# Macaroni and cheese
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** food-cooking
**Created:** [May 7, 2023, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710 "2023-05-07T21:21:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2023, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/21 "2023-05-08T21:25:49Z")
Don’t look at me - my attempts at Mac & Cheese consist of:
(a) Boil a box of pasta - usually Barilla medium shells or rotini (either whole wheat or tri-color)
(b) Mix in 4 cups or so of shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese, 12 ounces of milk, and one egg (or, usually, 4 ounces of egg-like product - must include the whole egg; not just egg whites)
(c) I usually put it into a casserole dish and bake, covered in foil, at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, but if I’m in a hurry, I’ll just put it on the stove and keep stirring until the cheese is melted.
It does tend to be more mac than cheese, but I never was able to make a proper Bechamel sauce.
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2023, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/22 "2023-05-08T21:29:01Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#):
>
> lick the screen
LCD au vin
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### Author:  [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/23 "2023-05-10T11:06:50Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#):
>
> …I never was able to make a proper Bechamel sauce.
It’s really easy. I’ll walk you through my simple recipe, if it’s any help.
Put a walnut-sized chunk of butter in a pan over low heat, add flour, stir to break up any clumps, add warm milk, salt and ground nutmeg and keep stirring until it stops thickening. Ten to fifteen minutes (the longer the better, they say). That’s all there is to it.
The trick is to add enough flour to thicken the sauce suitably, but it’s better if there’s not quite enough to form clumps. The melted butter pools in the pan and the flour makes it cloudy. If there’s too much flour, clumps will form, in which case you just add a little more butter and stir to dissolve the clumps. And if the sauce turns out lumpy, you can just take an immersion blender to it (a pro cook told me that many of his colleagues do that). When I was still buying and eating butter, I often made bechamel sauce, and it wasn’t long at all before I just winged it (no measuring, etc.)
Make it a little thicker, stir in the chopped up remains of that rotisserie chicken in your fridge, add some black pepper, and you’ve got the filling for the best croquettes you’re ever had. Chill the filling to thicken it further, separate into golf-ball sized portions, coat in beaten egg, dredge in bread crumbs and pan fry in an inch or two of olive oil.
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### Author:  [@salinqmind1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind1)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/24 "2023-05-10T14:28:30Z")
Make it anyway, for yourself. Maybe make half a recipe. I cooked for myself a lot in the 35 years I was married since Mr. Salinqmind wanted only burgerfries night after night after night. (Though eventually he did eat MY home-made mac & cheese, he confessed he really preferred the Kraft blue box kind his mommy fed him for years and years.)
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/25 "2023-05-10T14:39:22Z")
> [@alovem](#):
>
> Put a walnut-sized chunk of butter in a pan over low heat, add flour, stir to break up any clumps, add warm milk, salt and ground nutmeg and keep stirring until it stops thickening. Ten to fifteen minutes (the longer the better, they say). That’s all there is to it.
Yep. I just made some yesterday for lasagna. I even used cold milk and it was fine. Just incorporate relatively slowly while whisking and you should be good to go.
The main thing I try to remember is how much roux to thicken how much liquid. With roux, it’s usually equal parts flour and butter (or other fat). And 1.5 tablespoons of flour will thicken a cup (8 oz, ~250 mL) of milk. So, for a cup of milk: 1.5Tb flour, 1.5Tb butter, 1C milk. That’s for what I would call average viscosity. If you like it thicker, go for 2Tb flour and 2Tb butter. If you like it thinner, 1Tb flour and 1Tb butter.
(Personally, I just think in terms of flour and liquid ratios, and think of it as 3:2 flour:liquid, but I wanted to be explicit above.)
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/26 "2023-05-10T14:45:11Z")
> [@salinqmind1](#):
>
> Make it anyway, for yourself.
Theoretically I will, it just never seems to actually happen!
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### Author:  [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/27 "2023-05-10T15:08:42Z")
Do you spend much time stirring? I ask because I usually don’t (or didn’t, because I don’t eat butter anymore), but I’ve heard repeatedly that the sauce turns out better when you stir it for 20 to 30 minutes. I learned to make béchamel in order to make croquettes, the filling of which has to be pretty thick. At the time, it seemed to me that most recipes (specifically for croquettes) called for a little too much milk and lots of stirring, which, it seemed to me, was a means of achieving the right consistency through evaporation of the water in the milk, which, of course, requires all the stirring to keep it from sticking to the pan. At that point, I started measuring the ingredients, thinking that if I didn’t overdo it with the milk, I could reduce the stirring time. But I ended up just eyeballing the ingredients, and the results were good enough. So… all that information just to ask: Do you agree that copious stirring makes a better béchamel sauce?
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/28 "2023-05-10T15:40:48Z")
> [@alovem](#):
>
> Do you spend much time stirring? I ask because I usually don’t (or didn’t, because I don’t eat butter anymore), but I’ve heard repeatedly that the sauce turns out better when you stir it for 20 to 30 minutes
Oh hell no. Maybe a minute or so when I first am incorporating everything, then a little bit here and there until it comes to a near boil and starts thickening. Once it’s sufficiently thick, I let it sit in low heat for maybe ten minutes and give it a whisk midway and at the end. Total stirring time is maybe 3 minutes at the most. I usually do my bechamel in 10-15 minutes, not 30. I’m not sure why I would want to cook it that long or what additional improvements there are for keeping it that long, but I’ve never purposely tried (though I’m sure I’ve left bechamel sitting on a low flame while preparing other stuff.)
I was googling cold milk and bechamel earlier and why that’s bad, but apparently it’s not. I mean, there are sites that say use hot milk, but I found a New York Times article saying you should use cold or room temp milk. Unfortunately, it was behind a paywall so I couldn’t read it. Curious why now.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/29 "2023-05-10T15:48:02Z")
Far and away my favorite mac and cheese recipe is this one:
> **[Stove Top Mac-n-Cheese](https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/stovetop-mac-n-cheese-recipe-1939465)**
>
> Get Stove Top Mac-n-Cheese Recipe from Food Network
It’s really easy–a five-ingredient sauce (not counting the optional flavors like mustard/hot sauce/black pepper), and on the table in about 20 minutes from the time the water boils–and has a texture very similar to Kraft, but much much much better flavors. Baked mac has never really appealed to me, but this exactly hits my craving for stovetop.
As a variation, try mixing in warming spices, like cumin, cayenne, garam masala, chili powder, smoked paprika, or some combination thereof.
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### Author:  [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/30 "2023-05-10T15:53:44Z")
@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness:
Just so you know, that link redirects me to Food Network UK home page, with no reference to that specific recipe. I’m in Europe. Happens often enough (other posters’ links) to be an annoyance.
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> I was googling cold milk and bechamel earlier and why that’s bad, but apparently it’s not. I mean, there are sites that say use hot milk, but I found a New York Times article saying you should use cold or room temp milk. Unfortunately, it was behind a paywall so I couldn’t read it. Curious why now.
Must be to prevent clumping, wouldn’t you say? I usually warmed a glass of milk in the microwave but noticed once that using cold milk doesn’t seem to be a big deal, as long as you add it little by little, stirring thoroughly.
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### Author:  [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/31 "2023-05-10T16:36:37Z")
> [@alovem](#):
>
> I’m in Europe.
I’m in Switzerland, and I just closed the pop-up and could reach the site.
Same recipe, different site:
> **[Stovetop Mac and Cheese Recipe | Alton Brown](https://altonbrown.com/recipes/stovetop-mac-and-cheese/)**
>
> Sharp cheddar cheese and evaporated milk make Alton Brown's stovetop mac and cheese extra creamy, while a dash of hot sauce adds a nice kick.
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### Author:  [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/32 "2023-05-10T16:52:41Z")
> [@Die\_Capacitrix](#):
>
> I’m in Switzerland, and I just closed the pop-up and could reach the site.
Thanks, but there’s no pop-up for me. The link takes me to [this page](https://foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes). Just thought I’d mention it, although there may be no point in doing so, as it’s just going to derail the thread and it’s apparently not a matter of carelessness.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/33 "2023-05-10T19:21:53Z")
> [@alovem](#):
>
> Thanks, but there’s no pop-up for me. The link takes me to [this page](https://foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes). Just thought I’d mention it, although there may be no point in doing so, as it’s just going to derail the thread and it’s apparently not a matter of carelessness.
Yeah–I’ve never heard of that happening with a food website. It sounds like some sort of localization bullshit, and is unfortunately out of my control. Not only can’t I fix it, I can’t even predict which websites will engage in that behavior. Sorry, and thanks, @Die_Capacitrix, for finding a workaround!
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/34 "2023-05-10T19:24:29Z")
> [@alovem](#):
>
> Must be to prevent clumping, wouldn’t you say? I usually warmed a glass of milk in the microwave but noticed once that using cold milk doesn’t seem to be a big deal, as long as you add it little by little, stirring thoroughly.
Very hot milk would probably lead to unfixable clumping, as the outer starches gelatinize and form a coating around the clumps before the individual flour grains could mix through the liquid. Very cold milk, though, might make it difficult to stir the flour in. That’s my guess, anyway.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/35 "2023-05-10T19:35:33Z")
Oh, duh. That’s probably the reason I started doing it with cold milk to begin with, as with a slurry you usually want to use cold or room temp liquid, so why not with a roux?
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/36 "2023-05-10T19:38:39Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Very cold milk, though, might make it difficult to stir the flour in. That’s my guess, anyway.
If you’re doing a slurry (just flour and liquid), you stir the liquid into the flour. It mixes fine. With a roux, the flour is incorporated into the fat, then the liquid is added, so no issues there, either.
ETA: or I should say, the slurry doesn’t contain all the liquid you are trying to thicken. You make the slurry and pour that once it’s well mixed into the liquid you want to thicken.
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### Author:  [@Blindmellowjelly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blindmellowjelly)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2023, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macaroni-and-cheese/983710/37 "2023-05-11T22:58:37Z")
I can’t give you my entire recipe, but it involves Velveeta, butter, milk, eggs, and a gratin crackercrumb and cheese baked top.
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