Cooking For Engineers

[guest]

I've been making this for years now, but I change it up a bit. I replace one of the 12 oz cans of evaporated milk with 14 oz can of condensed milk (which adds a sweet flavor to it and probably a crap load of fat - but EVERYONE goes crazy over the salty sweet). Also, I was having trouble figuring out how to measure out the 5 oz of american cheese and the 3 oz of monterey jack, so I would buy the 8 oz shredded colby and monterey jack mix at the store. Sometimes, I add a shredded slice of american too b/c I always feel like you can never have too much cheese. haha. It comes out great every time. I'm sure if you follow the recipe to the T, it will come out just as fabulous. For the breadcrumbs, I usually cheat and buy plain breadcrumbs, then melt about 3-4 tablespoons of butter in a pan, sprinkle a little garlic and some Parmesan cheese and add the breadcrumbs, sauteing until they brown a bit. Good luck!

[Dilbert]

mac&cheese is a comfort food that has more definitions and recipes than countable.

>>complicated
not really. there 3-4 "basic prep" stages - all dumb&simple.
once you've done homemade mac&cheese a couple times, it's like falling off a slow moving turtle - easy to do, doesn't hurt a bit.

I do the pre-cooked pasta (typically elbows, but not always...)

I make a roux - butter&flour comma slightly browned

I use milk to make a white sauce
if you want richer/smoother mouth feel, use a box of heavy cream + (later) water to adjust consistency
make the white sauce, melt in the cheese, adjust consistency....
not complicated, or?

the only significant diff in "condensed" vs "evaporated" milk is the sugar content.
which wheeze golly, I've never added sugar (or salt) to my mac&cheese, so no can comment to that.

I've been know to sweat down minced onion in the melted butter before making the roux.
but only when DW isn't watching.....

(things that likely make no difference in the end....)
I use dry mustard vs ground seed.
I use cayenne pepper vs hot sauce.

sometimes I do a bread crumb topping; other times no topping.
pan toasted homemade bread crumbs - veddy good approach.
thin sliced stale baguette, even more better, just press into the sauce.....

>>the cheese
for one cup of (dry pasta - about 120g) I use 6 ounces (170g) of cheese.
aaahhh, should add,,,, liberally measured/scaled/seldom "under-weighted"

after getting real dang tired of "cheddar mac&cheese" I rather a bit overboard went working with 4-6 different cheese types.

since then I've learned max three cheeses is more than "really good"
so, altho cheddar is almost always present, the (more or less equal parts) balance can be swiss, muenster, edam, gruyere, provolene, butterkasese, whatever... some melt better/easier than others - but I found even hard cheeses that want to string and not melt smoothly make duper dang good mac&cheese.

so, just spread 'yer noodles and go fer it.

[jmm0837]

I use this recipe every time I need to take a dish to an event. I have modified it over the years, I now use half and half instead of evaporated milk and use Fontina cheese in once of the american, but the proportions are the same. Everyone loves it. Oh, also I use extra pasta water because we like it creamy. Thanks!