I don’t think there is anyone I know who doesn’t love mac & cheese. My husband & I are certainly no exception, and I think my sister would tell you that I popped out of the womb asking for some! During Lent, mac & cheese is our “go-to” meatless Friday dinner, and we’ve had fun coming up with various combinations over the years. So when The Chopping Block recently held a mac & cheese cook-off for employees, how could I resist making my favorite version? Well, as luck would have it, it turned out to be not only my favorite, but voted the favorite of the day!
Let me start by saying that my husband and I love “smoky stuff” – smoked meats, smoked fish, we even like smoked olives in our cocktails. That said, it really isn’t a big surprise then, that our favorite mac & cheese should feature smoked Gouda and smoked paprika. Of course there is also some Gruyere for melty goodness and a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano added for just a bit of tang. I remember when I was working on this recipe, I felt like it also needed a bit of sweetness to play off the smokiness, and I found a great solution in slow-caramelizing a couple of shallots. Is your mouth watering yet?
Mac & Cheese
- 1 lb. elbow macaroni, boiled to “al dente” in salted water & drained
- ½ cup Panko breadcrumbs, toasted
- 2 large shallots, sliced & caramelized (The shallots should be the size you see that makes you think, “Why would anyone want a shallot this big?”)
- 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter (plus more for the baking dish)
- 6 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons smoked paprika (you can add more or less, depending on your taste for smokiness – this feels “just right”!)
- 5 cups of milk (1 quart plus 1 cup), scalded
- 7 oz smoked Gouda, grated
- 6 oz Gruyere, grated
- 3 oz Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
- Salt & pepper, to taste
I didn’t include a photo of the macaroni… but really, what’s so interesting about a picture of boiled elbow macaroni anyway? Boil it in salted water and cook it to just “al dente” so it still has some firmness – it’s going to soften up more when it cooks with the cheese sauce. If the box it comes in tells you how many minutes to “al dente”, cook it for a minute less. Trust me. It works, and it keeps you from having mushy mac in your mac & cheese. Once you’ve drained it, just return it to the pot you cooked it in. As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, I have a very small kitchen and I like to keep the number of pots, pans & bowls I use to a minimum. This saves me one more bowl to clean up!
While you’re waiting for water to start boiling for the macaroni, get the shallots going. Caramelizing them nice and slow will take about 40 minutes or so. I know, I know it sounds sooooo long. But if you get them going at this point, by the time you need them, they’ll be pretty much done. Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter and about a tablespoon of neutral, unflavored oil (like grapeseed oil or canola oil) in a small saute pan and add your sliced shallots. You want them to get all melty and brown, so don’t add salt. Just let them go over low heat. Seriously, forget about them and go take care of the rest of your ingredients. Once you start to smell them, give them a little stir now and then. You’ll see them slowly brown. Do you see those gorgeous caramelized shallots in the photo above, right next to the smoked paprika? Yes, you want them that brown… and you simply cannot hurry that color!
While your macaroni is boiling and your shallots are caramelizing, toast up your breadcrumbs. I love using Panko instead of other breadcrumbs – it’s just so light & gives a nice little crunch without weighing down the dish. You can toast them in the oven on a sheet pan or on the stovetop. For me, what is out of sight is often out of mind, so I prefer the stovetop – I’ve suffered the consequences too many times, forgetting I had breadcrumbs or nuts “toasting” in the oven!
Finally, warm up your milk. You don’t want to boil it, but you do want to scald it. Just take it to the point when you see little bubbles forming around the edges. You can just keep it in the pan you warm it in. (I put it into the measuring cups just for the sake of the photo!)
By the way, all three cheeses can be tossed together in one bowl. I use my food processor to grate the cheeses, just adding one after the other. Once they’re all grated, put them in bowl and mix them up a bit – using your hands is best, you don’t want to smash the gratings together, just toss so that they’re blended.
Now go ahead and butter your favorite baking dish. This time, I wanted to make individual mac & cheeses. I already had four little oval cocottes from Le Creuset and one of my rewards from the cook-off was two round ones. I love mixing colors and shapes, so these turn out to be perfect for mac & cheese! Plus, they have lids and the mac & cheese needs to first bake covered.
They’re just so pretty! And cooking individual portions makes it easy to reheat leftover mac & cheese without it drying out. Just pop the whole thing in a warm oven (about 300 degrees) for about 20-30 minutes, depending on whether the mac & cheese starts at room temperature or comes straight from the fridge.
From here on out, everything moves pretty quickly, so having all of this prep done ahead of time really helps. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. And now you can get started on the sauce that will pull everything together. If you’re not familiar with preparing a roux (flour & butter) that will serve as the thickener for your milk and create your sauce, here’s a little video that will show you the steps. For some, the idea of a “roux” (which sounds fancy and grand, but it’s not) and making a sauce is just plain scary – I know too many people who won’t even consider making a sauce from scratch. If that’s you, please do watch this to see how simple it is!
Now go ahead and pour that sauce all over your cooked macaroni, folding it all in. Add in those blended cheeses & just keep folding until everything starts to melt together. Don’t forget to add in your beautifully caramelized shallots. You really can just watch it all just come together – a mac & cheese miracle! Finally, put the mixture into your baking dish – or in my case, my little cocottes.
Sprinkle on those toasted Panko breadcrumbs for a nice, crunchy topping. If you’re using a single baking dish, cover it with foil and pop it in the oven. I just covered the cocottes with their lids and put them on a sheet pan to keep them all together.
Bake the mac & cheese, covered, for 20 minutes. Then remove the foil (or lids), return the mac & cheese to the oven & bake for another 10 minutes or so. You will want to see the breadcrumbs getting even toastier, maybe a bit of cheese bubbling through. If you want a really crunchy topping, go ahead and run your mac & cheese under the broiler for a minute or so – but watch it carefully, it will go from toasted to burnt very quickly! However you decide to finish it off, let it sit for about 10 more minutes outside the oven before diving in. Oh, geez, more looooong waiting! Yes, but you’ll be grateful – the cheese will be less liquified, just melted through with some stretch to it when you finally do dig in.
My husband and I will be enjoying ours as a side to some good old-fashioned meat loaf and a green salad. Considering we got a couple of inches of snow here yesterday, comfort food topped our dinner choice tonight! Enjoy!
Speaking of comfort food – it comes in many forms, depending on country and culture.
