I need your macaroni and cheese recipes... stat!

Maximum Mac and Cheese

I don’t screw around with a white sauce. I mix a few cheeses, boil the macaroni, and then mix the macaroni with butter, the cheese, pepper, and milk. Top with bread crumbs and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Works every time. The secret’s in getting good cheese and just enough milk. The other proportions are up to you.

1. boil pasta
2. melt Velveeta
#. mix together.
4. ???
5. Dinner!
/adaptation of stupid internet meme

Actually, you do exactly as @Adirondackwannabe says, because that’s what I do. I’ve done it long enough that I can eyeball the proportions I need. YMMV.

Paula Deen
Diet food, it ain’t!

I like to mix cheddar, parm, and maybe a good farmers cheese.

There are recipes?

@noelleptc Oh! I should have said just follow the recipe and dump it into a greased, covered casserole dish and stick it in the oven 350 degrees for an hour or so. It doesn’t have to be in the slow cooker.

On the box it says: pour into boiling water for x minutes. Strain. Sprinkle powdered cheese stuff and stir.

promises promises.

Gotta have mine with little slices of hot dogs mixed in, peas on the side. Kinda hungry now.

Chef Terrance Brennan’s Gourmet Mac and Cheese

1½ cups elbow macaroni

7 ½ Tbs Butter, divided

¼ Cup plus 2 Tablespoons Flour

3 Cups milk

2 ¼ Cups gruyere, shredded

½ Cup mascarpone cheese

¾ Cup bread crumbs

¼ Cup Parmesan Reggiano, grated

salt and fresh ground pepper
1.Bring 2 quarts of salted water to a boil and add the elbow macaroni. Cook until it’s al dente, approximately 6 to 8 minutes.
2.While the macaroni is boiling, slowly melt 5½ Tbs of butter over medium high heat in a medium sauce pan.
3.Add the flour, stirring, cook together for a minute or so. Do not brown the mixture; you want a blonde roux. Add the milk, whisking to avoid lumps. Bring mixture to a boil and continue whisking. Lower heat and simmer for about five minutes until it thickens.
4.While the milk is simmering, combine 2 Tbs butter and the bread crumbs, and melt together in a separate pan.
5.Add the Parmesan cheese. This adds another layer of flavor so it’s not one-dimensional. Just cook until the butter is melted. Remove from heat.
6.When the milk is ready, add the mascarpone cheese. Then add gruyere cheese and whisk it in, and as soon as until it’s melted, remove from the heat. This will happen quickly because the gruyere cheese should be grated and at room temperature.
7.Season with salt and black pepper and whisk to combine. Add the macaroni to the cheese sauce, mix it well, and when it’s nicely incorporated, spoon it out into a cooking dish. 8.Sprinkle the bread crumbs on the top, using your hands to pat it down to make sure it’s nice and evenly dispersed all over the surface. The topping becomes very crunchy when it bakes. Cook for about 35–40 minutes in a 350 degree oven until golden brown and bubbly.

1lb of pasta cooked, drained, al dante
2–21/2lbs of American cheese shredded (I buy a block and shred it at home)
2 eggs (I use large or jumbo)
1 12oz can of Evaporated Milk
12oz of Milk (regular milk)
Black Pepper to taste
1 stick of melted butter
Panko Bread Crumbs

In a Bowl with wisk, mix Eggs, Evaporated Milk and regular milk and black pepper to taste together. Put in a baking pan the cooked drained pasta and shedded cheese making sure cheese is mixed through out pasta. Nex pour the mixure of eggs and milk over the pasta and cheese.
Then take the Butter and Panko Bread Crumbs and mix together and put over the top of the and bake 350 for approx. 1 hour, It will turn a nice golden brown when done.

Here’s one I just found from the Civil War era. Boil the macaroni in milk. (see pasta package for measures.) Add salt to taste. In a separate pan melt cheddar cheese and butter. Stir into cooked macaroni. Pour into baking dish. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top. Bake 40 minutes at 350 degrees. I was delicious and my spouse liked it because it was more solid than most mac and cheese. (I like the creamy kind too)

Will any of these help?
For myself, I use tortellini for the macaroni, a combo of muenster, sharp cheddar and bleu for the cheese, and Panko for the topping.

@JilltheTooth I was going to forward this question to you if I didn’t see you soon. Let the drool begin.

now I want some

where’s kardamom?

Make sure it is macaroni pasta, and I prefer it basic, without any bacon or what not.

Mac and Cheese
1 (24-oz) pkg. large elbow noodles
2 cups heavy cream
salt & pepper to taste
1 cups sour cream
8-oz cream cheese; softened & cubed
4 cups grateed cheese (sharp, mild or colby jack mix)
½ c. (1 stick) butter
1 tsp Nature Seasoning
½ c. whole milk; divided
¼ c. butter or margarine, melted
2 cups breadcrumbs

Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain and return to pot. While noodles are still hot stir in can milk, sour cream, cream cheese, salt & pepper, Nature’s Seasoning, grated cheeses & butter until melted.

Combine melted butter and breadcrumbs for topping.

In a 9×12” casserole dish dot bottom with 3–4 dots of butter. Add ¼ c. of the whole milk to the bottom of casserole.
Pour half the macaroni & cheese mixture into the caseerole. Stir to combine with milk. Add remaining macaroni & cheese to casserole. Dot with remaining butter and pour remaining milk on top. Top with buttered bread crumbs.

@BarnacleBill The cream cheese and sour cream sound like delicious ingredients but what is Nature Seasoning?

It’s a type of seasoned salt that morton makes. you can substitute any other favorite salt blend.

It works well with veggies, meats, etc.

GO TO THE FOODNETWORK.COM WEBSITE AND DOWNLOAD THE MACARONI AND CHEESE RECIPE BY THE chef called The BAREFOOT CONTESSA.

IT DOES NOT FAIL AND EVERYONE I MAKE IT FOR SAYS IT IS THE BEST EVER.

Yes. Barefoot Contessa is Ina Garten and all her recipes are excellent and use easily available grocery store ingredients.

As far as I’m concerned, she is one of the few FN chefs whose recipes are accessible and CONSISTENTLY good and easy to follow.

The other two are Tyler Florence (Tylers Ultimate) and Alton Brown (Good Eats) two Southern boys who really know how to cook.

They also have good Mac N Cheese recipes also. I can’t do links from iPhone, but all of their recipes are easy to find.

@noelleptc the one I gave you is a take off a custard and its very simple to make and can be made with most cheeses, I have done it with many different types. The classic is American Cheese though. Takes me no time to make and I always get alot of compliments on it.

what time do we eat?

On my way over

I make a killer Mac and Cheese that is not only tasty, it’s lowfat.

First get your water boiling and then cook half of a box of penne pasta like Barilla or any other that you like, according to package directions. These boxes usually contain one pound, so I only use half of the box so that it will fit into my round casserole dish like this one. It’s about 5 inches deep and 8 inches across.

In the meantime, grate 1–½ cups of cheese into a bowl. To make this delicious and low fat, I make half of the cheese be Trader Joe’s own brand of 75% less fat cheddar cheese (it hardly has a taste at all, but the texture is perfect) then half of the cheese will be the finest and sharpest cheddar cheese that you can find. Trader Joe’s has a bunch of really good ones like this New Zealand Sharp Cheddar

If your pasta is finished before you get to the step about making the roux (which is next) drain it, put it back in the pan and put a teeny tiny splash of olive oil into the pan and mix it around throuroughly just so the noodles won’t stick together. No need to rinse or cool it down.

Also before the roux making, slice up 1–½ cups of white button mushrooms and sautee them with about ½ cup of diced onions and one Tablespoon of olive oil until just starting to brown, then set the mushrooms aside. It’s fine if they cool off.

So then you will need a medium sized sauce pan in which you will make the roux. You will need one cup of non fat milk (or you can use low or full fat milk if you aren’t too picky about making the whole thing super low fat). You will want to warm the milk up in the microwave (you can just leave it in the glass measuring cup) Then you are going to take ½ cup of Smart Balance Buttery Spread or butter if you don’t care about the cholesterol content. Both work just fine. And you will take ½ cup of white flour (preferably unbleached) and then melt the “butter” over extremely low heat and then slowly, slowly, slowly add the flour a little at a time while you mix and mix and mix. Don’t stop mixing and make sure you do this over very low heat for about 8 minutes. The mixture will start to thicken and will cook off the raw flour taste. Then slowly add in the warm milk a little bit at a time, continuing to mix and mix and mix without stopping for another 5 to 8 minutes. Then you can take it off the heat (give it a little taste to make sure that there is no raw flour taste) Then pour the grated cheese into the roux and mix it up until it melts completely. Then add the sauteed mushrooms into the cheesy roux mix. And if you like, you can add one strip of cooked, crumbled real bacon or fake bacon like Morningstar Farms brand (I’m a vegetarian, so that’s why I use this)

Then dump the whole cheesy, mushroomy sauce over the noodles that are still in the big pan, in which you boiled the noodles. Mix thoroughly and then pour the whole thing into your casserole dish. Sprinkle the top with Panko Japanese style breadcrumbs (there are different brands).

Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. Enjoy.

The best dishes are winged. Recipes for things like this are usually just a roadmap.

Kraft. Now, for my slap, please??!?

Really, I’ve never had good, homemade Mac and Cheese. It’s not part of the culture here, and all the friends I have that grew up where it was also grew up not knowing how to cook (or cook well, in once case). But, I do enjoy Amy’s Organic Mac and Cheese.

@MyNewtBoobs I too enjoy Kraft mac and cheese occasionally (it’s very yummy), but until you’ve had some really good home made mac and cheese, you don’t know what you are missing. Great mac and cheese is one of the greatest pleasures on earth. It’s not that hard to fix, even though reading some of the recipes may sound daunting. It’s really basic stuff.

The better the quality of cheese you use, the better your dish will be. But mac and cheese with Velveeta and regular old American cheese is pretty darned good too. I also like Amy’s mac and cheese.

It’s kind of like the difference between eating a burger at McDonald’s and eating a really great burger that’s been grilled on a backyard barbecue. They’re both good, but one is possibly sublime, if it’s made really well, with high quality beef, marinades and grilled onions.

I urge you to try one of our home made recipes and then report back and let us know what you think.

@noelleptc What kind of cheese did you use? Did you make a roux? How did your guest enjoy it?

Now I’m hungry again