Recreating Stouffer's Macaroni and Cheese Recipe _ Eric Kim _ NYT Cooking

It came with a spinach souffle .

Those who love Stouffers know that that's a deep cut but spinach souffle is so good .

Um , this is not about the spinach souffle though .

It's about the mac and cheese .

Hi , I'm Eric Kim .

I'm a cooking writer for the New York Times food section today .

I'm making a Stouffer's style creamy mac and cheese .

If you've ever had Stouffer's Mac and cheese , it's the wonder of it is that it stays creamy and as you're scooping it , it's like it's still gooey .

It's not runny , but it's not a hard set either .

Nothing wrong with those mac and cheese .

I like those two , but this mac and cheese is very , very , very creamy and that's what's special about it .

I think the question might be like , why am I trying to recreate the specific style of macaroni and cheese ?

For me ?

It does come from a pretty emotional and personal place , which is just that I grew up eating this .

And I think it was always my idea of what a , what a mac and cheese should be .

I think what makes a store first style mac and cheese really special and different from , you know , the regular baked mac and cheese or even a stove top mac is that it kind of exists somewhere in this national territory between the two .

So it's creamy and it stays creamy , but it's also baked .

It's like a little baked at the edges .

And so you get the best of both worlds , I think .

And let me tell you , it is not easy to achieve .

I have to give credit to my food stylist .

Friend Jessie .

I had baked maybe like 10 mac and cheese that day and was losing my mind and I was like , they're all splitting .

My friend Jessie was like , well , food stylists use sodium citrate to like stabilize a mixture like that .

So what we're gonna do is shred a bunch of cheddar and a little bit of pecorino Romano .

But the key to keeping that voluptuous like creaminess even after the oven is Velveeta , that creaminess comes scientifically from an ingredient in this product which is sodium citrate .

I'm gonna start grading the cheeses .

I have a cheddar here .

You want like a young creamy cheese .

Get an orange cheddar .

I or not .

It , it , it really doesn't matter for me .

It's really just I like recalling that like yellow stuffers cheese .

Oh my God .

There's so much that Yeah , this is like a pound of cheddar .

It's my favorite dish in the Thanksgiving .

You know , menu .

I wonder if like cooks can relate to this .

If you are in charge of the Thanksgiving .

You tend to let other people's favorite dishes , you know , take up more space in the cooking time .

And so this year was about making time for myself .

The Velveeta , it's so soft anyway , you can't really grade it .

So you should just tear it with your fingers .

People always say this .

But if you're cooking with kids , this really is the moment where you just make the kids do the labor .

I like to boil the pasta and then drain it and use the same pot to make my sauce .

I won't call this like a one pot , whatever .

But it's um it's just , I think it's easy like that .

So I have a pot of boiling water here and I'm gonna salt it pretty heavily .

Like , you know , you really do want your pasta to be well seasoned .

I'm using a , I love this shape .

I love this texture .

I don't know about you guys , but regular elbow macaroni from the box , it's never , never cooks up as big as a mac and cheese that you would get from a Stuer box .

When this cooks up , it'll be like really plump and like luscious and like uh and curly .

Another thing that really helps you with your creaminess is making sure that your pasta is cooked all the way .

It's plumping up and it won't soak up as much sauce and your end result will stay creamy .

The next step is to cut each one in half .

Just a with gang .

Perfect .

Mm This is perfect because now I'm gonna go and you know , work on some other stuff , but this is drying out right now , which I think is really important .

So there's no like water in your mac and cheese .

Now we're gonna make the sauce we start with , let's take a butter over medium heat .

You're not browning the butter .

You are just letting it go until it sort of like quiets down and stops sputtering .

So you will hear when it's ready .

Ok .

That's nice and firm me quiet .

So now I'm gonna add the flour .

This is half a cup of flour and you're just cooking this until it's smooth for like a minute .

That looks good .

I'm gonna add the milk now and that's just gonna bubble up and thicken a little bit .

This will take about 2 to 5 minutes once it comes up to a bubble .

So there's a funny story like I the surfers , people told me that , um , a lot of people don't realize that their family mac and Cheese is stouffer's .

That's so funny .

You know , when you get that family style one , if you know , if you know , you know , it comes in that aluminum tray and so it kind of just kind of looks like a church , um , potluck dish , you know , but it's actually something that you got from the freezer aisle came to a simmer , reducing it a little bit .

Keep it at the simmer .

I think that's pretty good .

Lightly coating the back of the spoon .

I would say that's lightly coating .

This is ready .

I'm gonna turn it off .

I really want this to be off the heat when I add the cheese a little bit first .

Oh , all that cheese regretted .

This will seem like way too much sauce .

But again , like noodles are sponges .

And what makes a Stouffer's Mac is all the sauce .

So I have some onion powder , dry mustard powder and a bunch of cayenne .

Thanksgiving was a really special holiday in my family because it was the time when the parents kind of sat back and it was the time when the kids got into the kitchen and made the entire dinner , you know , Korean kids , Children of immigrants , we wanted this food that we were seeing in all our coloring books and at school and on TV .

The Stouffer's Mac and cheese was the one thing that we didn't have to cook from scratch because it was already perfect , you know .

Oh , perfect .

With that said as an adult , I wanted to recreate it in my kitchen and I think it's like fun to as a cook to figure out why something tastes the way it does .

You could just serve it like this .

Actually , it'd be really delicious .

But um we're gonna finish it off in the oven .

Who keep in mind this is feeding a crab there's like this extra sauce on the bottom that I'm gonna spatula out and I want to pour that in there and this just goes in the oven for 15 minutes .

That's it .

3 50 degrees .

You're not gonna see like that crusty edge browning .

If you want that you can .

This is just a really creamy mac and cheese .

That's like what I'm after the texture that I want , I eat it with a spoon .

Not with a fork .

Oh , yeah .

See that , I just love how saucy that is .

Can I see that ?

I'm really happy with this .

This is exactly what I wanted .

Mm .

Mm .

That's so good .

It's super comforting and , and saucy and it's just so exactly what I think of as the platonic ideal of mac and cheese , your family's mac and cheese might be different .

My family came from a box and that's still special to me .

Do you guys wanna try some ?