Learn how to make traditional American mac and cheese – 11/27/2023 – Marcão’s Recipes

Last week, the social media algorithm flooded me with recipes for Thanksgiving, a date that Americans enjoy more than Christmas, celebrated this year on November 23rd.

Everything revolves around the roast turkey and its accompaniments. The most interesting of these is macaroni and cheese, affectionately known as mac and cheese. Macaroni and cheese, in case you didn’t understand.

In Brazil, we mainly know boxed mac and cheese, whether it is a dry preparation or a ready-made frozen dish.

You can make mac and cheese from scratch, with good pasta, good cheese, milk and some seasonings. Easy, easy and a thousand times tastier than industrial hi.

There are basically two styles of mac and cheese. The gratin, which goes in the oven with breadcrumbs, and the one you serve straight from the pan.

I usually make the recipe in the oven, but I decided to vary it. I prepared a pan mac, with a creamy sauce, which in appearance resembles the product from the box.

Mac and cheese recipes, in general, ask you to do two separate processes (like any pasta preparation). In a pan, you cook the pasta; in the other, make a béchamel sauce (milk and flour). Then mix the cooked pasta, sauce and cheese.

I got rid of the béchamel and chose to cook the pasta directly in the milk, using just one pan. The effect is the same, as the dough releases starch, which thickens the milk.

I decided to make my macaroni yellow, almost orange, to imitate the style of American homemade recipes. There they put cheddar cheese bread or its cheap imitations.

I boiled the milk with annatto, the same coloring in these cheeses. You can use powdered paprika or simply skip this part — annatto adds almost no flavor.

Buy a short, small tubular pasta, something between soup noodles and penne. I came up with an Italian shape called chifferi or elbow.

The choice of cheeses is free, it will depend on your taste and the result you want to obtain. If you want the “pull” effect, you might want to add mozzarella, which has a mild flavor; other cheeses are stronger and melt into a creamy sauce.

My mac was with 20% mozzarella, 30% Dutch gouda and 50% English cheddar — which I brought in my suitcase from London. It is a light yellow, hard, salty and crumbly cheese (very different from orange cheddar cheese). Parmesan substitutes well. Or a good cured Minas cheese.

MAC AND CHEESE

Difficulty: easy
Performance: 2 servings

Ingredients

• 1 liter of milk
• 1 tablespoon of annatto seeds (optional)
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of onion powder
• 1 tablespoon mustard powder
• 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
• 160 g short noodles
• 240 g coarsely grated cheese
• Cayenne and black pepper to taste

Way of doing

1. If using annatto, place the seeds in a tightly tied gauze bag. Heat the milk with the annatto until it boils. Turn off the heat and let it macerate for 15 minutes. Discard the annatto.
2. Season the milk with salt, the two peppers, onion powder, mustard powder and Worcestershire sauce. Mix well and heat over medium heat.
3. Before it comes to a boil, add the pasta. Cook, stirring constantly, until the pasta cooks and the milk thickens (like a white sauce).
4. Add the cheese and stir well, with the heat on, until it completely melts. Turn off the heat and serve (if you heat it any further, there is a risk of curdling the cheese).

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