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Macaroni and Cheese

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mac-cheeseLikely the first recipe I ever learned, Macaroni and Cheese is one of my favourite comfort foods. My parents insisted that from a fairly early age both my sister and I had to cook dinner some of the time. By high school, we contributed at least one meal a week each.. sometimes more since we were home much earlier than they were (and whoever made dinner didn’t have to do dishes. Big motivation.). However, for many years my parents had to “suffer” through meals of mac & cheese or tomato-soup-from-a-can and grilled cheese sandwiches.

I can still remember a time when I didn’t know how to make even this. I somehow read the recipe wrong and thought I had to cook just the butter and flour for 5 minutes (Don’t do this!! It ruins pots!!). Despite that, this is a really easy recipe to make – almost as easy as kraft dinner and tastes much better. This is a variation on Basic White Sauce.

Ingredients:

  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
  • 2 cups dry macaroni

Directions:

Fill a very large pot about ⅔ full with water. Bring to a boil. Add the macaroni, stir until boiling again, then turn down the heat to medium-high. If you leave the lid on, make sure it’s cracked open a bit so the pot doesn’t boil over. Cook for about 8 minutes, or more if it’s too chewy at that point. Drain the water, and set aside until the sauce is done.

While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a smaller saucepan. When it is fully melted, add the flour and quickly mix it in (I prefer to use a fork). A little at a time, add the milk while continuing to stir. As a general rule, add about half as much milk as there is already sauce in the pan, and make sure it is completely mixed before adding more. This will prevent lumps from forming. After all the milk has been added, continue heating and occasionally stirring until the sauce thickens. Once it starts to bubble at all, turn down the heat to minimum and add the cheese. Stir until the cheese has all melted. When the pasta is done, combine the sauce and macaroni in whichever pot can hold it all. Serve with raw or steamed veggies for a complete meal (corn, peas, carrots and brocolli are my favourites).

Serves 4.

 

Note: My sister recently taught me that for a single serving it works well enough to make this like you would kraft dinner. When the pasta is finished cooking, drain it and put it back in the same pot. Add each of the sauce ingredients, stirring well after each. The sauce turns out pretty much the same.

Variations: The easiest way to spice this up is to try different cheeses. In my opinion, you can’t go wrong with any of the hard cheeses (gruyere, emmental, parmesan, mozerella, etc). I also like to add nutmeg and/or white pepper for a little extra flavour. In the above picture, I used a rainbow mix of small pasta instead of just macaroni.

Related posts:

  1. Basic White Sauce

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