Mac and cheese: pasta in cheese sauce, baked under a crisp crumb crust
The American bake where everything depends on one thing: the cheese goes into the béchamel off the heat. A cheese sauce brought to the boil splits into fat and grains; taken off the burner it stays smooth and stretchy. The pasta is cooked two minutes short because it finishes in the oven, and the top is covered with buttered breadcrumbs.
Your own work in that: 25 min.
- Pasta 10 min
- Cheese sauce 15 min
- Baking 20 min
- Resting 10 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneCook the pasta two minutes short
Heat the oven to 200 °C and butter the dish. Cook the pasta in salted water 2 minutes less than the packet says: it should still be hard in the centre. Drain but do not rinse.
Ingredients: 400 g macaroni or fusilli · 1 tbsp salt
TipThe pasta drinks part of the sauce in the oven and softens there. Cooked through beforehand it comes out of the bake mushy, and the sauce turns thick and dry.
Two minutes short, no rinsingMake a pale roux
Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the flour and whisk over medium heat for 2 minutes, until it bubbles gently and smells nutty but has not browned. The roux must stay pale so it doesn't colour the sauce.
Ingredients: 50 g butter · 50 g plain flour · 800 ml milk · 250 g cheddar · 100 g hard yellow cheese (gouda type) · 1 tsp mustard · 1 pinch nutmeg · ½ tsp sweet paprika · ½ tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper
Two minutes, pale and bubblingAdd the milk and cook the béchamel
Pour in the lukewarm milk in a thin stream, whisking constantly; a ladleful at a time at first, then faster. Cook 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring, until the sauce thickens and coats the spoon. Add the mustard, nutmeg, paprika, salt and pepper.
TipLukewarm milk added gradually to a hot roux gives no lumps, because the flour starch swells evenly. If lumps appear anyway, pass the sauce through a sieve: that is enough.
A thin stream, until it coats the spoonAdd the cheese off the heat
Take the pan off the burner and wait half a minute. Only now add the grated cheddar and yellow cheese by the handful, stirring until each melts. The sauce should be smooth, glossy and stretchy.
TipIn a sauce that is too hot and bubbling, the cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat and water: the sauce breaks into an oily pool with grains in it. Off the heat the cheese melts gently into the warm sauce and forms a smooth emulsion. Grate your own cheese rather than buying it in a bag: pre-grated cheese is coated with an anti-caking agent that can make the sauce grainy.
Off the heat, by the handful, until smoothCombine and fill the dish
Fold the pasta through the sauce until every piece is coated. The sauce will look too loose: it should, the pasta absorbs it in the oven. Tip into the dish and level it.
Looser than seems rightTop and bake
Mix the breadcrumbs with the melted butter and parmesan and scatter evenly over the top. Bake 20 minutes at 200 °C, until the crust is deep golden and the sauce bubbles at the edges.
Ingredients: 40 g breadcrumbs · 20 g butter · 20 g parmesan
Buttered crumbs, twenty minutesRest before serving
Leave 10 minutes. Straight from the oven the sauce is liquid and runs across the plate; after ten minutes it clings to the pasta and portions lift out in pieces.
Ten minutes and the sauce holds
Before you start
With bacon
150 g bacon fried crisp and folded through the pasta or scattered under the crumbs. A very popular addition in the US.
Without baking
Just pasta in the sauce, straight from the pan, no oven: dinner in 20 minutes. Cook the pasta normally then, not short.
The sauce split
The cheese went into boiling sauce. Take it off the heat, add 3 tablespoons of cold milk and blend with a stick blender: the emulsion usually comes back.
