Cook's Illustrated recommends sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack. You want the overall result to be mellow and flavorful, so pairing one sharp and one gentle cheese is a good way to go.

Many recipes call for four types of cheese, but that can be kind of hard on the budget. (High temperatures can cause proteins in the cheese, like casein, to separate from the whey.) Speaking of Cheese… Doing so ensures that the sauce doesn't 'break,' or become curdled and grainy. Once you have that sauce to the right consistency, make sure to remove it from the heat before you whisk the cheese into the sauce. Please enable JavaScript to watch this video. The video from BBC's Good Food shows you how it's done. (You can also add spices and let them temper over the heat as well.) Next, you whisk in milk (any kind works, although I prefer reduced or whole) until the whole mixture thickens. It's not so hard, either.Īll you do is cook a little flour in some butter until it is fragrant and ever so slightly darker than when you started out. Make Your Own Bechamelįor me, making a bechamel (which is a fancy way of saying a white sauce, which you can also use as a basis for most creamy pasta sauces or gravy) is key to making a truly astounding mac and cheese. If you're using the broiler just to add more color and flavor to the casserole, cook the noodles just past al dente. In my opinion, if your recipe calls for longer baking time (say ten minutes or more), go with conventional wisdom and cook the noodles only partway, perhaps a minute or two before they reach al dente. It's important to note that the Cook's Illustrated recipe only has you bake your mac and cheese for a few minutes under the broiler, to seal in flavor and get the top brown and crunchy. Boiled until just past al dente, however, the noodles retain structure to stand up to the heat of the sauce for a few minutes without turning mushy, and the cheese can fill every nook and cranny.' If cooked until very tender, the noodles won't absorb the sauce. Image via Sweet Hersey LivingĬook's Illustrated explains it thusly: 'If cooked less than al dente, the pasta releases starch into the sauce and makes it gritty. Al dente pasta should have the faintest speck of white in the center when you bite into it.

How to make mac n cheese better