**The Origins of Mac and Cheese**
It all began in 1802 when Thomas Jefferson, who would later become the President of the United States, was on the lookout for a new meal to add to his repertoire. He discovered a fantastic macaroni recipe and brought it back to America, importing some high-quality parmesan cheese along with it. This marked the beginning of an iconic American dish that has since become a staple in many households.
**The Perfect Mac and Cheese**
To make the perfect mac and cheese, one needs to pay attention to the details. First, you need to cook your pasta al dente, which means it should still have a bit of bite to it. Then, you dump all the grated cheese into the sauce and stir it until everything is well combined. The next step is to cool down the mixture slightly and add some salt and pepper to taste. This may seem like a straightforward process, but trust us, it's essential to get it right.
**The Short Rib Secret**
So, what sets our mac and cheese apart from others? It all comes down to the short rib. All we did was season the short ribs with some bacon fat and then braise them in water for about two and a half hours until they just fall apart. This tender and flavorful meat is the crowning glory of our dish, and you can use it as a substitute for other types of meat if you like.
**Forming the Mac and Cheese Balls**
Once we have our short ribs, it's time to form the mac and cheese balls. We take our cold mac and cheese and pack it down into a disc about 10 centimeters across. Then, we place some short rib in the middle of each disc and use cling film to seal them up. This process is similar to making sausage meatballs, but instead, you're using pasta and cheese.
**Dredging the Mac and Cheese Balls**
To give our mac and cheese balls a crunchy exterior, we need to dredge them in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs. We pass the flour through the panang, which is essentially a French flour mixture, and then dip it into some beaten eggs before coating it in breadcrumbs. To get that perfect double coating, we go back into the egg wash and coat the mac and cheese balls again.
**Frying the Mac and Cheese Balls**
Now that our mac and cheese balls are ready, it's time to fry them. We transfer them to a hot oil-filled fryer basket and cook them for about six or seven minutes until they're golden brown all over. This is where the magic happens, and you get that perfect crunchy exterior giving way to a creamy, cheesy interior.
**The Final Product**
And there you have it – our mac and cheese balls with short ribs! They may look like little soccer balls at first glance, but trust us, they're worth trying. The combination of tender short rib, crispy breadcrumb coating, and creamy mac and cheese is truly unbeatable. So go ahead, give them a try, and let us know what you think in the comments below.
**Variations and Ideas**
We want to hear from you! What variations or ideas do you have for our mac and cheese balls? Perhaps you'd like to use different types of pasta, sauces, or fillings. Whatever it is, we're all ears. Let's work together to create the ultimate mac and cheese experience.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday we are fusing together three great flavors of america these are our deep fried short rib beef mac and cheese balls and we're going to show you exactly how to make them our deep fried mac and cheese balls have got short rib in the middle they're going to be amazing to start with we need to cook off some macaroni pasta okay so elbow pasta very italian we've got rapidly boiling salted water in here add that to the pan and cook it for about six or seven minutes it's a small pasta and we don't overcook it so we're going to get in the sauce and again in the fryer and then we can move on to the cheese sauce every good cheese sauce needs bacon okay it's there for flavor and it gives little specks of bacon throughout the mix i think you've been in america too this is our take on a classic american dish so you're adding bacon why not okay i could deal with that so start off with a few knobs of butter bacon into the pan to that we add flour if you can stir it in you'll get a paste yep turn that down a little bit as soon as the flower's equally combined add in the milk bit at a time when it's no longer lumpy and it's boiling add a bit more and what we want is quite a thick cheese sauce because later i'm going to cool it down and need to be thick enough for us to mold around our short rib okay i'm really liking the sound of this one so that's our white sauce with bacon next up the cheese i guess kind of crucial in a mac and cheese we've got strong flavor cheese a cheddar and some parmesan rice you're grating that we're going to talk about mac and cheese how american is mac and cheese actually very american explain i i shall it was 1802 and thomas jefferson who was yet to become president of the united states of america was looking for a meal he found a fantastic macaroni recipe and he brought that back to america importing it along with some parmesan that's very good how do you read that you know you just pick these things up um on the world wide web over the years now check our pasta perfect al dente a little bit of a bite dump all of our cheese into that sauce stir it we can even turn the heat off now cool a little bit of salt and pepper the wrong end of the pepper grinder ben come on keep up and then stir the whole thing together now mac and cheese you can eat straight away just as it is or what we're going to do put it on a tray put it into the fridge to chill it down and then we can come back to cold mac and cheese and form it around our short rib okay so all i've done is taken them seasoned them fried them off with a bit of bacon fat and then braised them in water so it's literally it's bacon fat beef water salt and pepper and you cook it about two and a half hours until it just falls apart now try some of that oh wow that's good isn't it now this short rib is amazing but you don't have to do this you could do it with brisket you could just buy some ready-made pastrami like a smoked cured beef and use that chop it up anything you want works it's just filling for our mac and cheese yes so one sheet of cling film okay grab our cold mac and cheese yup some we prepared earlier perfect what we need to do now it's really kind of sticky and stiff pack it down into a disc about 10 centimeters across put some of our short rib into the middle and then because of the cling film should all close in on each other the same process you might use to get sausage meat around an egg in a scotch egg yup or something like that this is our version of typical american food and flavors but if you think we're wrong please let us know in the comment box below yes if you've made macaroni cheese balls before what have you put in the middle have you put anything in the middle what else could you put in the middle we are fully open to ideas so we need to make maybe three or four of these all exactly the same and then we begin to pane them panang doesn't sound very american it's french so flour egg and breadcrumb the same thing you do to a goujon or a fish finger we can do exactly the same thing here cool so flour pass it through there yep some egg and then breadcrumbs and to get the double christmas we go back into egg and breadcrumb once more so it's a double dip let me remove this one from the egg to allow you to do that that's one squelchy big big big also looks like a softball or a baseball which americans might know as well now as you can see these are absolutely huge one of these is a porsche on its own with a bit of salad fantastic main course now transfer these to our fryer basket three is going to be more than enough and then lower it down and they need a good sort of six or seven minutes to cook all the way through and every so often just roll them so they get golden all the way over beautiful look at that oh crispy golden huge mac and cheese balls wow they've just come out of hot oil then they're going to be hot best to use tongs at home there we go three amazing mac and cheese balls with short ribs now that's our version but that's not to say it's the only version we want to hear yours perhaps you can make it vegetarian use different pasta a sauce or a different filling let us know by commenting below sorted that is really good because you don't usually get crunchy mac and cheese you can put a topping on it with breadcrumbs but it's not the same that is fantastic that's the tenderest beef nothing i've ever had and the bacon just tops it off that is so good youtoday we are fusing together three great flavors of america these are our deep fried short rib beef mac and cheese balls and we're going to show you exactly how to make them our deep fried mac and cheese balls have got short rib in the middle they're going to be amazing to start with we need to cook off some macaroni pasta okay so elbow pasta very italian we've got rapidly boiling salted water in here add that to the pan and cook it for about six or seven minutes it's a small pasta and we don't overcook it so we're going to get in the sauce and again in the fryer and then we can move on to the cheese sauce every good cheese sauce needs bacon okay it's there for flavor and it gives little specks of bacon throughout the mix i think you've been in america too this is our take on a classic american dish so you're adding bacon why not okay i could deal with that so start off with a few knobs of butter bacon into the pan to that we add flour if you can stir it in you'll get a paste yep turn that down a little bit as soon as the flower's equally combined add in the milk bit at a time when it's no longer lumpy and it's boiling add a bit more and what we want is quite a thick cheese sauce because later i'm going to cool it down and need to be thick enough for us to mold around our short rib okay i'm really liking the sound of this one so that's our white sauce with bacon next up the cheese i guess kind of crucial in a mac and cheese we've got strong flavor cheese a cheddar and some parmesan rice you're grating that we're going to talk about mac and cheese how american is mac and cheese actually very american explain i i shall it was 1802 and thomas jefferson who was yet to become president of the united states of america was looking for a meal he found a fantastic macaroni recipe and he brought that back to america importing it along with some parmesan that's very good how do you read that you know you just pick these things up um on the world wide web over the years now check our pasta perfect al dente a little bit of a bite dump all of our cheese into that sauce stir it we can even turn the heat off now cool a little bit of salt and pepper the wrong end of the pepper grinder ben come on keep up and then stir the whole thing together now mac and cheese you can eat straight away just as it is or what we're going to do put it on a tray put it into the fridge to chill it down and then we can come back to cold mac and cheese and form it around our short rib okay so all i've done is taken them seasoned them fried them off with a bit of bacon fat and then braised them in water so it's literally it's bacon fat beef water salt and pepper and you cook it about two and a half hours until it just falls apart now try some of that oh wow that's good isn't it now this short rib is amazing but you don't have to do this you could do it with brisket you could just buy some ready-made pastrami like a smoked cured beef and use that chop it up anything you want works it's just filling for our mac and cheese yes so one sheet of cling film okay grab our cold mac and cheese yup some we prepared earlier perfect what we need to do now it's really kind of sticky and stiff pack it down into a disc about 10 centimeters across put some of our short rib into the middle and then because of the cling film should all close in on each other the same process you might use to get sausage meat around an egg in a scotch egg yup or something like that this is our version of typical american food and flavors but if you think we're wrong please let us know in the comment box below yes if you've made macaroni cheese balls before what have you put in the middle have you put anything in the middle what else could you put in the middle we are fully open to ideas so we need to make maybe three or four of these all exactly the same and then we begin to pane them panang doesn't sound very american it's french so flour egg and breadcrumb the same thing you do to a goujon or a fish finger we can do exactly the same thing here cool so flour pass it through there yep some egg and then breadcrumbs and to get the double christmas we go back into egg and breadcrumb once more so it's a double dip let me remove this one from the egg to allow you to do that that's one squelchy big big big also looks like a softball or a baseball which americans might know as well now as you can see these are absolutely huge one of these is a porsche on its own with a bit of salad fantastic main course now transfer these to our fryer basket three is going to be more than enough and then lower it down and they need a good sort of six or seven minutes to cook all the way through and every so often just roll them so they get golden all the way over beautiful look at that oh crispy golden huge mac and cheese balls wow they've just come out of hot oil then they're going to be hot best to use tongs at home there we go three amazing mac and cheese balls with short ribs now that's our version but that's not to say it's the only version we want to hear yours perhaps you can make it vegetarian use different pasta a sauce or a different filling let us know by commenting below sorted that is really good because you don't usually get crunchy mac and cheese you can put a topping on it with breadcrumbs but it's not the same that is fantastic that's the tenderest beef nothing i've ever had and the bacon just tops it off that is so good you\n"
