There’s a whole giant head of broccoli in this. And you don’t even need to steam it separately, it gets cooked right in the same pot with the mac and cheese. 🙂 Plus chicken + pasta + cheese = complete meal. At least, in my books! I adore Mac and Cheese. If I see it on a menu, especially at posh restaurants, I have to have it on the side. Any Sydney-siders tried Neil Perry’s Mac and Cheese at his Rockpool Bar & Grill restaurant? It’s utterly incredible. It’s also so rich that I can’t have more than a couple of (generously heaped) spoons of it. So the Mac and Cheese I make at home that’s suitable for serving as a meal is made without cream by using a roux as a base. Sounds fancy (it’s French!), but it’s just melted butter + flour whisked into milk to create a creamy sauce.
I make this in the oven so that way you can make it all in one pot, rather than cooking the macaroni separately and mixing it into the sauce. Making it this way requires an exact amount of liquid to macaroni ratio, specific water + milk combo (too much milk = takes far too long for pasta to rehydrate) and following the cook times specified in the recipe. Oh – the other very specific steps I do are: a) Stirring the cheese in just before grilling/broiling to brown the top (if you add it beforehand, it takes forever for the pasta to cook); and b) Sprinkling the panko and parmesan on at the end, then broiling/grilling it to brown. This serves 2 purposes: browning the crunchy topping while the pasta finishes cooking using the residual heat, and the sauce thickens. You’ll be surprised how much the sauce thickens during the broiling phase. 🙂 Here’s the video so you can see for yourself the magic of how you can make Mac and Cheese in one pot! With no cream!!
Regular readers have probably noticed that cast iron cookware appears often in my recipes. It’s because I love recipes that start off on the stove then finish in the oven – one of my favourite techniques. And cast iron cookware is so fantastic for even distribution and retention of heat on both the stove and in the oven. It’s also the #1 culprit for the curses and screeches of pain that occurs more regularly than I care to admit. I just forget HOW GOOD they are with heat retention, and how hot they stay even after a decent period of time out of the oven. I underestimate how long it takes for the dutch ovens to cool down (ages and ages!) and go to grab the pot with my bare hands. Other times, I can’t find my oven mitts so I try to take it out of the oven using a flimsy dishcloth instead (ouch ouch ouch!). So it’s with many thanks to Burnaid that I’ve created a guide for what to do if you burn yourself. I really hope you never yourself, but this is important information that everyone should know so please take a minute to read it. 2 easy important steps. Do you know what they are?
And know that you can always easily find it on my site because I’ve created a page especially for it now so you can find it under About on my menu bar.🙂 OK! So back to this Mac N Cheese….hmmmm. Not sure what else to say about this! √ One pot √ Easy √ Creamy and cheesy √ Complete meal √ No cream Errrm….ticked all my boxes for an easy, scrumptious midweek meal! 😉 – Nagi x
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