inspired. by my grandmother that I prepared at Red Rooster where she was executive chef. I'm going to start with my pasta. The first thing I'll do is pour a capful of olive oil to make sure the macaroni doesn't stick.

I'm not going to add olive oil. I'm italian. I grew up adding a little olive oil to the pot, but one time I tried not to and realized it was a complete waste of olive oil to do that. My rule is that it should taste like the ocean, we actually bring the water to a rapid boil at 212 degrees, we will add salt for every two gallons. I like to add 1/2 cup of salt, this is elbow macaroni, this is cavatappi, come on. Using Gemelli pasta is the easiest to cook and my grandma uses it all the time, so it's my favorite pasta for macaroni and

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because it has so many ridges and squiggles, all that surface is perfect for the cheese sauce to adhere to and that that's all.

This is just a cheese sauce delivery vehicle. Camela pasta allows the cheese sauce to wrap around the pasta and just gives a great texture to your macaroni and cheese. Okay, let's add the pasta once you add it, you want to get a quick stir now comes the moment of truth let's try one of them to see if they're ready that's perfect very rich and al dente and this will hold up in the process of baked when we go to do the nitrous now while d is still hot, I like to season it with pepper and salt, then add the butter before I bake the macaroni and cheese.

I like to toast some panko just to add a nice crunchy texture on top. My topping is actually a graham cracker and pepper streusel it has a little bit of bacon to give it a smoky quality we're going to add a little graham cracker we use a combination of white sugar and brown sugar the brown sugar has a little bit of normal and it works for a little more caramelization full salt for seasoning black pepper a little bit of vanilla and a little bit of melted butter mix until you have a nice crumb and then you're ready to put on top of the macaroni and cheese okay let's make the sauce first I'll start with about 1 /4 stick of butter to simmer in the pan just a little.

I'm going to add a cup of milk, we'll start with half and half, a little bit above medium. We heat up the technique to make the Bowie, we will add a little cold milk and then add the flour, the Bowie will not separate and will allow the macaroni and cheese to be a little creamier. We're going to add white pepper, a little bit of nutmeg, roasted garlic, mustard powder, the four flavors that we added in mint to give a sweet and spicy element to the macaroni and cheese, we turn off the buoy and then we're basically going to melt the cheese with the rest. heat I'm going to add my different cheeses cheddar cheese American cheese and monster cheese you don't have to add them in any particular order we're going to leave the doctor I'm going to add my center party now before we have the next cheese we want to make sure the first one is completely incorporated and go the marscapone to the last drop, so in the buoy we had to agree the air and the cheddar cheese, the hardest cheese is first to give it time to melt, I add a quarter cup. of flour rich in parmigiano-reggiano and finally the white cheddar cheese and then we will add our hard master cheese.

The Philadelphia cream cheese will prevent the water and fat from separating in the oven, so the more moisture it has in the baking process, the more stable your mapped cheese will be. Now we're going to add the Cuban mozzarella. I have one more ingredient for my sauce the egg the egg is what holds everything together it will look very fluid but we are going to depend on the starches in the pasta when we actually cook it and that will help everything firm up. The cheese doesn't need to be completely melted at this point, it will melt in the oven when you go to bake it all now, let's put it all together. so first I'm going to put the macaroni in the pan.

I'm just having room temperature butter. Here we are only going to paint the bottom and sides of the cast iron skillet. You don't need an integer. a lot here we're going to add our pasta, we're using a baking dish that's going to hold all the heat and keep the pasta warm even well after baking it well, any other. I love using a cast iron skillet for my macaroni and cheese. I like that country feel, you know, so I take my cheese and serve it right, we're just mixing the cheese sauce and the pasta to make sure that every little bit of the cavatappi is covered.

It makes my mouth water. I'm going to fold. In our cheese sauce, it's okay for the cheese sauce to be a little thick. Once you put it in the oven, it will melt and fill all the crevices in the pasta. Then I'll add my teeth, you know? Also, top everything with cheese spreading it out in an even layer and then we're going to top it with that toasted panko and now for the crumb topping so now we're going to put this in the oven at 350 for 10 to 15 minutes and now we're going to bake it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees to 325 degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Okay, this looks cheesy, it looks good, it looks perfect, the color is good, the texture is good, this is just perfect. There isn't some chives on top with crispy toasted panko on top. I can't wait to see what cheese is underneath. Okay, this looks great, creamy and crunchy. I can smell the bacon. Now, for the moment of truth, let's try it mmm no. I wonder my kids love this, they are good Mexicans, as you just saw, macaroni and cheese can be very simple or more complex, let's take a look and see what makes each of these recipes different, let's start with the cheese , which is the most important part.

Ada macaroni and cheese uses American cheddar cheese and American Munster cheese is high in moisture and fat, so it is very soft and melts very well. You can already see that he is starting to milk. The cheese is not aged or fermented for long. time and has some additives that you may not necessarily want in your macaroni and cheese. Anthony added parmigiano-reggiano, which isn't the best cheese for melting, but gives it a really rich and delicious cheese flavor. Everyone needs a little more parm. In his life he combined it with mascarpone, which is a cheese that has a very high moisture content, which is why it provides the melting capacity of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Michael added Philadelphia cream cheese to his sauce, which adds lots of creaminess. We're going to add our high master cheese, which is Philadelphia cream cheese. He combined it with mozzarella, which adds a springy, fluid quality to his sauce and really helps coat the pasta really well and then we have some mozzarella for that fiber. texture that everyone loves at Matthews Not all cheeses melt the same way Cheeses with a higher moisture content no more easily than Jesus with a lower moisture content Jesus with a high moisture content also melt at a temperature The lower we have the casings and the calcium begins to separate and flow very well with the available water that is in the semi-hard and high moisture cheese when you have a hard cheese that has been aged for a long time and the water is lost, the calcium and casein get stuck and formed you really don't want that in your macaroni and cheese to counteract the lumps, you can add other cheeses with high moisture content, as we saw with Michael when he added the Philadelphia cream cheese or with Anthony when he added the mascarpone cheese, So when choosing cheese for your macaroni and cheese it's important to balance the flavor of a hard cheese with the moisture of a soft cheese, you get a really nice meltability and delicious flavor.

Another quality that adds creaminess to macaroni and cheese is adding flour because it thickens your sauce into a sauce, you added the flour with all the other ingredients so it may have been distributed a little unevenly and didn't cover all of the pasta . Michael used to believe that for his sauce it is a combination of milk and flour where the milk covers the flour particles so they don't clump together, what you get is a very smooth creamy sauce on top of the variety of cheeses. Michael also added some very interesting spices to his dish to give a sweet and spicy element to the macaroni and cheese.

I also added powdered mustard which has some emulsifying properties that keeps the sauce nice and creamy and smooth and also adds a very nice layer of spice. 80 I used elbow macaroni which doesn't have much texture but the shape traps the sauce Anthony used very well. a cavatappi, so you have a lot of surface area with that pasta, the sauce really covers it very well because it has a lot of ridges and squiggles, all that surface area is perfect for the cheese sauce to adhere to, so with each bite you get a lot of pasta and lots of sauce Michael used Gemelli, which has a lot of surface area and some textures, 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? She could also top everything with cheese, she didn't add any structure or texture to the macaroni and cheese. Anthony added toasted panko to the top of his mac and cheese, which not only gave it a delicious crunch, but also added a sort of nice crunchy texture on top, but also added some visual appeal, it looks absolutely Perfect Michael took it to another level, adding crumbled graham crackers, black pepper and a little smoked bacon which gives a really nice robust flavor profile to that dish.

The chef used three different ones. plates and got three different results. Ada used a glass dish and, generally, she wants to lower the temperature about 25 degrees when she bakes anything in glass because once the glass is hot it retains heat very well, so she doesn't want to burn the dishes. macaroni. and cheese, it takes a lot of energy to heat cast iron, but once you heat it up, it's a nice, even heat. I like that country feel, you know, and you get some really delicious crispy, crunchy macaroni. Michael used a ceramic gratin dish to bake his macaroni. which also, like cast iron, requires a bit of energy to heat up, but once it does, it retains heat very well and here you should also give a nice crispy edge to your macaroni.

The Grattan dish is very traditional to use with macaroni and cheese, look, I mean, just no, okay mm-hmm, when making macaroni and cheese you will want to balance the texture of the cheese, pasta and other spices, but at the end of the day everyone will love macaroni and cheese. Nothing more needs to be said, but wow, we're back here.