I’m not a huge fan of baking mac and cheese because it makes the pasta mushy on the inside and chewy on top. Also, the dairy solids and fat in the cheese tend to separate in the oven, leaving you with a greasy mess. For me, the only redeeming part about an oven baked mac and cheese is the crispy bread crumb topping. That’s why I set out to make a macaroni and cheese that still has the crispy topping but can be made in around the time it takes to prepare the kind the comes out of a blue cardboard box. To accomplish this, I decided to do two things. The first was to the simplify the cheese sauce. The second was to pan fry the bread crumbs in butter so you don’t need to bake the whole thing. I know it may sound odd, but the inspiration for this simple cheese sauce came from techniques used to make chocolate ganache and cheese fondue. Normally a cheese sauce is made by cooking flour in butter and creating a roux. This not only thickens the sauce it adds richness. Chocolate ganache is made by adding chocolate directly to hot cream. I figured if you can do it with chocolate, why not do it with cheese. Because melted cheese is already pretty thick, it doesn’t need a ton of help in that department, however it does have a tendency to clump when shredded and it also tends to separates when melted. This is where the fondue technique comes in. When making fondue, you toss the shredded cheese with starch. This keeps the cheese from clumping but it also helps keep it from separating when melted. The starch also provides just a bit of thickening power to keep the sauce draped around each elbow of macaroni. The best part of doing it this way is that it eliminates the need to make a roux, which not only speeds things up, it cuts out a few steps where novice cooks often make mistakes. I use a mixture of Cheddar and Gruyere for my mac and cheese because I like the flavor, but you could really use just about any kind of cheese that melts. I’ve also kept the seasonings to a minimum to really bring out the flavor of the cheese, but you can add things like sautéed onions and mushrooms or nutmeg to dress it up a bit. If you happen to end up with leftovers, try turning this into into these Fried Mac and Cheese Balls the next day.
📖 Recipe
