Mrs Jones' Baked Macaroni & Cheese

As my blog name hints, I am a huge mac and cheese lover and always have been.  I've probably tried more mac and cheese recipes than any other type!  At the same time, I'm pretty particular about my mac and cheese.  A recipe has to be just right to get two thumbs up from me.  Maybe 1 in 8 mac and cheese recipes I try are ones I deem tasty enough to make it to my blog.  Those include the magnificent Creamy Baked Mac and Cheese (my husband's favorite), Beer Mac and Cheese, and Stove Top Mac and Cheese.  I also made Ina Garten's Mac and Cheese for Ina Fridays and enjoyed it, but wouldn't have posted it on the blog if I hadn't made it specifically for that recipe group.

So what I'm getting at here is that I'm always trolling for more mac and cheese recipes, and when I do make one, it has to be freaking fantastic if it's going to join my little mac and cheese recipe family.  Ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to say there's a new cheesy, noodley member of the family!  The recipe is called Mrs Jones' Baked Macaroni and Cheese and I found it on a blog called Chick in the Kitchen.  I honestly have no recollection of how I came upon the recipe, I just know it was a couple of months ago.  We moved recently and with all the craziness of buying a house, packing, moving, and not being able to use the kitchen for several weeks, I had in the back of my mind the idea that I would make this mac and cheese recipe once I made my way back into the kitchen.  That happy day finally occurred recently, so of course this is one of the first things I made!  Oh and for those wondering, apparently Mrs Jones was the preschool teacher of the cousin of the blog author, Dara, some number of years ago, and the recipe has been in her family ever since. I altered it a smidgen (increased the Worcestershire sauce and added some salt), but my version is pretty true to the original.

Okay, on to what people may actually care about: a description of the recipe.  This is NOT a creamy, saucy mac and cheese.  There's actually no sauce to speak of.  Instead, the cheese, eggs, and milk make a rich, custard-like binder for the noodles.  It's not dry at all, either, and that's coming from someone who loves lots of sauce!  The mac and cheese also has awesome flavor from all of the sharp cheddar and the dried mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne pepper in the sauce.  All the flavors really work together perfectly.  Even my husband really liked this mac and cheese, and he's a guy who groans whenever I make any recipe other than Creamy Baked Mac and Cheese because he loves that one.  This recipe is definitely a keeper and one I'll still be making 50 years from now!  Thank you, Dara, Dara's aunt, and Mrs Jones!

Mrs Jones' Baked Macaroni & Cheese

1 lb regular or whole wheat small pasta shells (I used Barilla White Fiber)

2 Tbsp butter

1 lb shredded sharp cheddar cheese

2 eggs

12 oz can evaporated (NOT condensed) milk

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground mustard

1 pinch cayenne pepper

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 casserole dish.  Boil shells in salted water, drain, and return to pot.  Add butter and stir until it's melted, then let the pasta cool for a few minutes so it won't melt the cheese.  Stir it occasionally so it will cool faster.

While the shells cool, whisk the eggs in a small bowl until smooth.  Whisk in evaporated milk, salt, ground mustard, cayenne pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

When pasta has cooled a bit, stir in the grated cheese until it's evenly distributed.  Spoon pasta into the prepared baking dish and pack it down lightly with the back of a spoon.  Pour the egg mixture evenly over top.

Bake, uncovered, until the edges are bubbly and the top is golden, about 30 minutes.

Yield: 8-10 main dish servings or twice as many side servings.  Mac and cheese is ALWAYS a main dish at my house!

Ina Fridays: Mac & Cheese

*First of all, please forgive me if the spacing in this post and recent posts is crazy.  Blogger seems to be spazzing out and keeps changing my spacing in already published posts.  How I have it right now looks fine in Firefox and Internet Explorer on my computer, but I'm not sure how it looks on others*

I've joined a new cooking group!  This is a small group that prepares an Ina Garten recipe once a month.  There are guidelines for the type of recipe each month (such as main dish or appetizer), but other than that, we're free to pick whatever recipe we want.  I'm quite fond of Ina Garten's recipes and a couple of them I've been making for half my life (like Rosemary Roasted Carrots and Parker's Split Pea Soup), so am excited at the prospect of trying a new one of my choice each month.  The fact that I can choose which recipe to make is very nice since I can either choose something that fits my dietary requirements, or else pick something to make as a special treat. 

This month's assignment was a main dish recipe.  It only took about 3 minutes of digging through recipes on the Food Network website to find Ina Garten's recipe for macaroni and cheese.  What better first recipe to make for a mac and cheese devotee like myself?  I haven't cooked a pasta dish since September, so was pretty excited to make this! 

  
The recipe was quite easy to make, not any more complicated than other baked mac and cheeses.  I'd never used gruyere, tomatoes, or fresh bread crumbs in mac and cheese and was curious to try them out.  The only thing I changed about the recipe was to cut it in half so we wouldn't have tons of leftovers.  It ended up making a good amount anyway! 

The recipe came together very well and looked great, but I was a bit nervous when I tasted it before sticking it in the oven.  I have an extremely low tolerance for processed cheese/Velveeta, and to my surprise, the sauce had a processed cheese taste and texture.  It gave me the "Velveeta shudder", never good! 

Luckily, it was much better after the stint in the oven, and I ended up enjoying the mac and cheese pretty well.  I think my gruyere was to blame.  There were two varieties to pick from at the store, one was $10 a pound and the other $20.  I really didn't want to spend $10 on a little hunk of cheese, so picked the less expensive one, which was softer.  When I tasted it before grating it, it actually tasted like American cheese to me rather than gruyere!  Now I really want to make it again with the firmer, pricier gruyere in spite of the cost, because I'm sure it will taste better.

The verdict:  Cheese issues aside, this was a really nice mac and cheese, creamy with good flavor.  I didn't need to adjust the seasonings or amount of milk or cheese at all.  The sauce was pretty darn thick, but I wonder how it would be with the better gruyere.  I personally enjoyed the tomatoes on top and the fresh, buttered bread crumbs were really nice.  My husband picked off his tomatoes but thought the bread crumbs were fine, which is a first for him- he usually does not like bread crumbs on pasta.  He rated it 6 stars out of 10, but was raving over it as he ate and had two servings.  I think he'd actually give it a higher rating except that he's extremely devoted to my "signature" mac and cheese recipe (the one the blog was named after, and that he rates "9,000" stars) and was stubbornly opposed to me even making this one.

All in all, this is definitely a mac and cheese worth making if you want something a little different!  My one suggestion would be to buy good gruyere.

Ina Garten's Mac & Cheese

8 oz cavatappi or macaroni

4 T butter, divided

1/4 C flour

2 C milk

1/2 Tbsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg

8 oz gruyere (by weight), grated

4 oz cheddar (by weight), grated

1-2 small tomatoes, halved and sliced thinly

2-3 slices bread, crust removed and made into crumbs in the food processor

Preheat oven to 375 and grease a 2 quart baking dish.  Boil pasta in lightly salted water until tender, and drain.  Make the sauce while the pasta cooks.  Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a medium sauce pan over medium heat, then whisk in the flour until smooth.  Cook and whisk for another minute or so, then whisk in the milk in small additions of about 1/4 cup each, making sure sauce is completely smooth before you add more milk.  Cook sauce, whisking frequently, until thickened, then about a minute more.  Remove pan from heat (this is important so the cheese doesn't get gritty), and whisk in the salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then whisk in the cheese a handful at a time until smooth. 

Stir the sauce into the cooked pasta and spoon into the greased baking dish.  Top with the sliced tomatoes.  Melt remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and mix it with the bread crumbs, then sprinkle it evenly over the pasta and tomatoes.  Bake until the crumbs are golden and the sauce is bubbling around the edges, about 20 minutes.

Yield:  About 6 main dish servings (I halved the recipe which supposedly would make 3 servings, but those would be truly gigantic servings!)

Here's a list of the other bloggers that participate in Ina Fridays!

•   Alyce @ More Time at the Table
•   Ansh @  Spice Roots 
•   Barbara @ Moveable Feasts  
•   Bhavna @ Just a Girl From AAmchi Mumbai..
•   Chaya @  Bizzy Bakes
•   Linda,  @ Tumbleweed Contessa
•   Mary @ The Egg Farm
•   Minnie @ The Lady 8 Home
•   Mireya @ My Healthy Eating Habits
•   Patti @ Comfy Cuisine
•   Peggy@ Pantry Revisited
•   Rocky Mountain Woman @ Rocky Mountain Woman
•   Veronica @ My Catholic Kitchen

Chaya at Bizzy Bakes sadly lost her daughter recently.  Chaya, my heart goes out to you and your family!

Beer Mac and Cheese

Alright, time to play catch up with my backlog of recipes that need to be posted!  This one is for Beer Mac and Cheese.  One of our favorite restaurants has an amazing beer cheese soup on the menu, and we love the Welsh Rabbit I make for Easter every year, so my mac and cheese loving brain logically made the leap between those dishes and mac and cheese.  I pretty much winged the recipe and the sauce was based on the one from Welsh Rabbit.  Got the idea for the pretzel topping from this recipe on AllRecipes.

The resulting mac and cheese was divine.  The amount of beer flavor was perfect, and it was nice and cheesy.  And the pretzel topping?  Also great!  By only broiling individual servings with the pretzels, the mac and cheese stayed nice and saucy without getting gritty, and leftovers didn't suffer from mushy topping since.  I just reheated it in the microwave, stirred in a little milk to keep it creamy, then sprinkled the individual bowls with a bit more cheddar and the pretzel topping before tossing the bowls under the broiler with the topping.  What could be better?

Beer Mac and Cheese

12 oz macaroni
3 T butter
2 T flour
1 1/4 C milk
3/4 C wheat beer (I used Pyramid Hefeweizen)
2 t Worcestershire sauce
2 t dijon mustard
3/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t paprika
3 C grated sharp cheddar

Topping:
extra grated cheddar

1/2 C roughly crushed pretzels
2 T melted butter
1/4 C parmesan cheese
1/4 t dried parsley

 Boil macaroni in a large pot of lightly salted water.  Drain, return to the pot, cover the pot so the macaroni stays warm, and set it aside. While the macaroni cooks, make the sauce.  Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and add flour.  Whisk until golden, about 1 minute.  Add the milk, about 1/4 C at a time, whisking until smooth after each addition.  When all the milk has been added, pour in the beer all at once and whisk until smooth.  Whisk in the Worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and paprika.  Bring sauce to a simmer and cook about 2 minutes until thickened, whisking the whole time.  Remove sauce from heat (this is important!) and stir in the grated cheese until melted.  Add the sauce to the pot with the drained pasta and stir to combine.

Preheat the broiler and move the oven rack to the highest position.  To make the topping, just toss together everything but the extra grated cheddar in a small bowl.  Spoon macaroni and cheese into either individual broiler safe dishes or into 1 larger dish.  Sprinkle with a bit of cheddar, then the topping.  Place under broiler and broil until golden brown, being sure not to walk away or it could burn!  This should only take a couple of minutes.

Enjoy!  This is great with Cucumber Dill Salad.

Yield:  About 8 servings.

Amazing Stove Top Mac and Cheese

I love cooking, but don't really like watching cooking shows or the Food Network. It's just not very interesting to me. I do like the recipes of some TV chefs, like Giada de Laurentiis (I have 3 of her books and have made a lot of her recipes with great success), but I've never seen her on TV. The only TV chef I enjoy watching is Alton Brown. Paul and I watch old episodes of his show sometimes. This particular mac and cheese recipe is his. It's one of those recipes that I saw online, realized I had all the ingredients, and scurried off to the kitchen to make. The method is rather different from most other mac and cheese recipes, and the result is delicious. Flavorful, cheesy, and as smooth and creamy as any Velveeta based sauce. The down side is that it doesn't reheat particularly well, but it's so easy to make that it's okay! You could try using another kind of cheese instead of the cheddar (maybe pepper jack, swiss, or a bit of parmesan?) and I'm sure those would be great, too.

Amazing Stove Top Mac and Cheese

8 oz macaroni
2 eggs
1 t salt
a sprinkle of pepper
1/2 t hot sauce (I use Frank's Red Hot Sauce)
1/2 t prepared yellow mustard
3/4 C milk
1/4 C butter, cut into pieces
10 oz freshly grated medium or sharp cheddar cheese

Cook macaroni in a large pot of lightly salted water. While it cooks, whisk eggs until smooth, then whisk in salt, pepper, hot sauce, and mustard. Whisk in milk. When macaroni is cooked, drain and return to pot. Put pot on stove over low heat and add butter. Stir until melted. Stir in egg and milk mixture and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened: about 3 minutes. Remove pot from heat and stir in cheese.

Yield: 4 servings as a main dish, 6 as a side

Creamy Baked Macaroni and Cheese

It has occurred to me that I have not yet posted a SINGLE macaroni and cheese recipe on this blog, even though I named the blog after mac and cheese! I've even made macaroni and cheese since starting the blog, just haven't added the recipe for some bizarro reason.

As implied by the title, I love macaroni and cheese. Love it. My level of adoration is a little embarrassing, seeing as I'm almost 27 years old, but whatever. Macaroni and cheese is too perfect not to love. Over the years I have tried a multitude of recipes and have a couple of favorites. The one I'm posting here is a slight alteration of one from AllRecipes and is one of the best I've ever had. This is a baked mac and cheese. Usually baked macaroni and cheese is not very creamy, but this one most certainly is, thanks to the entire brick of cream cheese that you stir into the sauce. It's also very rich and cheesy (more than twice as much cheese as pasta will do that!), and just... good. Reheats great, too. If you love saucy, cheesy, creamy macaroni and cheese, I suggest you give this one a try.

Story time: People are so fond of this mac and cheese that I often bring it to potlucks, and I always bake it in the same Fiesta dish. We actually call it the mac and cheese bowl because it's the main thing I use it for. Anyway, few months ago, we brought this mac and cheese to a potluck at some friends' house and ended up leaving the leftovers there when we had to leave early. A couple of days later, we were back at their house and when I peeked in their fridge, I found my mac and cheese bowl inexplicably half full even though it had almost all been eaten up. Magically replenishing mac and cheese bowl? Sadly, no. They just loved it enough that they made some themselves!

Quick note: Excess heat makes cheddar cheese get gritty. To make sure your mac and cheese is smooth and wonderful, be sure to add the cheddar cheese to the sauce when the pot is off of the burner and the sauce is no longer boiling. The cheese will also get gritty if you bake it too long, so just bake it long enough to make the topping golden.

Creamy Baked Macaroni and Cheese

8 oz macaroni
1 t salt for water
1/4 C butter
3 T flour
2 C milk
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1 T dijon mustard
8 oz cream cheese
12 oz shredded medium cheddar

Topping:
4 oz shredded medium cheddar
2 T melted butter
1 C cornflakes, crushed
1 t dried parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and grease a 2 quart baking dish. Boil pasta in large pot with 1 t salt. In a medium sauce pan, make a roux with the butter and flour. Let cook while stirring for a minute or two. Stir in milk a little at a time, making sure sauce is smooth after each addition. Add salt, pepper and mustard, then stir in cream cheese until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in cheddar cheese. Pour into prepared baking dish and sprinkle with remaining cheese. In a small bowl, stir together butter and crushed cornflakes and sprinkle on top of casserole. Bake for about 20 minutes or JUST until topping is golden, then sprinkle with parsley. You can leave off the topping and just do the extra cheese and parsley if you want.

Yield: about 12 servings as a side dish