My dad never let me eat cheese
Which is of course why I eat it all the time now
Boxed mac & cheese is meh. It’s been years since I bought any, but when i did I’d only buy Velveeta or Kraft. Homemade mac & cheese can be fantastic.
What if you could only stomach the gristle if it were covered in cheese?
Did he ever cut it?
Annie’s > Kraft. Kraft tastes like melted plastic. But yes making your own always better than box, but not quite as convenient.
American Kraft Mac & Cheese, or Canadian KD?
Annie’s would probably be fine if you removed 60% of the pasta and saved it for later and made it with 40% of the pasta and 100% of the sauce.
Kraft starts out with a reasonable pasta-to-sauce ratio, on the other hand. Velveeta does too, but Velveeta is super chemically tasting.
I actually formulated an Instant Pot version that is only slightly more work than boxed.
It’s not nearly as good as my baked mac & cheese, but hits something of a sweet spot in terms of taste vs time & effort. It’s certainly better than boxed.
I need your recipe. My pinterest recipe went away and now I’m stuck with only my memory of it. Unfortunately that did not extend to proportions.
Ratios:
2 Oz liquid for every 1 Oz pasta, maybe just a smidge extra liquid. And the pasta can’t be too bulky. It’s got to be mostly covered with liquid.
So I usually do 4 cups of liquid for a pound of elbows. I tried to do 2 pounds once, but it didn’t work because the water didn’t get up to the top pasta. But a generous quart to a pound works well.
Pressure cook on high 4 minutes and quick release.
For 1 lb of pasta (uncooked weight), stir in:
1 12 Oz can & 1 5 Oz can evaporated milk
2 cups shredded cheese (16 Oz)
Salt & pepper to taste
Actual recipe:
I cook the pasta in beef broth (which I make from a concentrate) rather than water. And I use Barilla elbows because they hold up better & don’t stick to themselves like other pasta does.
I use 3/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup mozzarella, 1 cup cheddar
The combo of the beef broth & the Parmesan makes for a good flavor combo. And I mix it up depending on what cheese I have, what needs to be used up. But that’s my starting point anyway.
1 Like
Ina and Martha have terrific Mac+Cheese recipes. Both take an extraordinarily long time and are rather large dishes. Both are quite worth it on the rare occasion that either lots of people are over, or you just want to make one meal for the week ( we usually double them).
My recipe for baked mac & cheese is pretty similar to Martha Stewart’s, which is loosely based on the recipe in the Fannie Farmer cookbook. But there is no need to butter the dish(es) you serve it in, IMO. That’s just a waste of butter. I’ve tried it both ways and there is maybe 1% less sauce stuck to the sides of the dish if you butter it. I also use a little less butter in the sauce as I’m not trying to see how much fat I can have in my diet.
And good gravy you don’t use bread crumbs. That’s amateur hour. Kretschmer’s toasted wheat germ is where it’s at.
For cheese I use cheddar and that blend of Swiss & Gruyere from Trader Joe’s, although again, I’ll mix it up if I have other cheese I need to use up.
My mom uses half “farmer’s” cheese and half Monterrey Jack and hers is pretty good too. Well, as long as she doesn’t do anything silly like add ham to it, which she is known to do. I am a mac & cheese purist. No meat!!!
1 Like
Joe Scott on YT has a Ukraine video on their wheat production - people gunna starve!
Thank you! I’m going to try this next time my son in law has drill bc that’s when I tend to see my mac & cheese loving daughter.
(My other daughter has issues with lactose and hubby prefers boxed mac & cheese. 
)
1 Like
I believe it says on the bottle that Kirkland is bottled by Jim Beam which also makes Knob Creek. Would not be surprised if they are quite similar. They’re coming from the same distillery with the same moonshine recipe going into the barrels.
1 Like
Hubby prefers my Instant Pot mac & cheese to my baked mac & cheese. I prefer my baked. But they’re both good and we both like both kinds.
If I have fresh milk I need to use up then I bake it as that recipe uses fresh milk, but if we’re in a hurry and/or I don’t want to heat up the kitchen then I do Instant Pot.
Oh, and if I’m making for my half-Swiss cousins then I cook the noodles in the beef broth in the Instant Pot and I use 100% Swiss/Gruyere blend for the cheese, and otherwise follow the baked mac & cheese recipe. They like it that way.
1 Like
I have tried some fussy mac & cheese recipes but I have not liked any quite so well as my instant pot version. But oh my, gruyere…
I used to listen to The Splendid Table podcast (radio show?) by Lynn Rossetto Kasper. Someone wrote or called in and asked her how to make a good mac and cheese. The only part I remember is this: “First you start with a good Gruyere.”
I didn’t even know how to spell Gruyere at the time and I still don’t know what makes one “good” but what I get from my local Sprouts does in fact make a very nice mac & cheese.
If only I had people in the house who appreciated that….
1 Like
Maybe we should have a GoActuary mac & cheese bake off! I would love to try your Gruyere mac & cheese!!!
1 Like