How to Make Mac & Cheese with Anne Burrell _ Worst Cooks in America _ Food Network

All right , my rockin red stars .

I am showing you my version of macaroni and cheese with Fontina Parmesan and so Panto is Italian bacon .

You're like , wait , that doesn't look like bacon at all .

So , and bacon are both pork belly .

The difference .

Pancetta has not been smoked and you're like , but wait , Pancetta is round and it's like , just because it's been rolled up , you can unroll it and it looks just like a strip of bacon .

I'm starting off with um my Pancetta .

I'm dicing it into about quarter inch dices and I'm gonna throw it into my saute pan .

We're gonna do what's called rendering .

I'm rendering the fat out of the bacon and I'm gonna use that Pancetta fat to make the roo which is fat and flour cooked together that will thicken the milk for our sauce .

It probably won't be as much fat as I need .

So I'm gonna add butter to that as well .

So I'm starting off with just a little tiny bit of oil in the bottom of my pan .

It's what I like to call sort of the encouragement .

You know , we just get things started a little lubrication and I put all the in my pan .

Notice my pan is not on yet .

Ok .

I'm gonna turn it on to a fairly low heat because I want to start to melt the fat out of my .

Does that mean I can make fat free bacon now ?

But it means that we're gonna use that fat and the flavor of our pancetta will permeate the entire situation .

I have an onion , my onions ready .

So let's think cheese .

I'm gonna put some saran wrap under my grater because it will help keep my board nice and neat .

The cheeses that I'm using are sort of a version of Swiss che cheese and that's one of my favorite kinds of cheeses .

Whenever I'm grating cheese , I find like if I do it that on like an angle or on a pointy spot , it happens to go much faster .

So I keep , you know , when I get to here , then I just rearrange and go to a pointy spot .

So let's be thinking about my pasta .

Let's get my pasta cooking , right ?

Oh jeez .

I make sure you salt your pasta water .

Good .

Now , when I'm cooking my pasta for this , I wanna cook my pasta till it's just under where I want it to be .

I want to still feel a little bit of a bite in there when my mac and cheese is done .

I'm also using Fontina , which is a very mild Italian cheese .

When it melts .

It's so delicious .

It's really nice and creamy and then Parmesan , which is very salty and kind of nutty and gives a real depth of flavor to everything .

So now my pancetta is looking nice and brown and crispy .

So I'm gonna take it out of here and just add my onions to this .

And then I'm gonna add my flour and build on top of this to take it out .

I'm gonna use this guy a slotted spoon so I can pick all this up .

Let's see , the fat falls out once my mac and cheese is built , I'm gonna add this back in there .

And so we'll have nice crispy little bacon bits all throughout the whole situation .

All right , there we go .

My onions in there .

Smelling delicious .

All right , we're gonna just sweat these guys .

So I am going to take my pasta over and drain it now .

All right , we're just gonna let that hang out for a minute .

I'm adding a couple of tablespoons of butter to this .

I need more fat than I got out of my pancetta .

I'm going to add flour to this .

All right , get that in .

So for this , I'm gonna use a whisk and we wanna whisk this in .

We're kind of looking for the consistency of wet sand and then we're adding milk to this .

There we go .

All right .

So we're cooking this .

Now , I'm beating this with a whisk because I want to bust through sort of all the flour lumps , you must bring this to a boil .

So the raw flour feeling cooks out .

So now while this is coming to a boil , I'm adding mustard .

I like mustard .

It's like adds a really nice big flavor kick and makes things really nice and zesty and I'm gonna add a couple shots of hot sauce .

Alright .

Already , this is really thickening up once you've busted through and there's no more lumps .

I would go back to stirring with your spatula .

All right , because you wanna make sure nothing is stuck on the bottom .

I'm at a boil now .

We've got a nice little bubble happening .

It's almost like a lazy bubble .

So I'm gonna turn this off now stirring in my cheese .

So that was the and Fontina I'm adding in Parmesan .

Now when you add your cheese , you really need to let the milk here come to a boil first because you don't wanna really boil it so much once the cheese is in that can cause the cheese to curdle .

Have you ever had that experience having mac and cheese ?

And you're like , why does this feel like gritty ?

Now ?

My pasta .

Oh Yeah .

Hello .

Beautiful .

My pan .

All right .

So I'm just gonna give this one more little splash of milk because remember I'm gonna cook this again in the oven .

So I I want it to stay this creamy by the time it's done , it will have been as creamy as it was just a second ago .

So here we go .

These guys on a sheet tray .

I have some panko bread crumbs .

I'm gonna put them on the top and then I'm just gonna put these guys in the oven to brown them until they get really nice and crispy .

I might give these like one more little Sprinkle of Parmesan too because Parmesan will get nice and brown and it's in there already .

So I have not .

All right .

So , things are happening nicely now .

There we go .

Oh , my God .

That's good .

Right .

Why are we making this every day ?

Well , don't blame me if your dresses don't fit that way .

That'd be a good reason .