**Making Macaroni and Cheese from Scratch**

To start making this classic comfort food dish, I want to make a batch of creamy white sauce, also known as béchamel sauce, which is the foundation of macaroni and cheese. First, I heat one quart of milk in a separate pan while in another pan, I melt 6 tablespoons of butter and add half a cup of flour. I cook these together for about 2 minutes, whisking constantly to prevent the butter from burning. This type of sauce is often used in lasagnas and other creamy dishes.

As I continue cooking, I slowly pour in the hot milk, whisking continuously to combine. The mixture thickens rapidly and forms a smooth, creamy sauce. Once off the heat, I add some flavorings: 1 tablespoon of salt, half a teaspoon of pepper, and half a teaspoon of nutmeg. Nutmeg is a classic addition to macaroni and cheese and brings out the flavors in the cheese.

**Choosing the Right Cheese**

Now that my white sauce is ready, it's time to choose the right cheeses for this dish. I use 12 oz of good Swiss Gruyère, which has a nutty flavor that pairs perfectly with the pasta. I remove the rind and grate the cheese using either a food processor or by hand with a grater. The grated cheese is then added to the white sauce, mixing well to combine.

For the second cheese, I use 8 oz of good cheddar, which provides a sharp, tangy flavor that complements the Gruyère. I cut the cheddar into half and grate it using either method mentioned earlier. Both cheeses are essential components of this dish, and their unique flavors will elevate the macaroni and cheese to new heights.

**Assembling the Dish**

With both cheeses grated and added to the white sauce, it's time to assemble the dish. I combine the cooked cavatapi (a type of pasta) with the cheesy white sauce, mixing well to coat each piece evenly. The pasta is cooked al dente, which means it still retains some firmness in the center.

**Finishing Touches**

To add a touch of elegance to this classic comfort food dish, I top the macaroni and cheese with sliced tomatoes and breadcrumbs. For the tomatoes, I use two medium-sized Israeli tomatoes, cutting them in half and removing the cores. The tomatoes are baked into the macaroni and cheese, infusing it with their natural sweetness.

For the breadcrumbs, I cut five slices of bread into small pieces and blend them into crumbs using a food processor with a steel blade. To bind the crumbs together, I melt 2 tablespoons of butter and mix it with the breadcrumb mixture. The breadcrumb topping adds a satisfying crunch to the dish, while also providing a nice textural contrast.

**Baking the Dish**

Finally, I transfer the macaroni and cheese mixture to a baking dish and bake it in a preheated oven at 375°F for 30 minutes. This will allow the top to brown and bubble, creating a crispy, golden-brown crust that complements the creamy pasta and cheesy sauce.

With its rich flavors and satisfying textures, this macaroni and cheese dish is sure to become a crowd-pleaser. The addition of Gruyère and cheddar cheeses elevates it beyond the ordinary, making it a truly special occasion-worthy dish.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI started off with two split chicken breasts okay I get that little tiny can of chipotle peppers and adobo I take out like a big handful of like four or five peppers and some of that Adobo sauce rub it all over the breast and let it sit on the countertop for 2 hours tops that's it then I put it into a pot and just cover it with water and I add in three cloves of garlic and poach it on low so it's nice and juicy and it's infused with that chipotle flavor so that's right here all completely shredded up and then I put the pasta in the same water I just add a little bit more water some salt and I cook the pasta the pine a in that just a minute under what the box or the package says so it's Al Dente cuz it's going to cook twice in the oven y all right so um to start here I'm going to show you how to make the custard for this macaroni and cheese it's very simple Marcella can if you don't mind chopping up the scallions uh white and green parts and then remember the garlic that I had in the hot just smash it right here in the bowl it's going to add some additional flavor to the custard and then to that I'm going to start building up what's going to kind of tighten up that's our flour tighten up our custard while it's in the oven two eggs go in and that's 2 tspoons of flour and then from that little can that you marinated the chicken in a little bit more of that Adobo sauce and if you have any left over it lasts forever in your fridge so it's fine to have some left over and like a little Zippy bag and let's press out the air and then I usually just break off little pieces so some pepper goes in a little pinch of salt okay whisk this up now to this I'm going to add in Mexican crma it's a little bit looser than sour cream but you can use sour cream as well that goes in add some nice tang and zip cuz there's going to be that like cre fresh yeah it's kind of like a crem fresh but cre fresh to me is a little bit tighter as well so a little bit of water can loosen it up you know no big deal and heavy cream goes in nice just a little bit just a little bit I mean it's it's fall you know what I mean we're kicking off the mac and cheese Club why not you know we never order I'm sorry you got to feed like 10 people with that right yeah totally I think a 13 by9 is a good 8 to 10 maybe 12 people all right you want to toss that in here ma'am now I'm going to also then toss in the pasta everything just kind of goes together mhm sunny I like that you don't have to heat this um sauce it's like a br it makes itself in the oven because the egg kind of really custards and holds it together um every once in a while when I'm in a hurry though I'll do the entire sauce on the stove top just leave the egg out and just kind of warm up the uh heavy cream and it tightens up for you and you can make it kind of like a stove top mac and cheese if you want all right so you just mix this up that's a bowl of love right there right there right you think we have enough cheese should we add more cheese I don't know I don't know we got to do the top oh there's more cheese yeah there is actually I get some of the uh restaurant grade tortilla chips they're always say restaurant style cuz they're a little bit lighter and crisper if you want to Crunch those down take a little anger out super fine yeah super fine just like oh there you go nice little toss on this and then mix with the cheese yep cheese goes and that's going to be our topping so just tortilla chips and some more shredded cheese look at that all right into the Bowl 13 by9 sure you don't need butter spray or you can just take like a tablespoon of but and wipe it down with a little bit of paper towel marel you ready with our topping yep that goes right over the top yeah oh my God it's like a nice crunch if you're going to do this uh the next day like you know put it together and then bake it leave the crunchy top off yeah it'll um yeah and then if you reheat it it's best to bake a reheat cuz the microwave is really not going to give you the crunch of the tortilla again so 375 into the oven for 30 minutes yay uh Sun you didn't cover it no uncovered for 30 minutes yeah at 375 it's going to give you a nice golden brown top everything's going to be nice and bubbly under the bottom I have a quart of heavy cream a little bit of cayenne pepper and a little bit of smok paprika so that's all going to go in a 12in skillet on the hot part of the grill so first things first we're going in with our cream you can see that pan is hot be careful when you're cooking with cream because it will start to boil up quick and it rises as it boils so unlike cooking it on your stove inside if you get a little on the grill not quite as messy and the clean Up's easier so that's a bonus but you could see it coming up here we go it's coming quick it's coming quick it's coming quick so when it starts to boil you just move it to the cooler side of the grill and it'll go right down and we're good when that happens on a stove it's a little scarier because the cream goes all over the stove but on the grill it just burns right off so then we've go in with our smoked paprika if you don't have smoked paprika could you use regular yeah if you don't have smoked paprika you could use sweet or you could use Hungarian um both of those will work fine do not panic not a big deal um obviously the smoke adds a smoky flavor so that helps and a good pinch of salt I'm going to say about two teaspoons and then we're just going to give this a little stir and as you stir it it will drop back down you want to reduce this by about half so I'm going to go to my cooler side of the grill and we're going to let that start to reduce and it's going to reduce by about halfway all right as that is reducing I'm going to start cutting up some of my ham I have about a pound of ham here and we're just going to cut this into nice large dices salty Smoky delicious in mac and cheese um if you wanted to make it vegetarian you could omit the ham completely or if you don't have ham could you use another type of meat absolutely if you had like rotisserie chicken or roasted chicken that would be delicious in here any vegetables would be great in here you could crisp bacon then do the cream and all that stuff also would be great so have fun with it customize it make it your own look what you have in your pantry or in your fridge maybe something that you're long on that you want to work into the mac and cheese then I'm going to put in a couple shakes of hot sauce this is an optional ingredient but I like hot sauce so we're going to go with a couple shakes of hot sauce and then I have cream cheese and I have grated guda any creamy cheese would work good here so um a goat cheese would work good a farmer style cheese would work good all that stuff works great in mac and cheese the orange cheese that is already creamy also works fantastic the classic as far as grated cheeses go you could go cheddar you could go Gudda you know any kind of semi soft cheese works great so I'm going to put in my cream cheese and we're going to give this a whisk and you're just going to start melting it in there bring this back kind of closer to me and a little bit over the Heat and we're just going to whisk this in and the great thing about a che cheese of this style um is because of its consistency it really stabilizes the sauce so you don't have to worry about the sauce breaking as much cuz the cream cheese is going to kind of bind it together right then as this starts to melt then we're going to go with some goua if you wanted to even use a smoked Gudda that would be delicious you could use American cheese that would be great but I like sharp cheddar and G are kind of my two favorite um for a Mac they just give it um a little bit of bitin good richness Touch of salt which all kind of works really well oh yeah you can see how thick it's getting now too between the reduction of the cream and the cream cheese you're getting that really beautiful creamy mac and cheese kind of situation going right there and that's what you want soon as that's broken down we drop in our ham and is this whole method the same indoors as well yes so if we were doing this indoors we would be over about a medium high heat on our stove top so medium medium high whichever would bring it up to a simmer real nice for us that's what we would be looking for all right and now I am going to start adding my pasta so we already have the pasta cooked so because this is going to cook a little bit longer you want to cook the pasta about 3 minutes less than the directions would tell you to cook the pasta cuz it's going to continue to cook in the sauce so we start mixing that in the sauce will this be thick enough so this is going to thicken really nicely because of the cream cheese and because we reduced the heavy cream if you did not have heavy cream 2 oz of flour and 2 oz of butter would thicken one qu of milk so if you did not have heavy cream you could go that method too the mac and cheese is creamy now the last thing before we put the lid down and remember when we put the lid down on the grill it essentially turns the grill into an oven but with you also get the benefit of a little bit of that Smoky flavor which I love so I'm going to cut up some scallion we're going to mix this into some panko breadcrumb I'm also going to put a little bit of pearo so that'll be the third cheese so we have that creamy cream cheese we have the goua um which gives us some nice rich n and a little bit of bite and then the last thing we're going to add is peino which is going to give us a little bit of salt so those three things go in there this goes on top of our Mac and then I just evenly coat it we take the mac and cheese off the direct heat we put it on the indirect heat we drop the lid down and now this is going to bake at like 350 400° let's check to see how the mac and cheese is doing cuz it should be oh yeah oh my gosh Liv come on look at it it's like a masterpiece you can see that crust is really started to form there everything is melted I mean it just looks spectacular so I'm going to let this continue to bake for a second as we get the crumble ready we're now going to pull oh the mac and cheese all the mac and cheese live let's get in there look at that wow you know and I kind of love too that the cream poured over you get a little bit of that goodness around there they they your guests know that you earned it so I boiled the crabs for about 10 minutes picked the meat and now I'm going to sauté it putting in about 2 tbsp of olive oil I'm going to add onions and garlic to this that and I'm going to sauté this for a few minutes until the onions get translucent your house is going to smell amazing so when the garlic and onion have wilted down and become translucent I'm going to add in the crab meat and you want some of the crab stick to the pan as well but this thing is so cool when you're eating the macaroni and cheese and you get that big lump of crab meat it's like a gift now that the crab is ready and I still got kind of some of that that burnt stuff in there that I wanted I'm going to transfer the crab back into the original bowl that I took it from and I'm going to use Cherry to deglaze the pan which is just fancy for saying take the good stuff from off the bottom so I'm going to use about a half a cup wo baby you're probably thinking like this is just some fancy mac and cheese you're Mak in here but it's worth it I've kind of combined two of my favorite things southern macaroni and cheese and Low Country Style seafood salad I'm going to start on my roof 2 tablespo of butter I'm going to let that melt I'm going to also add in flour that's the start of a r a rue has butter and flour or some type of fat and flour and I'm going to whisk in one tablespoon the r is basically the start of a bashel sauce which basically is a elevated cheese sauce okay and the reason I'm using a whisk is because we don't want lumps in our Ro you see that color it's everything from the pan and as you see we de glazed all of that brown stuff that normally you would think oh it's time to wash the pot don't you wash that pot de glaze it and use some liquor to De glaze it so that looks awesome now we're going to add in a pint of heavy cream we're going to start building our Rue and our cheese sauce that's good now I'm going to use about about 1 cup of regular whole milk okay I haven't added the cheese yet but just to smell of the cherry and the garlic and all the stuff that was in the pan that was left oh my goodness now I have 4 o of shredded grer parmesan and about 8 oz of shredded extra sharp yellow cheddar these cheeses just work really really well together you get a good funky sharp taste from the grer cheese and we're going to leave some sharp cheddar because we're going to top it with more cheddar and I'm want to slide in that parmesan just give it a whisp two tpoon of dry mustard dry mustard just gives us this really great bite it's one teaspoon of smoked paprika and the smoked paprika gives it a nice little smoky flavor I'm going to also add in salt and pepper not only are we getting a bite from the mustard we're getting a bite from the pepper and I'm going to biting to this soon this is just going to look awesome when we mix it in with the pasta and the crab meat and then top it with even more cheddar on top I'm adding in some freshly chopped parsley Thyme and Teragon and that's just going to balance out all the sharpness I'm going to let that cheese sauce simmer I've already boiled one pound of pasta it's basically just one box and I have drained it I did Reserve about a cup of pasta water I'm not going to use the entire cup but I did save a bit because of the starch is going to help as a binding agent to keep the macaroni and cheese together I mean it's still a casserole so you still have to have some type of structure I am going to add this glorious cheese sauce directly in the pot with the pasta oo yes let's give it a stir and did you forget about the crab meat I did we're going to add in the sauteed crab meat with the onions and garlic OMG if I could I would just eat it right out of the pot right here as a matter of fact I am going to eat it listen I have been starving I've been at church all day I need something cheese crab meat fresh herbs oh my goodness you can't go wrong want to add in 4 oz of cream cheese just to make it a little Premier woo if your macaroni and cheese doesn't sound like that when you mix it you done something wrong and remember we had 4 oz of cheddar we let sit to the side for a very good reason the cheese let give it a nice little crust on top there we go that looks delicious I'm going to pop it in the oven at 375 for about 10 to 15 minutes or until it gets nice and brown on top is there any more mac and cheese I'm making truffled mac and cheese this is a great dinner party dish because it's kind of very casual but it's very elegant people love it you can make it in advance throw it in the oven nothing to do when the guests arrive so I'm starting with mushrooms I've sliced crini and shitake mushrooms and I'm just sautéing them in butter and olive oil just until they're tender which they are it's perfect going to add a little bit of cream cherry the sweetness is really good with them There's Something About Cherry and mushrooms that are really good together you'll get infused into the mushrooms but it's also going to deglaze the pan so you get all the flavor into the truffled mac and cheese okay while that cooks I'm going to cook the pasta so I like to use kavat tapi which is like a squiggly pasta I'm going to pour it into a big pot of boiling salted water and that cooks for about six to eight minutes next the sauce so I'm starting with truffle butter it's a 3 oz pot I use white truffle butter because I really like the flavor okay that's going to melt and now I'm going to make the sauce I'll add half a cup of allpurpose flour whisk it constantly for 2 minutes pour in four cups of scalded whole milk and cook the sauce stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes so now I'm going to add lots of cheese so I've got four cups of Grier and three cups of grated extra sharp cheddar and then lots of seasonings just a sprinkling of nutmeg 2 tbsp of salt and lots of pepper just going to stir this in oh this smells good it looks good this is like classic comfort food all dressed up for a party okay I think the pasta is ready so I'm going to strain it I'm just going to put it right in the bowl well lot of pasta okay now I'm just going to put the sauce into the pasta and I want to do it while it's still hot you can really smell the nutmeg it's a little subtle but it really makes a difference and then stir all this in and then I'm going to add probably 2/3 of the mushrooms that I cooked I'll save some for the top can really smell the truffles how good is this going to be the aroma is going to be all the way through the house that's nicely next okay just put it right in the dish so nice you can really make this like early in the day or even the day before and just throw it in the oven before dinner and just because I can't leave well enough alone I've made herb breadcrumbs to put on top and it gives a nice really crunchy topping and lots of flavor let me tell you how I made them I put 1 and 1/2 cups of diced white bread with a crust removed into the food processor with two cloves of garlic chopped chopped 3 tbsp of chopped fresh parsley turned it on and in a few moments I had perfectly fine breadcrumbs all ready to sprinkle over the mac and cheese okay one more thing just so everybody knows they're mushrooms in this and truffles I'm just going to do some mushrooms right down the middle of the dish okay into the oven 375° for 40 minutes and this is going to be am amazing and that's truffled mac and cheese who knew mac and cheese could be so elegant but I can't have it sitting here with that at least a little taste just a little corner nobody will miss it just smells so good that's a little taste that's the best Mac and Cheese I've ever made two of my favorite spring recipes are mac and cheese and Pasta Prima Vera a longtime favorite of mine so I'm mashing up the two and making mac and cheese Prim a Vera how good does that sound I'm adding some vegetables to a pot containing butter and oil I just cut a bunch of asparagus into about 2 in pieces and then I'll add some broccoli fettes Prima Vera of course means spring so I'm using spring vegetables and I also like to add garlic and green onion I'll just scrape them in and for color I'm adding some red bell pepper not exactly a famous spring vegetable but sometimes I like to throw a little color in there just for fun I'm going to stir it around just a bit and I'll add some salt and pepper simple seasoning spring vegetables don't need much I'm going to stir and cook the veggies in the butter and oil for a few minutes okay these veggies look gorgeous they're still nice and crisp but they're starting to turn really bright green I'm going to add half a cup of white wine you can skip the wine and add broth if you prefer and I don't want to cook the vegetables too much so this is a pretty quick moving recipe so next comes two cups of whole milk spring is not the time to skimp and use fat fre milk in your recipes and then about a half a cup of heavy cream salt and pepper and this sauce is going to take a little little bit of time to get hot and start to Bubble Up so I'm going to grab another spring veggie out of the freezer frozen peas you can use fresh peas if you have them I rarely have fresh peas there's something about my soil that is not conducive with growing peas I'm just fine with the Frozen and I just pour them right in I'm cheating a little bit on the sauce and I'll show you how it's really easy first I'm going to put some cheeses into a bowl I've got a generous cup of white cheddar and a generous cup of Fontina Now by cheating I mean I'm going to use corn starch to help thicken the sauce rather than make a white sauce and take all that time two teaspoons of cornstarch and then I'll just use my fingers okay the cheese is totally coated and the sauce is now bubbling away which means it's hot enough to add the cheese so I'm going to add just a handful at a time and I'll stir it lightly and make sure it all gets Incorporated look at how thick this got already it looks beautiful needs a little more pepper I like to see those little flecks and before I stir in the pepper I'm going to go ahead and add the macaroni and for the macaroni I'm using little shells now drum roll please I'll turn the heat off under the sauce holy moly it looks so good the little shells are just capturing that sauce so to finish it off I like to sprinkle on green onions just all over okay there it is mac and cheese Prima Vera now I'm just going to get the macaroni on to boil I've got got a pound box now while the macaroni Cooks I'll get started on the cheese sauce just turn the heat on medium and then into the pot I'll pour a cup of heavy cream this is definitely a treat very very rich and decadent and then to the cream I'll add just a couple of tablespoons of butter and then while that starts to melt I'm going to throw a garlic clove in here and then as it melts the garlic will Infuse the butter and cream and just add to the deliciousness of the mac and cheese okay while the cream keeps heating up I'll get started on the cheese now one of the cheeses I love to put in this Italian mac and cheese is goat cheese and I'm just using a fork to crumble it into chunks and now for the grating cheeses I'm going to start with Fontina I love using Fontina for mac and cheese it's really really creamy really smooth I'm going to gr about a half a cup of this and then I still got parmesan and Romano to go okay got the Romano grated so all the cheese is ready and now I can pull this lusciousness together first thing I want to do is get the garlic clove out of the pot and then all the cheese goes in the Fontina and Parmesan the wonderful sharp Romano the incredibly Heavenly goat cheese okay now before I even stir it I'm going to drain the macaroni and I'll just put it right into the pot and it'll help melt the cheese even quicker there's a little bit of water on the macaroni so that'll help the sauce with the consistency I love this sauce a lot of times when I make mac and cheese I start with a white sauce and then add the cheese this is so much easier it's basically just cream and cheese macaroni stir it all together okay give it a little stir now it doesn't need too much salt because there is so much sharp cheese in here so I'll just add a little bit but plenty of black pepper now I'll just stir it around and let the hot macaroni do the job okay it is absolutely perfect now just to give it a little brightness I'll mince up some parsley I can act like it's a vegetable then I won't feel so guilty about all that cheese okay now I'll just stir the parsley in I mean this is a work of art when it comes to comfort food I'd say mac and cheese is pretty high on everybody's list so for dinner tomorrow night I thought I'd make a grownup mac and cheese with bacon and blue cheese how bad can that be so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to just cook the bacon and instead of doing in a pan with it spattering all over the place I like to do it on a baking rack in the oven okay into the oven 400 degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes until it's nice and crisp and browned okay next to cook the pasta and that's going to cook for about 10 or 11 minutes now I'm going to make a white sauce it's really the same white sauce you'd make for any gretan or P pie once you've mastered it it's really easy okay so I need one and 1/2 cups of milk and I'm going to heat it up and then in another pot 2 tbsp of butter turn on the heat 2 tbsp of flour so I'm just going to cook these together for about 2 minutes you don't want the butter to burn going to whisk them together so this cooked butter and flour is going to act as a thickener for the sauce now I'm going to add the hot milk to it and it's going to thicken it okay I'm just going to cook that over low heat until it just gets a little thicker it's looking good though okay in the meantime I'm going to get the cheeses ready so I'm using three different kinds of cheeses I'm going to use Grier first cuz it's got a nice nutty flavor I'm just going to grate it you can actually do this in the food processor too it's really fast but it's not a lot of cheese these so I'll just do it by hand okay I need about half a cup so that's fine and the next one is Cheddar good English cheddar nice and sharp okay I need about a third of a cup of cheddar that's perfect and the last cheese is rfor and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to crumble about 2 ounces into the sauce it's going to give it a really nice peacon Tangy flavor okay let's see how this is doing oh the white sauce is just perfect now it's thickened it's not incredibly thick but what it does is just coat the spoon so now off the heat I'm going to add all the cheeses so half a cup of Grier third of a cup of cheddar and about 2 O of rord you can really use any kind of blue cheese but rokford has a particularly wonderful flavor and a little bit of nutmeg it's a really classic spice that's used in gret Tans you sort of won't know what's there but it'll make everything else taste better give it a stir so the cheese is all melt in that's a much better way to do bacon so it's not splattering all over the place just chop it up just put it right in okay time to drain the pasta so I'm just going to put this right back into the sauce to stir it around this is so easy to make in a large quantity but since it's just Jeffrey and me I'm just making it for two and the best thing is I can make it today and bake it off tomorrow and then I can spend tomorrow with Jeffrey instead of cooking okay A little bit of a topping so it's sort of crunchy on the top so take just take two pieces of white bread cut off the crust and just chop them up put them in the bowl of a food processor with a steel blade and just a little bit of fresh basil couple of leaves let's put it right in the food processor with bread just pulse it until it's crumbs okay just just right on top of the mac and cheese so it's creamy on the bottom and crunchy on the top okay into the fridge I'm going to bake it tomorrow night for a cozy and comforting dinner for Jeffrey and me jeffree's not going to believe how fast I can make dinner so I've got mac and cheese with blue cheese and bacon a lemon curd tart mac and cheese is going to bake 400° for 35 to 40 minutes it's going to be bubbly and hot and crunchy on the top it's going to be really good how did you whip up this unbelievable dish when we were together all afternoon I have a secret and I'm not tell are you not going to tell me your secrets after all these years of marriage you're going to hold the secret from me now while those work let's talk about this uh Mac Mac Mac Mac Mac Daddy and cheese I don't know if it was necessarily the mac and cheese are my wrapping that you all enjoyed uh some shallots go down and a little bit of garlic now this is one of my favorite ways to to handle garlic and to handle shallots is to kind of slow roast them when you slow roast them you kind of bring out that sweetness that you really love about it people say oh I don't like garlic it's so bitter it's so because you probably had it the wrong way come over here to Daddy Dr garlic and I'll help you out okay all right so we get those together in a little bit of a tent hit it with a little olive oil actually I like to throw a little salt and a little pepper in there too kind of sealed up not super super tight check it out and down we go on a pan kind of nice little Easter basky thing okay in uh about 325 20 minutes or so now while that's going and getting nice and uh caramelized let me get some bacon and some heavy cream and this is going to be kind of the beginning and start is it the cream you all big cream fans I like that I I didn't you didn't strike me as cream fans but I okay always check it too I'll tell you a great story one time I'm making fetuccini cajun chicken alfredo um or actually tequila turkey fetuccini and uh we got the you know CU I always get those mixed up and we asked my buddy's wife to stop it's not his wife anymore actually but we asked her to stop and get the cream for us the heavy cream and it was uh it was actually the sweetened heavy cream so make an alfredo sauce with that and my buddy that's watching this right now is dying that I said that let's just keep it between us and the other 400 million people watching this okay a little time going into this forget it I'm not taking it off the stem I don't have any time for that but hey okay so let's check these out these you've got a nice little crunch going to them this cream is going to reduce down by about a third if I turned the heat up okay now I'm going low and slow on the bacon cuz I really want to Bender down the fat and get some nice crispy bacon cuz I'm going to pile that on top of this Mac Mac Mac Mac Mac Mac Daddy and cheese that's all I can sing okay so here's the deal the tenders are working the cream's going down the Bacon's cooking I salt the water I add the pasta when you come back it's Mac Daddy mac and cheese okay shallots and garlic hot hot hot hot hot and don't tell me you don't do that at home okay now the Bacon's going to work in two different ways one it's going to be a nice crunchy topping and two it's going to work as the base of my uh my Rue that's going to work with my cream to tighten up to make my cheese sauce yes I know you're bacon cheese sauce yeah my middle name okay open those bad boys up get that garlic out this is a great way to do it I'll tell you if you take some garlic like this this whole thing I did with the shallot and go ahead and make a spread out of it and put it on top of some bread and hit a little fresh Roma tomatoes on top of that you will love it who took my knife turkey that one's turkey man took it it's getting close to your day isn't it okay give these a quick little chop up Talk Amongst yourselves your favorite turkey recipe these go in now so I've got some hot oil I got the shallots and garlic they're doing their time let's get over with a little bit of flour why do you keep putting these over here what's your I don't know what your I mean the whole time okay A little bit of flour goes down make some R try not to ruin no I'm sorry I'm not even going to say it I let it go come on halfway through I let it go okay now here we go we get this down now we could put a little color on this if we want and kind of darken it up if we were doing a gumbo or something but right now I'm making it kind of blonde now I'm going to hit him with some cream now the cream has been doing some time that I can do okay me scoop that thme out of there get that out of the way okay now what's happened here is it's reduced by about a third now adding the warm cream in right now is kind of the kicker if you put in the cold cream on top of the flour that's when you well you don't know why you get mystery dumplings in your gravy okay so just a little at a time right in on top of that and this works as the bridge to adding in our cheese so people make mac and cheese and they say well as soon as I heat my cheese up in the microwave soon as I heat up in the microw I don't against microwaves but as as soon as you heat up the microwave it all kind of tightens up so much you get that big Clump at the bottom of the fondu pots because uh you push the cheese too fast and it kind of tightens up and forms into a ball so there we go done with this guy you know the movie done with this guy all right now we get a little Pepper Jack Jack cheese works great at members of the pepperjack Society over here so we get the cheese in get a little cheddar in again I'm going to save just a ah forget it everybody like we're watching our diet today okay stir this up into here just kind of get it coated with that let me get a little salt and pepper down on it there we go there we go okay now reach over hot hot yeah let that drain out a second try not to drop it now I like to use pen in mine I'm not a big you know I like to use the elbow macaroni when I'm making mac salad but this right here this has got some real nice texture to it so the pen is my way to go riate you know with the edges on it so it holds some sauce okay so we mix that around now and I've got every utensil I own out let's see here clear a landing spot somebody down into the dish now this is already cooked oh I know I'm crying inside good call Little panco on top there we go we're going to hit a little bit of parsley on top of that for some great color what do you think with that bacon you think I should do time with that absolutely little bit of bacon there we are and I got some olive oil here now what's going to happen I'm going to pop this in the oven about 350 for about 20 minutes and let that brown up nice so I have a box of elbow pasta you can't go wrong with elbow pasta I'm going to boil this for 7 minutes until it's Al Dente it's going to cook in the oven so if you overcook your pasta on top of the stove you're going to have some really mushy macaroni and cheese and you don't want that all right so I'm going to let this boil and I got some cheese to shred all right so I have sharp cheddar and extra sharp cheddar instead of using pre-shredded cheese I just like to shred my own old school is the way to go this shredded cheese will be the base of my cheese sauce right let me pause my pasta is ready all right so I rinsed it with some cold water to stop the cooking process and just setting it back there got to finish up with this cheese so what I do is just eyeball it all right and I'm using the extra sharp cheddar to cut into small cubes I'll add the cubes right before it goes in the oven got to make a cheese sauce I'm going to head over to my stove I am making a cheese sauce the fancy term for it would be a bashal which is a r it's basically going to thicken up my cheese sauce so I have a half a stick of unsalted butter I'm going to add to this a few pinches of flour my grandmother never measured this she just put it in there so now I'm going to add two cups of hold milk a/ half a cup of heavy cream bring this to a rolling boil it should slightly thicken up as the heat rises going to add my sharp cheddar cheese now I reserved a little bit cuz I like to top it right right before I put it in the oven mhm this is the consistency I want almost like a nacho cheese consistency okay my grandmother does not use cream cheese but I like using cream cheese because cream cheese just adds a slight Tain going to add a pinch of salt pepper and garlic just added my garlic powder going to add some freshly cracked black pepper and a pinch of salt you don't want to overs salt your macaroni and cheese all right I'm going to take it over here going to put my elbow pasta in my pot I'm going to do all the mixing in this pot grab my spoon back here you hear that you hear that you know you got some good macaroni and cheese woo look at this y'all all right so last but not least I'm going to add in two eggs I'm going to whisk it in there with my sour cream my grandmother doesn't put sour cream I find that sour cream just elevates that tanginess from the extra sharp cheddar so I like using that sour cream in there and this is what makes southern macaroni and cheese different from other macaroni and cheeses it's the egg it's what's going to hold the macaroni and cheese together because essentially macaroni and cheese is a casserole fold in the egg I have a 9 by3 casserole dish that I've put some melted butter in there just going to pour that directly to my casserole dish so now is the time to add the cube extra sharp cheddar last but not least the reserved sharp cheddar all right so I have my oven preheated to 350 I'm going to bake this uncovered until it gets slight golden brown on top and all the cheese has melted once that happens I'm going to get some foil and Loosely cover it with foil and bake it for an additional 15 minutes to cook the center I'm pulling out my macaroni and cheese ooo I tell you it smells delicious you want to see it look look at that it looks like my grandma's it actually looks a little better it looks good grandma you didn't hear that yours is still good delicious this smells amazing all right y'all ready to dig in the mac and cheese is amazing thank so creamy and cheesy Wow first thing I'm going to make is this mac and cheese which is traditional mac and cheese with the volume turned up so to make real mac and cheese as opposed to the stuff in the Box first thing I want to do is make a bash M sauce which is really a fancy word for white sauce so I'm going to heat one quart of milk and then in another another pan I'm going to melt 6 tablespoons of butter and add half a cup of flour and cook them together for about 2 minutes while I'm whisking it you don't want the butter to burn this is the kind of sauce you use in a gretan which sounds fancy in French but it's perfect for mac and cheese okay now I just want to slowly add the hot milk and you'll see the whole thing becomes a really nice thick white sauce add it whisking actually I think you can just who that's hot how about forget slowly just dump it all in okay there that's fast and now off the heat just going to add some flavorings tablespoon of salt seems like a lot but remember we're putting a lot of pasta in this half a teaspoon of pepper and half teaspoon of nutmeg which is sort of a classic gretan seasoning I thought would be really good with mac and cheese just whisk it together I actually think nutmeg brings out the flavor in the cheese which brings me into the next thing cheese lots of good cheese so the first thing I'm going to do is put in 12 oz of good Swiss Grier it's a really nutty cheese and it's wonderful in mac and cheese and just going to take off the rind and then I'll show you a really F I mean you can do this by hand with a grater if you want to but if you have a food processor it's really fast so you take the grading disc just like this and then there's a post that goes on it that goes in the food processor and then the top goes on so a little bit of a process but when you see how fast it is you'll know why now isn't that amazing one more piece okay little piece left over for the cook the second cheese I use is cheddar and I'm going to use 8 oz of good cheddar so I'm just going to cut this in half I love good cheddar it's just sharp and got lots of flavor and do the same thing last piece and that would have taken a lot of time if I done it by hand lots of cheese okay then I'm going to put the cheese into the sauce a lot of cheese in this sauce but that's why it tastes so so good okay just stir it in you don't want the heat on in this process cuz you want the cheese to melt when it's mix with the macaroni you don't want to burn the cheese burnt cheese but so I'm going to combine this now with macaroni which I cooked actually I use kavat tapi you can certainly use macaroni but cavat like that and I just thought it's a little more special for a party so put that in a bowl add the sauce it's about a pound of macaroni or kavat tapi okay mix that all together Bo this looks like enough for crowd in my experience everybody loves it so they eat a lot so I'm going to pour this into a dish and I'm going to do sliced tomatoes and breadcrumbs on the top use a nice little Crunch and delicious flavor with the so it really is macaroni and cheese but for a party okay into the dish how bad could that be so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take two probably two Tomatoes I'll see how they take the little cores out these are good Israeli tomatoes and they're on the vine and I cut them with a bread knife it really helps when this all bakes together the Tomatoes Get Baked into the mac and cheese it's just wonderful so just right on top really simple and one trick is you never want to put tomatoes in the refrigerator it really destroys the flavor perfect okay now breadcrumbs so maybe about five slices of bread just cut the crusts off cut these in pieces and then put them in the food processor with a steel blade and just wor it up just do it enough so they're little crumbs but not so it's all stuck together 2 tbspoon of butter okay just melt that pour in the breadcrumbs just mix them together the butter really helps the breadcrumbs Brown want a nice Brown top okay right on top of the tomatoes and the mac and cheese I'm going to bake it at 375 for 30 minutes and it's going to be bubbly and delicious and next I'm going to make short cakes real oldfashioned food and I think Greg's going to love it crazy well it's it's mac and cheese but better fancier mac and cheese well cuz it's made with really good cheddar it's made with really good crier and pretty\n"