 Today on The Spruce Eats, mac and cheese, cheesier than ever. Whether you've had a good day, bad day, or anywhere in between, mac and cheese never, ever disappoints. It's elementary. You want to know what makes mac and cheese, mac and cheese? Today, I'm going to let you know. This is the type of foundational cooking we are talking about at The Spruce Eats. Hey everybody, I'm Kisha Harris, an editor here at The Spruce Eats, and today we are going in on mac and cheese. We're going to start with the all-american cheddar noodles in the oven. Then we're going to do a burger mac and cheese with a jarred tomato sauce and beef. And finally, we're going to end with a stovetop mac and cheese with broccoli and cheddar. We're going to start with the all-american cheddar. And where does it all begin? It begins with the pasta. To this pot of water, I'm going to add salt. And when it starts to come up to a boil, I don't want you to do anything until you taste it. You must taste it. Now, it should taste like you go to the beach, you get in the ocean, you get a little salt water in your mouth, and you taste, you're like, oh, I can taste the salt. That's what it should taste like. The next part of mac and cheese. Stay with me. Cheese! Cheese! We need cheese. We need copious amounts of cheese. It's easy to buy the shredded cheese. But you know what? The thing that they have to do in order to make that cheese last on the shelf is put in some stabilizers so it doesn't clump. And while that's fine for us, for maybe something else, for this luscious mac and cheese where there's such simple ingredients and very few ingredients, you want to do the cheese grating yourself. I personally am not doing cheese grating because, you know, I use these muscles for other things. Oh, fine! Just in time. Yes. Look at those. So can you grate that cheese? The cheese of it? Yeah, you can grate all of it. Why not? Come on. I want to see what's coming. Yes. Here's the thing. You can use cheddar here. But this is when you want to get your cheese feels all up in it. Okay? We can do pepper jack. We could do moderate jack. We could do cheddar. Gruyere. Gouda. Because gouda is what? Gouda. Gouda. You're okay, right? Whatever. Bye, Lauren. Bye, Lauren's arms. So this process is going to cook for about five to six minutes. But I would encourage you to keep checking, keep tasting, and wait for it to be al dente. So we don't have much time. Let's pull this sauce together really quickly. All cheese the sauces start with. Bechamel, which is a roux that starts with flour and butter. So I have put two tablespoons of butter into this pan, and I'm going to wait for the bubbles to go down. You do not want to start building this roux while the butter is still releasing its liquid, okay? We're going to wait for that film to go down. And we're not trying to brown. We're just trying to melt that butter. Don't be directed by your food. Let the food be directed by you. So if you get to this moment and you're feeling a little harried and things are all over the place, don't be afraid to take the pot off of the flame. Put it to the side until you're ready to start tending to it. Now I'm ready. The bubbles have gone away, right? I'm going to take equal parts flour to fat. And when you slowly incorporate it, that wasn't slow enough, but you'll see it kind of comes together. And it smells so nutty. This is the very beginnings of what roux is. When you think about creole cooking and Cajun cooking, when they make roux, really the skill of a chef, of a Cajun chef is based on how well they can make a roux. A light roux, a dark roux, whatever. But this one, we just need this. Okay, great. Now what we're going to do is we have a half a cup of whole milk. I'm going to slowly add that in. You want to dump it at once. You don't want to change the temperature too quickly. And I'm going to turn down my heat a little bit. Now it looks a little clumpy, but you just keep going. I want to make sure I don't have any clumps, and I want to get it to the right consistency. Now it feels like if you've ever made pudding at home, this is kind of the stage where it's starting to get that consistency. It's called nape, which means that if you can put something in it, and you can draw your finger through the middle and it doesn't close back up, that's where we want. So great. Now I'm here. I'm going to take it off of the heat. I'm going to add in some paprika, and I'm also going to add in some black pepper, and I'm going to add in a pinch of salt. I'm going to get that all incorporated. I'm not going to put it back on the heat, because it doesn't need to be back on the heat. I should be putting in the cheese right away, but we have to make sure to check on this pasta, right? You have to always work on your timing. If you want success in the kitchen, you have to kind of think backwards about, hmm, perfect, exactly where you want it to be. I'm going to drain the pasta. We're going to take that cheese that Lauren grated. We'll save some of it for the top, and just the heat from that sauce is what's going to melt the cheese. So the reason why you put a little bit in at a time is because we don't want to bring the pan's temperature down, and we don't want to bring the contents temperature down too much. Now this is where it becomes mac and cheese. That looks so much better than when I used the packaged cheese. All right, we've got the luscious, luscious cheese sauce, and let me tell you the difference of grating your own cheese versus packaged, you can see it. And let's see. I'm sure you can taste it too. Yes, yes. Perfect amount of salt. We're going to add in the noodles, and we're going to lusciously and lovingly get everything coated. I have a buttered dish. Same butter that you use, unsalted butter. And, you know, be liberal with it. We want the little brown little edges if we could get those. See, the great thing about this mac and cheese is that this is really a mac and cheese for maybe four people or one after a bad day. But you could double it and put it into a bigger casserole. I'm using a small one right now. If it's a bad day, put more cheese on. Put more cheese, it's okay. And then to gild the lily even more, this is the gildedest lily you're ever going to eat. We have some cubed butter. We're just going to drop those on there. And then what I'm going to do, just this is for me because I love black pepper, I put a little bit of black pepper on there. Kiddos. This is going to go into the oven and wait till it comes out. Mac and cheese. It's elementary. We are moving on to burger, mac and cheese. Yes, you heard that correctly. Burger and mac and cheese together. Dream! So, let's begin. I've got water boiling, salted water, ready for our pasta. It's getting hot. I am going to take these two tablespoons of olive oil. Add it to the pot. So it starts with some onion. One rib of celery. And celery is an interesting ingredient. You don't really think about it. You think about it in a mirepoix. You think about it again in this trinity that is the foundation of a lot of creole cooking like gumbo and inti fave. But celery is like a secret salt. It's that secret kind of ingredient that you really don't really know that you need until you need it. And we also have a half of a medium green bell pepper. Cooking, cooking, yum, yum, delish, delish. So with the other one, we started with a traditional kind of bechamel. This one, you know, we want, if you think about a cheeseburger, you know, I like onion on it. Some people put the bell pepper in there and then you need a little ketchup. Ketchup is our tomato sauce. So, it's not a traditional mac and cheese, but this is going to give you all of what you need. All right. My water's coming to a boil. I'm going to add my pasta because I want it to be ready when I'm ready. I'm going to stir it up real quickly. Make sure that it's not sticking. Here we go. We've got the trinity in here. All of the notes. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm in my grandmother's kitchen. Okay. She's making hot side cheese. She's making sweet potato pies. All of the things. Okay. Salt, pepper. Next thing, I'm going to use some tomato paste. And this is going to help thicken. And I just want to cook it out a little bit. Most tomato paste live in a can or a tube. It has a little bit of a metallic taste to it. You want to cook that out. And now we're going to continue to season this sofrito. I'm going to add four cloves of garlic. Or five or six or seven or eight. I mean, no vampires in my house. We're going to put the beef in there and it's going to start to give off its fat and add its flavor and all of that stuff. And it's going to help to pull up the fond on the bottom. I don't necessarily cook the meat all the way through. I want the meat to start to break apart so that when it incorporates with the pasta that it's just a very even mouth feel. Like I don't have big pieces of beef in there. I want to have kind of a very nice saucy, saucy sauce. And again, we want to season. Season, season, season. And keep in mind when you're using jarred stuff, canned stuff that has its own salt level. So I don't need to season this too much. I just need to season it to actually bring the flavor out. You could use an arrabbiata. You could use a roasted garlic. You could even use an Alfredo sauce if you wanted to. I mean, why not? It's mac and cheese. It's your mac and cheese. Do your own thing. And listen, you might be asking, why don't you just make the pasta ahead and let it sit? No bueno that. You know, as soon as it comes out of the pot, it is ready for flavor. It's hot. It's ready to take in all that sauce and everything that you kind of labored over a little bit. It's ready to take in all those flavors. And I want to do that. I don't want it to be cold and say, no, son, I don't want you. I want it to say, oh, bathe me. Bring me together. Okay. So I'm going to put in 32 ounce jar of your favorite sauce right now. We are going to bring this up to a boil. And you see, look at the consistency. No big pieces of meat. We're going to let that simmer, maybe for about 10 minutes, five to 10 minutes. And in that time, I'm going to taste this pasta. Perfect. Perfect. The sauce is done. The pasta is done. We're ready to rock. Love that consistency. Love the smell of that. And remember, all ways taste. We're going to taste this for salt. Mmm. Oh. All right. In goes our pasta. Noodles are saying, thank you. They had a long hard boil. They jumped in the sauna. They jumped in the meat sauna. They said yes. They're asking for a glass of red wine right now. Sorry. We don't have it. I think that anything that's made in a casserole dish is a casserole. You know, macaroni is a category. And I think a casserole is a technique. So macaroni cooked in a casserole dish is a tech category. Okay. We're going to do half of it. I'm going to smooth it out a little bit. Okay. So we're going to take this, be as liberal when you want to make sure it's even, so that when we cut into this bad boy, you get cheese in the middle. You get cheese on top. Then, we take the rest of our burger mac. Yes! Yes! So this is almost like a little lasagna. Okay. Final two cups of cheese. And here it is, your burger mac and cheese, ready for the oven. And for our last trick here at The Spirits Eats, we have stovetop mac and cheese. So simple. One of the box mac and cheese is great. But guess what? You can do it yourself in one pot, in no time. And guess what? We've added frozen broccoli from your freezer. So you get all of that green mac and cheese feel together in one. It's going to be magical. Let's get started. The frozen broccoli. Listen, we just don't want to throw it into the situation. We actually want it to be incorporated easily. We don't want big hunks of broccoli. So what I suggest is that you defrost it and you roughly chop it. It doesn't have to be fine pieces. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it just needs to be chopped. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the colander where I'm going to strain the pasta and I'm going to put it into the bottom of the colander. Pasta is ready. Al dente. Here we go. Now what we're going to do is this hot water is going to go over that cold broccoli, just warming it up. And now we're going to get the sauce together. We're going to start our roux again. Two tablespoons of butter. All the liquid is coming out of the butter. Now we are ready for the equal parts of flour. That's two tablespoons. Take your time with the roux. And listen, if you mess up, start again. It's only two tablespoons of flour, two tablespoons of butter. Just get it right. And take your time. It is a one pot meal, but you don't have to rush through it, right? Okay. Look at this gorgeous roux. It's beautiful. It's gray color. I'm going to take the mustard powder. We love mustard. Or if you've had grain mustard, those mustard seeds, ground down is mustard powder. And it's almost like a pecan, bright, nosy heat. I think it's great. And I'm going to take some black pepper. And I'm just going to get it incorporated real quick. No biggie. Here is our roux. Here's our seasoned roux. We're adding two cups of whole milk. And we want to get it incorporated. We just don't want to pour it all in. Get in those corners, guys. And I love this recipe because when you come home from a long day of work as a food editor and you really don't feel like cooking, this will take care of you. This will hug you back. This will tell you it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. So look, you see the steam coming up off of this beautiful milk facial? You do not want to boil this. You don't want to burn the bottom of it. That milk will easily burn to the pan. So you just wanted to come up just before a simmer. Perfect. We're here. I'm going to turn the flame off. You could also remove it from the heat source if you need to. But now this is just hot enough for us to add the star, which is the cheese. Okay? I'm not going to put it all in there. I'm going back to the whisk again because I really want to start to whisk those two things together. And you can see it, like the color of the cheese. You can see the texture change a little bit. Now this, look how smooth and gorgeous that is. Yes. I'm going to put the rest of the cheese in there. So that first mac and cheese that we baked, the sauce was a little bit more firm. It was a little bit more tight. But this one is much more loose. And this is what we want. We want to pour this into a bowl and put our face into it. And now all we have to do is taste it. Mm-hmm. Proceed it in. Ooh. I'm going to add a little bit more salt and pepper. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Here comes our pasta and broccoli. Broccoli, this is when you call everybody. Come on, y'all. I'm not playing. It's hot. Y'all want to enjoy half a foot? Let's go. That's when you do that. Yes. Look, and you see what I'm saying? See how loose that is? We did it, guys. We have three amazing mac and cheeses. We have the classic baked mac and cheese. Yum. We have a burger mac and cheese. A yum. And finally, we have our stovetop mac and cheese with broccoli and cheddar. Davunila. All right, let's start at the beginning, the classic baked macaroni and cheese. First of all, you want to take in the smells, the coloring on top, the cheese, the pasta, the little crispy bits that are sticking out. That's what we are looking for. Now, depending on how much you like somebody is how big a slice they get, because they might not be coming back for seconds because there might not be seconds. That beautifully cooked pasta is just sitting there glistening with butter and cheese and goodness. Then, we have little crispy bits on top that just add to the moment. Just add to the moment. And then, you go in. Oh. Oh. Mm-hmm. Two steps. Let's get it. Are we done? Because I need to go and eat this. Oh, we have more. Okay, great. All right, hold on. One more. Now, let's move on to this burger mac and cheese. Yes, burger mac and cheese. See, it looks like a lasagna. It's giving you the lasagna feels. But once we dig in, whole other ball game. All right, I'm going for the corner. Oops. Wait a second. Like a little pool of noodles and meat and cheese and a little love, right? That trinity that's in there so you get all the smells. Like it's like meatloaf and in a casserole with baccaroni. Yum. Let's get into that. Oh. Mm. And write some people over on Sunday. Come over. I'm making a couple of things. Making mac and cheese. Word? Word. Come on over. Mm. Mm. Mm. But wait. There's more. Our stovetop poppy right here. Stovetop mac and cheese. Didn't come out of a box. Well, the pasta came out of a box. But you made this lovely little thing right here. Here we go. Right into a little bowl just as much or as little as you want. I like to use a spoon with this because it just says spoon. Don't say fork. It says smooth edges. Oh. Mm-hmm. Mm. I love this. And I love how that mustard powder comes out in there. And I would just take a little bit and more pepper. Little pepper. Mm. Well, not broccoli. It just says it's okay. I'll take care of it. Mm. Guys, we did it. Three macaroni and cheeses. Faked American mac and cheese. Burger mac and cheese. Stovetop mac and cheese. So these are some of my favorite mac and cheeses. What are some of yours? 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