The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Stovetop Mac and Cheese

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Most people are familiar with the stuff in the blue box, but what might seem like a simple dish holds many nuances, from achieving that perfectly smooth cheese melt to avoiding greasiness or lumpiness. Find out why mac and cheese holds a special place in Kenji's heart and the results of Deb’s experience making Kenji’s three ingredient recipe. Recipes Mentioned: Deb’s Stovetop Mac and Cheese (courtesy of Smitten Kitchen) Kenji’s Stovetop Mac and Cheese (courtesy of Serious Eats)

I'm excited to tell you that one of our favorite Radiotopia siblings, Ear Hustle, is back with a new season. Ear Hustle is a show about life inside prison, but it's not your typical prison podcast. Co-hosts Nigel Poore and Erlon Woods have recently been spending time at four California prisons and have a season's worth of funny, surprising, and unforgettable stories to share. In a recent episode, they were able to visit a groundbreaking prison hospice, where they spoke to men who are grappling with the reality of dying inside prison. Also coming up this season are stories about the objects people keep inside their prison cells, complicated mom-daughter relationships in prison, and incarcerated people who wonder whether they've become too comfortable behind bars.

and incarcerated people who wonder whether they've become too comfortable behind bars. Stories about life on the inside told by those who live it. Find Ear Hustle wherever you get your podcasts. So, Deb, you made one of my recipes. Which one did you make? I made the three-ingredient stovetop one. Yeah, the three-ingredient one is the one I do now. There's also like a 74- one, like a many ingredient version, which is the version from when I was still, you know, single. I had a lot of time to make stuff. I think we both have our like pre-kid and post-kid versions of recipes. This is probably

the one you came up with it like on a Monday night with like two crying children at 6.30pm. My three ingredient one came from when I had not two kids, but one kid. Yes. It was definitely like a, what's an easier way to make this? There's got to be another way because I don't have time for this. From Radiotopia from PRX, welcome to The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for The New York Times. And Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen and she's also the author of three really good best-selling cookbooks. We're both professional home

cooks which means we can and will make the same dish 57 times in our quest for the perfect recipe. And on this show we want to pull back the curtain on the recipe development process to show you a little bit about what goes into developing a perfect recipe so that you can figure out what works best for you. This week we're talking about? The pragmatism and the pitfalls of stovetop mac and cheese. That's next on The Recipe with Deb and Kenji. Stick around. Deb, can you tell me a little bit about your recipe development process?

Like what's the first thing that you do when you start working on a recipe? I start with a very specific craving. Like I'm hungry and I want to make something and I don't have a go-to recipe for it and it bothers me. Right. My cravings come with very specific instructions and usually what I run into is like every time I make it like A happens or B happens or I hated this recipe I made this time and it basically is like not a happy place, it's a grumpy place, it's a litany of grievances I've had with previous versions I've made of something and then I'm kind of going from there to say well how would I like to make it? What do I wish this recipe would do that it's not doing And then I'm kind of going from there to say, well, how would I like

to make it? What do I wish this recipe would do that it's not doing already? And that's kind of where I start. It's like a grumpy stain on your soul that you want to turn into a happy one. It totally is. How does it work for you, Kenji? Do you start with a craving or does it start somewhere else for you? You know, recipe inspiration comes from various different places. These days, especially now that I have two kids, it's like, okay, what am I cooking at home? What's useful for me? Sometimes it is the same as you.

It's like, okay, I have these recipes. I've made this dish before, but there's this like little niggling thing that makes it like kind of a pain in the butt to make. You know, I wish I had a recipe that didn't involve this step, or I wish I had a recipe that streamlined it a little bit more, or I wish I had a recipe that kind of like synthesized all the things that I like about this dish in one sort of foolproof way. It's like a fun problem to solve. It's like, here's the thing that I know people at home have trouble with because they've

written to me about it. Or it's like, here's the thing that's like, all right, I've made this dish a hundred times, so it's easy for me. But how do I put myself in the shoes of another home cook or someone who's completely brand new to this dish? And what problems are they going to have? And how can I solve those problems? Something you mentioned when you were talking about your recipe development is something that I feel really lucky to have to both of us because we've been on the internet and been sharing

recipes and books and online for years. One thing that we have the advantage of, more disadvantage, depending on how you think about it, is that we have the voice of thousands of people in our head as they've given us feedback on what they are willing to do, what they do not want to do, what they hate to do, and what do they hate that we write into recipes. I feel like it can be very helpful. I know what cheeses people feel okay buying and what pasta shapes nobody can find and what questions are going to come up. Like as soon as it's milk, can I use skim milk? Can I use oat milk?

Can I use almond milk? You know, so in a way, I feel like you and I both have this unique advantage of getting to write better recipes from it. One of the big advantages of writing a recipe online is that you don't have the fixed audience that a magazine has. You know, a magazine has a fixed subscribership.

And so you're always writing your recipes for the same group of people. And so in some ways, that's an advantage because you know what kind of recipes like at Cooks Illustrated, at least, you know, when I was there in the early 2000s, like I knew what what the readership wanted. And you know that they're not going to go out to this specialty grocery store to buy a chote or an Ottawa coloring, you know, whereas online, whatever you're interested in, you can find an audience for that. And you're also able to find an audience that's going to be willing to do a certain amount of work or have access to things that a magazine audience might not have.

The disadvantage, though, is that you also reach everybody. And so like, no matter how good something, how much you work on something and how proud you are of something like, well, first of all, who it might not work for, right? You have a broader audience, so it might not work for some people, in which case you do have to go back and reconsider. But you're also just going to find people who want to say angry things no matter what you do, you know? There's many more comments, but that also means that there's like a bigger pool of negative comments that come through. It's true. And you have to like protect yourself from that and like not let it get to your head too much at the same time.

I find it very helpful to know like where people struggle with recipes. I've never had somebody tell me that they could not successfully make a roux before. But I know if we're talking about whipping egg whites, it comes up all the time that people struggle with it or an emulsion of like, you know, if you're trying to make mayo or stuff like that. I find it really helpful. I consider it like free product research that'll help us write better recipes. Yeah, I think it's part of the job is getting feedback. Fortunately, I feel like the vibes at Smitten Kitchen are very good. And I want to give credit

to that because it's a very nice place. Kenji, why did we decide that we wanted to do our very first podcast ever on Stove Top Mac and Cheese? Well, a couple of reasons. First of all, I think there's some really interesting sort of technical bits when it comes to mac and cheese. You know, there's like stuff we can talk about why cheese melts smoothly or why sometimes mac and cheese comes out greasy or lumpy. Or like, how do you reheat mac and cheese? That's always like a problem, right? Because the pasta absorbs water. So for a recipe with relatively few ingredients, there's a lot of sort of interesting technical things going on. But for me, it's also because it's like one of like the, I don't know, five dishes that my daughter, that my six-year-old

can like make from scratch. It's like a thing that even people who've never cooked or who are very young or who maybe never cooked until they were adults, like you're in college, what's the first thing you're going to cook? It's like, I'm going to learn how to make mac and cheese. But it can be highly technical if you want it to be. To be honest, that like baked mac and cheese gets all the attention and deservingly so. It's, you know, it's epic, it's decadent, it feeds a crowd. Like nobody's forming a line in front of a pot of like the orange stuff. But I think there's something like really utilitarian about it. And it's very essential. And it's quick comfort food.

It's like it's supposed to be like you should be able to eat it within 15 minutes of deciding that you're going to need cheesy carbs for dinner. Like it should just be something you make quickly. It's like there's a snow day and you just went sledding and you come back inside and you're like, what are you going to have for lunch? It's like, oh, I'm making mac and cheese. It's definitely not a salad. It's going to be ready in 10 minutes. Exactly. And my feeling was that, yes, I definitely have tremendous nostalgia for the boxed blue stuff. But I also just, I'm sure you and I both know as recipe developers and as people who make it all the time that you could make something from scratch and just a couple ingredients just as quickly

if you knew how to make it and what to make. If somebody could go ahead and write that recipe, you might find that you like it even more because it's a little more tweakable when you do it yourself. And also you don't have to run out to the store because you probably already have the ingredients. I've got to say as a recipe developer also, you know that there are certain recipes that are like guaranteed hits as far as if I write about this, people are going to read it, right? And people are going to look for the recipe and like, you know, mac and cheese, scrambled eggs.

Like there's some things where it's like, if I write this recipe, people are going to look at the video, people are going to read the article and like mac and cheese is pretty way up in that list. So you were like, this is fan service. service this is a definite because what I find really funny because you say that and yet that is also for me something that I have historically resisted like I started my site in 2006 and yet I did not publish a quick essential stovetop mac and cheese recipe until 2018 because I tend to be resistant. I tend to feel like well everyone has a recipe for that and what am I going to add that's any different? Actually, that place where I think, what am I going to add to it is exactly where I start my recipe development. Most of what's out there about this recipe is accurate

and like good. And I don't really have too much to say other than, hey, I tested and here's a version I like, right? Absolutely. That's sometimes the case. And then sometimes you run into recipes where it's like, okay, yeah, like there's this problem that I've historically had with this and other people have had with it. And, you know, and you find you find that problem and you find a solution for it. And that's pretty cool, too. So let's talk mac and cheese. Like where was your head when you started working on your Smitten Kitchen mac and cheese recipe? And we're talking about your essential stovetop mac and cheese here, not like one of the many other mac and cheese recipes on Spittin' Kitchen. So many mac and cheese. There are so many ways to put pasta with cheese and I'm not going to stop here. But this quick essential stovetop mac and cheese came from

actually a strict, like a very sharp nostalgia for the craft box mac and cheese. I absolutely adored it growing up. We didn't get to have it very much. I've learned the term recently. It's called an ingredient household, but we didn't have a lot of box or package food growing up. So therefore, yes, we had an ingredient household. There's cheese, there's butter, you can make it yourself. But we did get to have Kraft mac and cheese, but never often enough. It was actually the meal my mom would make if we had babysitters coming over, a babysitter. It is like a kid's friend's coming over meal for us also. Because it's like something that you know, like if you say, do you want mac and cheese? Like the kids are going to say yes. And I've been burned a couple times, in fact, where I made homemade mac and cheese. And they're

like, this is not the same as at my house. The box stuff at least is the same as at their house and that your kid's friends are going to eat it, right? The reason why I actually started having boxed mac and cheese around with my second kid is that my daughter would go to sleepovers and she would have playdates at friends' houses and she would then come home and be disappointed that we did not have the small white shells and cheese that she had grown accustomed to. You're talking Annie's here, though. I'm talking about the Tradere's knockoff event i know my nostalgia is for the orange tubes from craft do you have a particular nostalgia kenji for box mac and rhodium cheese too i do so so we did have quite a bit of the box craft dinner my mom would

always doctor so she would always add extra butter and a couple extra slices of American cheese. So it was creamier. And like if you followed boxed mac and cheese technology later on, Velveeta introduced one where you like squeeze out a little packet of stuff instead of just having the orange powder that Kraft does. And so it was called like the Velveeta, like the deluxe version, which is like gooier and creamier. And that's what regular boxed mac and cheese tastes like if you add extra

American cheese and extra butter to it. But yes, I definitely had nostalgia for it like down down to like the putting a single macaroni tube on each time of your fork, right? Yeah, no, you were you even a kid if you didn't do that with your macaroni and cheese like those thin tubes? Yeah, yeah, of course. So for me, you know, when when I was working on my I have a couple of stovetop mac and cheese recipes, but the goal with them is always like, okay, there's this like flavor memory you have of Kraft mac and cheese. And if you have Kraft mac and cheese now, it basically tastes like what you remember it as, I think, but it does sort of, yeah, lack a little bit of like, you know, complexity from better cheeses, I guess. I don't want to put down American cheese, but cheeses that have like a little bit more flavor to them. My goal with my recipes is to sort of capture,

first of all, the ease of the stovetop mac and cheese, right? It has to be something that can come together in the time it takes to boil the pasta, right? Like that's one of the big appeals. But then have a little bit more flavor to it. But I think it also needs kind of the gooeyness for me. So that's really, and I think this is definitely one of the places where our recipes sort of cleave apart a little bit. And I think it actually, now of the gooeyness for me. So that's really, and I think this is definitely one of the places where our recipes sort of

cleave apart a little bit. And I think it actually, now that we're talking about it, goes back to childhood. Because when they started introducing that deluxe mac and cheese, I did not like it. It was too goopy for me. So for me, I feel like the deluxe, the creamier versions were missing the saltiness and the buttery impact you'd get when you added butter to the orange cheese powder packet. But when I think of like my nostalgia for junk food, like almost all of it, the theme that goes between them is orange cheese powder. It's Cheetos, it's Doritos. My nostalgia was for that powder cheese packet. And so, when I started thinking about

what do I want from a stovetop mac and cheese, I always liked the butter, the milk, that kind of idea of a brew. I'm sure there's thickeners in with the orange cheese powder that gives it that. Yeah, exactly. They give it a little bit of body. And I wanted that. And I also just really liked the sharp saltiness of it which is how in my quick essential stovetop mac and cheese I actually use either all or part parmesan in it or pecorino because I felt like it had the salty impact where you didn't need as much of it to get that like pow that pop of cheesiness most of the time when I make it I use a mix of sharp white cheddar we're talking about orange cheddar but no I I use a mix of sharp white cheddar. We're talking

about orange cheddar, but no, I usually use a mix of like a sharp aged white cheddar and Parmesan or Pecorino, but I usually go half-half with it. But to me, I can use small amounts of that and get a nice cheesy salty pop without having to use a ton. But talk to me about your stovetop mac and cheese because you use different cheeses. And so, you know, so mine, you know, I use a three ingredient method and, you know, I was working on a recipe for serious eats for cacio e pepe for a while. And as you know, the difficulty in cacio e pepe is that the cheese tends to clump up. Right. And so, you know, the trick is you want like pretty concentrated

pasta water and then you kind of got to be a little bit delicate when you're adding the cheese in as far as heat goes so that you don't get the cheese all curdled and all clumpy but so I was thinking all right so I have this cacio e pepe recipe where I'm really concentrating the pasta water to get it a little bit extra starchy and then adding the cheese in off heat and twirling it around and it's essentially like it's a form of mac and cheese you know and so my idea was like okay well if we're doing it that way with cacio e pepe, can you make it, make the same technique work for a stovetop mac and cheese, like a gooier one, maybe by concentrating the starchy pasta water down even more. And then,

you know, being a little bit more careful when you add the cheese. And so, so that's what my, my three ingredient one is basically you cook pasta in a pot with water just enough to cover it. And you cook that water down until it basically all evaporates. And so all of the pasta water concentrates and all the starch that washes off the pasta stays in the pot. And that's what sort of forms what's essentially, you know, like a fat-free roux in the bottom of your pot that you can then stir evaporated milk and cheese into. So I made your quick essential stovetop mac and cheese. I made it. It was delicious.

I want to read the first comment on that piece on smittenkitchen.com. What comment is that, Kenji? The comment is from Sally T., who said on February 27th, 2018, my kids vastly prefer Annie's mac and cheese and Kraft to any homemade version that I make, which is truly ironic given how much I cook. For my daughter's fourth birthday, we tried the serious eats version of mac and cheese that is supposed to taste like Kraft, and it was a big fail. Nevertheless, I'll definitely try this one. Is this the 14-ingredient one or the three-ingredient one? She made that comment in 2018.

She was probably talking about my multi-ingredient mac and cheese recipe, which contains eggs and cornstarch and a bunch of other stuff. But I love that she compared mine to yours immediately right off the bat. Well, I made your three-ingredient mac and cheese, and let's talk more about that after the break. All right, welcome back to The Recipe with Deb and Kenji. Kenji, I made your very famous three-ingredient macaroni and cheese recipe. And I think it's a really unique recipe. I don't think there's any others like it or nothing else that I saw. And I want to talk

about why. And I have a few questions for you. So the main difference is that the existing recipes that are out there have you cook the pasta directly in milk and then stir season at the end. And I actually tested this when I was working on my recipe. And I took that step out because of foolproofing, because I found if you weren't careful, the milk would scorch. So your three ingredient mac and cheese is part of a can of evaporated milk. You use some grated mild or medium cheddar cheese or any good malting cheese. You say you can use Fontina, Gruyere, Jack, and then you've got uncooked pasta macaroni. And what I find so interesting about this, because this is a one pot recipe, like you're

not cooking the pasta separately and then making a sauce. It's all right in there, which is really a dream for speed. Almost every time I make a dish, no matter how fond over it is on the internet, how many times it's gone viral around the world, When the pasta is cooked in the sauce, something's always missing for me. There's always like an edge missing in the pasta, or I feel like it's a little gummy. If it's cooked directly in the sauce, you mean. But that didn't happen here. And I want to know how you pulled off this magic. So we start with, you've got your dried pasta, you just cover it with water and then you bring it up to a boil.

And so it does start by cooking in water. And that might be why the texture doesn't get that weird sort of soft edge gumminess. You basically add the sauce at the right time to not ruin the texture of the pasta, which is incredibly clever. So you knew this because you said you had tried to make mac and cheese recipes where you cook it in the milk and what had happened. instance, the sauce is acidic, right? And starches, like they don't soften the same way in acidic environments. And so, yeah, your pasta ends up taking longer to cook and also getting a little bit gummier than it does if you cook it in just plain water. Milk is generally not, you know, not particularly acidic unless it's very old milk. You don't really have that texture problem as much.

But the main reason I switched from milk to water is because the milk would scorch if you're not careful. Yeah, you have to stir it. It gets to, yes, it evaporates. And we don't really have that issue here, but I was so expecting it. So talk to me about the evaporated milk, because I feel like in a million years, I would have never thought to use evaporated milk. And I also don't know how many people keep it around. Is evaporated milk just milk that's been cooked down, maybe reduced by half, or is there more to it? Reduced by more than half, but yeah, ostensibly that's been like cooked down, maybe reduced by half?

Or is there more to it? Reduced by more than half. But yeah, ostensibly, it's just been cooked down and reduced. Although I think realistically, they take all the constituent parts of milk and then blend it back into some kind of, you know, franken milk. I think that's how they make it. Maybe the old fashioned way would be to actually boil it down. But now I think it's like they take milk protein and milk fat and mix it to the exact right ratio and then stick it in a can. It's really, I mean, it's a really interesting product. It must have come on the market as a way to, you know,

stabilize milk production, you know, have an inexpensive way that you could always have milk in the house if you hadn't gone to a store because our milk doesn't last long. And so is that how you just knew that it was going to work here? So the reason evaporated milk works so well is because, so there's milk proteins in there that help emulsify the cheese sauce. And when we say emulsion, we're talking about making sure that the fat in the cheese doesn't separate out from the liquid, and then making sure that the proteins in the cheese don't

all just clump together and turn into a stringy kind of mess that can happen. The higher the concentration of milk protein you have in there, the easier it is to form that emulsion. Just using a can of evaporated milk, I find, is a more foolproof, more reliable way to do that than to actually just try and boil the milk down yourself. If you didn't have it and you boiled the milk down, would it work or it's just not the same? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

You just have to be a lot more careful and make sure that the milk doesn't scald. But absolutely, you can use the same recipe and just swap water out at the beginning for milk and leave the evaporated milk out of the recipe. So basically cover the pasta with enough milk that you can boil it and then reduce that milk down until it's very concentrated and the pasta is fully cooked. And then you stir in cheese. But again, scientifically, it works to make this cheese sauce. But also because you're not cooking the whole thing and milk, you're cooking it in water for the first half. You end up having, you don't lose any of the creaminess because you're using

like double concentrate milk. So you feel like it tastes like it was cooked in milk, but without actually having the issues that come with it. Yes. And it's more reliable. So after you've cooked the pasta most of the way in the water and most of the water's gone, and then you add the evaporated milk and then you add your grated cheese. And I have to tell you, I trust you, Kenji, but I was like, there's no way this is going to work. There's no way this is going to work. It's going to curdle. Like you can't cook cheese. It doesn't work. Like it just splits. You know, what is cheese? It's like milk solids and fat. I mean, and that's what, and they just, it splits. That's

how you get those kind of clumpy bits and greasy bits. And you like think something's gone wrong. But in general, if you cook cheese, this is what's going to happen. You can make it like delicious and aesthetic by making like Frico cheese crisps. But in general, it's not going to, so I'm adding this cheese to this mixture and I'm cooking it. Cause for me, I'm going to add, when I usually add cheese to a recipe, I'm going to then take it off the stove or have it off the stove already, because I don't want it to split. But you let us keep cooking it. And I'm like, this is going to be a disaster. And it wasn't. It was so good. It came together. So it's all because of this evaporated milk? It's partly that. It's also the starchiness of

the pasta water. So when you're cooking pasta, there's starch from the pasta that leaches off into the water. When you toss pasta with sauce at the end, when you're about to serve it, you always want to add like a splash of the, of the reserved pasta water back into it to help it emulsify. It's the starch in there that's, that's helping it emulsify, you know, helps it thicken up a little bit. When you're cooking the pasta down in water and you're not draining it at the end, you know, you're just cooking the water down until it evaporates. None of the starch leaves. And so you have that really sort of hyper-concentrated pasta water in the bottom of the pot. So it's almost like making a bechamel, but without, you know, without the extra fat and without the extra step.

And you end up with a very thick, creamy, like really rich stovetop mac and cheese. Like it's really decadent. Yeah. Like a gooey, a gooey stovetop mac and cheese. It's really decadent. Yeah, like a gooey stovetop mac and cheese. I like to think if you do it right, it ends up kind of glossy. Definitely glossy. And there's definitely like, it looks iconic. I would take a picture of it with my phone and it'll look like it came out of a fancy restaurant or a food ad because it has that opacity, it has the orange. It has the thickness. You can barely see the definition of the pasta texture, which is a goal. And it's really incredible. So it was a big hit. So I've made it a bunch more times. I tend to play around. I tend to

use more of a white cheddar. And then I started working in some Parmesan because that's just my preferred sharpness. And I sometimes take down the amount of cheese just a little bit. But I do have fun playing with it. It's a really forgiving recipe. And it's incredibly clever. And again, it's one pot. I mean, mine's one pot too, but you're going to have to first go. Yours is one pot as well, yeah.

But you have to take the pasta out of the pot to make the sauce. That's true. People get annoyed when you say one pot and it's like, oh, but you also have to drain it. You know, it's like. Yes. So you mean one pot plus one col like, oh, but you also have to drain it. You know, it's like. Yes. So you mean one pot plus one colander. Well, that's the whole thing. You can have two pots and make things faster or you can have one pot and make things slower.

You just have to choose your culinary priorities sometimes. But I have a small quibble with your recipe. Oh, sure, sure. I like to hear quibbles. Kenji, why are you doing this to me personally? Why are you making me use six ounces of dry pasta? And I have a scale. I have multiple scales. It's not that. I can tell you why.

But I personally, like, I just have this thing, this kind of like twitchy thing where I need things to either match the package size or half the package size. I love a recipe with four tablespoons of butter or eight. Eight ounces of pasta or 16. Although I do break that own rule for mine because mine's a single serving. So it's four ounces. So the six ounces, it's not half and it's not quarter. You're right. And I have a kitchen scale. It's not an issue, but I just, could you, I just warmly you're among friends. Could you tell me why you did this to me? All right. A couple of things. So first of all, if you're using a scale to weigh your pasta,

you're being way fussier than I ever am. Welcome. I'm fussy. No, it's because it matches the evaporated milk container sizes. Those come in six ounces or 12 ounces. It's because I didn't want people to end up with like a little bit of some random amount of pasta leftover, have a better idea of what to do with that than some random amount of evaporated milk leftover. But, you know, I should have really just made it six amount of evaporated milk leftover. But, you know, I should have really just made it six ounces of evaporated milk and eight ounces of pasta,

and the recipe still works fine. I was actually going to say the whole can of milk, a whole box of pasta. Oh, yeah. If you do a 12 and a 16 ounce, sure. Yeah. So speaking of ratios of cheese to pasta, so one main way in which our recipes differ is that mine has an equal ratio of cheese to pasta, like a pound of cheese for a pound of pasta. Yours is more, it's like three to one. Yours has four ounces of pasta. This is for a single serving, four ounces of pasta and one ounce of Parmesan cheese. So you use a much sort of stronger flavored cheese, but a lot less of it. So your recipe, I made it as well. It's almost to me, the flavors are more like a cacio e pepe, right? Because it's black pepper and Parmesan, but unlike a cacio e pepe, it starts with a bechamel. So you're essentially making a real

cheese sauce, like a French style, like a Mornay sauce, right? I love this flavor of this bechamel, this sauce, because I feel like you get that kind of richness from the dairy. You get the little bit of butter in there. And because I'm using such a sharp cheese, I just find that you don't need as much. I mean, obviously, you can go a little bit over, but I always felt like I got the right cheese intensity because it's a very aged cheese with like a very good bite to it. I also love the idea of building it on Parmesan first and foremost or Pecorino because I feel like people often have these at home, often even pre-grated. You can add a little garlic.

You can add more butter. I also very often use, I usually split it between a sharp white cheddar and Parmesan too for more of a classic flavor. split it between a sharp white cheddar and parmesan too for more of a classic flavor. But yeah, for me, this was exactly what I wanted. Just like a thickened buttery sauce with a good cheesy sharp impact. For me, it was just I wanted to create a simple, impactful cheese sauce. I wanted it to be really easy. And I kind of, even though you could probably riff on this without a recipe, I really like getting the recipe exactly right. And then you can just scale it up to the amount you want to make. Right. Which works, I think, better with yours because yours, you're building the sauce separately, whereas mine kind of relies on that evaporation effect and it's a little harder to scale. Tell me about bechamel sauces in general

and why you chose a bechamel for this particular version. A bechamel is one of the mother sauces of French cuisine. It's basically a roux, you know, butter and flour mixture, which you cook together, and then you add milk. And often, you often see virgins with like a little nutmeg in, but it's one of these classic sauces that's foundational. I think it becomes a Mornay sauce when you add cheese to it. But I did not get trained in cooking in France. So I'm going to just nod and be like, that sounds right. No, I think it's a Mornay sauce when you add cheese. But to me, I always felt like that was the flavor behind the box cheese sauce. Like when you're adding butter to this powder, butter and

milk, and the powder has some thickener in it. I felt like that was what you were doing. And I felt like that was the best way to get it. And as I said, when they started using those deluxe cheese packets, I felt like I was missing that buttery flavor. Like it didn't taste, I didn't get the butter. I meant it for the butter. I meant it for the butter and the sharp cheese. Right, right, right. Because I think those deluxe ones, in fact, I'm pretty sure the powder also has it, but those rely on sodium citrate, which is like an emulsifying salt. It's the salt that has the chemical formula that spells nacho. You know, it's like sodium. Oh, really? Yeah. It's like, I can't remember. The stuff I would only learn from you. It's the salt that has the chemical formula that spells nacho. You know, it's like sodium. Yeah, it's like, I can't remember what stuff I would only learn from you. That's amazing. It's like NA6C5H307 or something like that. I can't remember the exact numbers,

but it spells nacho. It's used by companies as partly to get that sort of glossy gooey texture, but also as a cost saving measure, because you can make nacho cheese sauce that's like, you know, 90% water as opposed to, you know, it'll be a mixture of water and oil that's emulsified as opposed to actual, you know, dairy, which is more expensive than just vegetable oil and water. I think that's part of what, why you're missing that buttery flavor because there's probably literally less dairy in there. And for me, I really wanted to taste like better than boxed while having utter respect for boxed and feeling like it's a perfect product. Using good cheese, good butter, you can really get so much more flavor out of it. But even if you're just using grocery store butter and like pre-grated

Parmesan, I guarantee you're going to find it to have a more like nuanced flavor. Yes. So I found yours to taste like what a lesser blogger would have described as adult mac and cheese. But you, to your credit, did not use the word adult in there at all. No, there's no grownups in this room right now. But, you know, it's still obviously very, very simple. But there's a little bit more technique involved in it because you got to make your bechamel sauce and you got to make sure your cheese doesn't curdle when you add it in there. your cheese doesn't curdle when you add it in there. I think the perfect hybrid of our recipes, not that anyone else,

is I think that we use the pasta cooking method of yours. We use the evaporated milk for me. Like I've got to have like a knob of butter in there. And then I use the white cheddar and Parmesan combo, mostly cheddar. That for me is like, I can get a little bit of that butteriness. But the technique for yours is just so cool that you get to do away with.

If someone's trying to come up with a master recipe, but I think what really people need to do is they need to make boltereras. One thing I do want to talk about is like cheese choices. You know, like for example, like Deb's recipe I think works better with sharper cheeses. So if you try and use like a Parmesan or like a super extra sharp cheddar in my recipe, it'll come out grainy because there's not like enough emulsifying help in there. For mine, you could really add a little more cheese and you could add a little more sauce. You could use less pasta, more sauce.

You can play around and it's pretty forgiving of adjustments. But Kenji, could I do your, because I've definitely done yours where I've added a little bit of Parmesan and some white cheddar, but I probably can't use all that in it. No. So yeah. So my recipe, the sort of the emulsifying power in there is not extremely great. And so, so you wouldn't want to do something like a very extra sharp cheddar, you know, somewhere like a, or like a pure Parmesan, something, you know, a harder cheese, generally like the, the more aged cheese and the harder and the crumblier it is, the more flavor it's going to have, but also the more difficult it's going to be to incorporate it into a sort of smooth sauce.

And so my recipe, you really want to stick with things like a milder cheddar, maybe a medium cheddar or an American cheese or like a Fontina. Whereas Deb, your recipe, you know, you use a bechamel. And so you can get away with using like a really much more flavorful cheese. So I feel like if you're a home cook and you're looking at these two recipes and you're thinking, which one do I want? I think mine is sort of the milder, gooier one, whereas yours is the one where you can really pick whatever cheese you want. And if you really want to use that high end, like, you know, that seven year old cheddar cheese that turns into a shard when you poke at it, it'll still work in yours. Homemade macaroni and cheese makes a hit.

And it's simple with Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner. Only a nickel a serving, too. You get tender macaroni and new, improved Kraft grated that makes Kraft dinner golden with rich cheddar flavor. When I was digging into research, I did not know that Kraft macaroni and cheese was originally called Kraft dinner. So it's just dinner, like the utter confidence of being like, this is your whole dinner.

Kenji, do you think mac and cheese by itself is dinner? I think on the days that I that I resort to pulling out a box of Kraft mac and cheese from the pantry, it is absolutely dinner. I can't remember the last time I made mac and cheese where I didn't add something to it. For us, the default is frozen peas because my daughter loves frozen peas and I love frozen peas. And usually it'll be either ham or maybe some leftover chicken or something like that. But frozen peas and definitely broccoli are very, very common mac and cheese additions for us. Wait, you put that in?

Yeah, directly into the mac and cheese. My kids would call the cops on me. The one time I put broccoli in the mac and cheese and I was like, look at me. I'm like, and my kids like broccoli and they like mac and cheese. And I was like, I really thought I was onto something and they would not touch it. Like they were so betrayed by this mac and cheese. Now, did you always feel that mac and cheese required peas or broccoli or something else in it? Did adulthood ruin the purity of mac and cheese required peas or broccoli or something else in it? Did adulthood ruin the purity of mac and cheese for us? Or is it better with other stuff in it?

Because I'm pretty sure as a kid or even in college, I was never like, oh, my God, there isn't a green vegetable in this meal. So it's not correct yet. No, I mean, the peas we do just because we like peas. I'd be fine without it. It's not like a health reason. I don't follow like a, you got to have every food group, you know, in every single meal. I'm like, look at me imagining that you couldn't possibly put peas in mac and cheese for any other reason than you thought it was virtuous. I'm like,

sorry, but my biases are showing. You know, I love, you know, before I put the pasta in the water, I'll usually throw in some broccoli florets or something like that, or green beans, something to cook, scoop it out, do the pasta, and then go from there. So I am cooking two parts of the meal in one pot. Well, I can tell you from the early days of Serious Eats, this must have been circa 2010 or so, but we did one with mac and cheese where it was like, I don't know, 17 ways to amp your mac or something, internet speak from the mid 2000s. That was one of the most popular articles.

And it was all just like things you can add to your macaroni and cheese. There was like an internet famous video of some like drunk, very entitled looking college kid getting mad at a cafeteria worker because they were out of bacon and jalapeno mac and cheese. And we definitely put that bacon and pickled jalapeno in there, which are good additions to mac and cheese. Pickled jalapenos in particular go really well. I think it would be really good. I think you just can't cook the pickle. Well, that's one of the things about stovetop mac and cheese is you want most of your additions to be things that you can just stir in at the end. At the end. Yeah. So Kenji, what do you do when you have leftovers for mac and cheese? I tend to just microwave it and hope for the best,

but usually the texture is not as good as the first day. Right. Yeah. So the issue with macaroni and cheese, in fact, it's like the same issue you get with when you add noodles to chicken noodle soup and you let it sit in the fridge overnight. You know, it's that the pasta just continues to... It drinks up all your hard work. Exactly. So the same thing happens in mac and cheese. It's like the pasta just continues to absorb liquid water. And so the ratio of like water to fat to protein gets all thrown off, which is why it ends up kind of sometimes curdling and sometimes a little chunky. But really all you got to do is just add more water to it

or some kind of liquid to it. I usually either add a splash of milk to loosen it back up or a splash of water works okay. Also a splash of heavy cream. I actually just heat it up and I kind of like the different texture. I wouldn't want it on the first day, but I feel like I'm okay with it having a little more of a, I don't know. Like a loafy texture? Yeah. I mean, you can also kind of

have fun with it. But something my mom used to do, my mom used to always take leftover spaghetti and she would fry it in a pan with some butter, just a little bit, and then she would add some garnish on it. And it was so good. It was so good. So I don't mind it when it gets some crunchy edges to it. So anytime i post i post like a recipe or an article or whatever about how to do something leftover like i guarantee you like one of the first five comments on there is going to be leftover mac and cheese what is that hilarious leftover whatever what is that that's just like the generic internet recipe comment it doesn't matter how small the portion is somebody always asks me many people always

ask me if they can freeze something. Yes. Which I totally understand when it's a giant ziti bean. I'm like, this is a single serving mac and cheese. Can you freeze it? Maybe. So going back to your mom's fried spaghetti, if you have like mac and cheese leftover, do you ever just like slice it and fry it in a skillet with like butter or oil? I have definitely done it and it's really good. Like it's messy, but it's good. And then the other question is, have you ever stuck it in a skillet with like butter or oil? I have definitely done it and it's really good. Like it's messy, but it's good. And then the other question is, have you ever stuck it in a waffle iron? I have not waffled it.

Have you waffled mac and cheese? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like that's the baked kind you would want to waffle. No, you can waffle stovetop mac and cheese, at least day old stovetop mac and cheese. Okay. You cut a slice out. That's like the thickness of like a slice of thick bread, you know? Okay. And then you stick that in the waffle iron. I think we figured it out. We're going to have to end every episode with a will it waffle. Okay. Will it waffle, will it

tortilla? Yeah. Yeah. Can you fry it in a pan with butter? Those are the three questions I want to do about every food. All right. Well, that was the first episode of The Recipe. Thank you for joining us. The Recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions. Edwin Ochoa is the project manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Martavich.

And Yuri Lissardo is the director manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Martovich, and Yuri Lissardo is the director of network operations. If you liked what you hear and you want to find out more about the show or if you have suggestions for upcoming episodes, you can visit us at therecipepodcast.com or follow us on Instagram at Kenji and Deb and shoot us a message.

And we now have a phone number where you can call us. It's 202-709-7607 and you can leave us a voicemail. Thanks for listening. The Recipe with Kenji and Deb is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned,

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