How to make Panera mac and cheese at home

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Panera bread , white cheddar , macaroni and cheese .

Hi , everyone .

This is Stephanie Manley with copycat dot com .

Today , I'm gonna show you how to make Panera bread , white cheddar , mac and cheese .

Their mac and cheese is simply delicious and it's simply easy to make .

So we're gonna go ahead and get started .

I'm gonna cook up one box of pasta shells right here just according to package directions .

And in the meantime , I've got about um three tablespoons of butter .

I'm gonna let it melt .

I'm gonna add in three tablespoons of flour and we're gonna add in a couple of cups of milk and we're gonna start out making a white sauce .

So we're gonna add two types of cheddar to it .

We're gonna add a white American cheese and a just a Vermont white cheddar .

Um at least look a little disproportionate , but this is about three quarters pound of white American cheddar cheese and about a quarter pound of the Vermont white cheddar .

Um I got the white American cheese at the deli section of my grocery store .

I just said , hey , give me about a pound of white American cheese and they did and you can do it too .

So that's how you get the white American cheddar , it melts really , really nicely .

So definitely highly recommend getting that cheese .

So I'm gonna start the pasta and we're gonna come back and make the sauce already .

And for this task , I like to use a whisk because it helps make sure my sauces are nice and smooth .

So our butter has fully melted again and I've added equal amounts of flour and butter and I'm gonna whisk this together and cook it for a good minute or so I wanna cook it so that the root does not taste um undone .

It should have a nice neutral flavor to it .

It shouldn't taste like paste or flour .

If it , if you don't take the time to cook this , it will taste bad .

Ok ?

I feel like this is cooked long enough .

Now it's time to go ahead and start adding in the milk .

We're gonna do so just a little bit at a time , it's gonna thicken up nicely and make a really nice sauce and it should work just like that .

This is gonna make a really thick sauce .

So now the sauce is made , we can go ahead and start to add in the cheese and let it get in there .

Now , the white American um cheese , I , you don't have to be as worried about it um melting because American cheeses are just made to melt .

So we're gonna just stir this cheese in and let it melt fully .

All right .

So our cheddar cheese has almost melted through .

So we're gonna add in kind of our surprise ingredients here .

A mustard often adds a great flavor to cheese .

So we're gonna add a good tablespoon or so of gray Poupon .

It's just a Dijon style mustard .

And we're also gonna add a couple of shakes of hot sauce , just red hot sauce .

I like .

You can use Tabasco if you like .

So again , we're gonna stir this up and we're combine it with the cooked pasta in just a moment .

All right .

So our pasta is in here .

It's already cooked and I'm just gonna add my cheese sauce to it .

OK ?

We're just adding the cheese sauce .

Now we'll just stir this in and you can see this is really , really easy to make .

I hope you get this recipe a try soon .

You can see how wonderfully creamy this is .

I'm very excited to try this .

So I hope you enjoyed this recipe .

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So let's go ahead and taste this .

All right .

It is wonderfully hot still .

OK .

So we're gonna go ahead and try this .

It's wonderful and creamy .

It smells so good .

Mm .

The Dijon mustard adds just the right touch .

I hope you give this recipe a try soon .

Thanks for watching .