The Best Mac and Cheese You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) _ Epicurious 101

I'm Lish styling .

I'm a professional chef and today I'm gonna show you how to make restaurant style macaroni and cheese at home .

We'll be going over techniques pros use to make cheesy ooey gooey , comforting mac and cheese .

This is mac and cheese .

101 .

The perfect mac and cheese should have enough sauce to coat the pasta , plenty of cheese to make it ooey and gooey and I like a little crunch on top .

So now we're gonna move on to making our beam for the mac and cheese .

A beam is basically a thickened cream sauce and that's gonna be the base of our cheese sauce for this mac and cheese .

Well , let's start with the onion , shall we ?

I like to use onion in a mac and cheese because I think that it just gives it a little bit of character and backbone .

It's a savory element .

So we're just gonna dice these up any size is fine , smaller the better because nobody wants to bite into a huge onion .

This is a medium cheddar cheese .

The cheddar adds a nice creamy richness to the dish .

Pre shredded cheese sometimes has anti caking agents on it .

So it doesn't melt into the sauce as easily as if you take a block and just put some elbow grease into it .

And we're also using grier .

Grier is like a Swiss style cheese .

So it has a little bit , a tang , a little bit of nuttiness .

Look at that just like that .

We have our cheeses .

We're gonna butter our pan because you can never have enough butter .

Right .

This also prevents the pasta from actually sticking to the pan .

It lends itself to a nice golden edge .

I'm gonna get to work on my , I'm starting with a heavy bottom dutch oven .

Here , we're gonna add one whole stick of butter , which is a half a cup , unsalted butter .

But because you want full control over the seasoning , it's fully melted at this point starting to sizzle which lets you know that it's ready for the next thing .

So we are gonna add in our onions .

We're gonna season it with a little bit of salt because season as you go all the layers , that way , everything has the opportunity to become as flavorful as it can possibly become when the onions become super fragrant and are beginning to turn a little translucent then you know , it's ready to go .

So right there , I'm gonna Sprinkle in our half a cup of all purpose flour .

So the flour is going to absorb all of that flavorful fat now and we're just gonna cook this out for about maybe two minutes .

It's gonna thicken our sauce to a nice consistency , but it also adds flavor at this point .

It's very important that you continue to stir constantly and I think we are there .

So the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna add the Cayenne pepper .

Cayenne pepper is just there to wake up the senses .

It adds a little bit of warmth .

We're gonna start adding four and three quarters cup of milk .

This is not for the faint of heart for the dairy free .

And once you have a nice smooth sauce in here , continue to add the rest of the milk .

At this point , we're gonna season it with a little bit more salt .

Keeping in mind that you're gonna be adding salty cheeses to this .

So you don't want to over season at this point because you can always adjust later on once the cheeses are in and now we sit and wait and we let the room do its magic .

It's important to let it fully cook for those five minutes because you want to cook out the raw flour taste .

Sometimes if you rush it , you're left with that .

Everybody knows that like flour , coating on their tongue .

This baby is thickened , sexy and begging for cheese .

You can tell that it's done by the back of the spoon .

If it holds its line , that means it's done .

So we are going to reserve about a third of our cheeses for our topping .

But add in two thirds of our cheeses into this beautiful be .

This is this Wisconsin girls happy place right here .

Just stir these guys in .

Oh yes .

This is the kind of cheese sauce that dreams are made of .

Let's give it a taste .

Needs more salt but holy cheesy goodness .

My water is boiling for our elbow macaroni .

If we're gonna do mac and cheese , we might as well go classic , right ?

So you bring a pot of water to a boil and then you season it aggressively with salt .

This is your only opportunity to season the pasta .

So you wanna make sure that it's seasoned properly in goes our pasta .

I often go by taste when cooking pasta .

But in this situation because it's cook longer in the sauce afterward , I normally reduce the cook time by like 2 to 3 minutes according to packaged directions .

This one says five minutes .

So we're gonna cook it for about three .

My pasta is just before .

So I'm gonna grab my sauce so that I can add it directly from the pasta pot into the sauce .

It's actually delightful if some of that pasta water gets in there , don't be afraid of it .

It has the starch from the pasta , it has seasoning .

It's actually gonna be very helpful in this case .

And now we are just gonna give this guy a stir .

Now , here's the beauty of this dish .

If you didn't want to go the extra step and actually bake it .

You could just finish the pasta , the perfect in this creamy sauce right now and eat it just as it is .

We're gonna take this mac and cheese up a notch and we're gonna bake it .

So it gets crispy and golden and bubbly .

It's gonna be good .

It is time to put this thing together .

So I am going to take a ladle here because we're going the extra mile .

We're just gonna ladle all of this cheesy goodness right into our baking dish .

Maybe one more scoop then to double down on our cheese .

I'm gonna take that leftover and the leftover cheddar .

I'm just gonna Sprinkle that right over the top all the way to the edges , don't skimp and then we're gonna make our crunchy topping .

So I have some PICO bread crumbs here about a cup of Parmesan ao , a little pinch of salt and just , just a little bit of olive oil .

Stir that together .

This is for texture .

This is the crunch and here we go right over the top .

Oh , hello , lover .

Yes .

Now that the top is completely covered in our bread crumbs .

I'm gonna put it in our preheated 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes until it's golden , brown and bubbly .

Yes .

Golden and delicious .

You can hear that .

It's nice and crispy on top .

I know it's hard but let it rest for five minutes .

I did .

I had to like put up with it , but it's worth it because you get all of those good flavors .

Just kind of resting .

Settling down a little bit .

Let's give it a taste , shall we ?

I mean , you see the sauces clinging to the noodles .

There's a little crunchy bits on top .

I need some of that .

That is so good .

The two cheeses you get the tanginess , it's rich because of the acid of the cheeses .

My mouth just wants more like cuts through the richness , the crunchy topping , few ingredients but well thought out .

Just take your time .

Be patient and it pays off .