Runnier/gooier Cheese Sauce For Mac
A quick, stove-top only, super easy macaroni cheese recipe that only takes 10 to 15 minutes tops from start to finish. No baking, no flour, no roux. Just a simple, but equally tasty, cream cheese based recipe. The sauce is made from Greek yogurt, your fave cheese, onion and garlic powder, and some starchy water from cooking the pasta. That's right: no butter, no flour, nothing heavy, yet still so gooey.
The motivation of this experiment was to examine what goes into making the best an d gooiest mac and cheese. Specifically this experiment was an investigation of the qestion! What type of cheese creates the best mac and cheese concerning taste! C onsistency! And creaminess' Seeing as mac & cheese is a hosehold favorite and the most commonly known comfort food! We felt that answering this qestion cold lead to a better more consistent mac & cheese dinner and maybe even bring the comfort levels p for whoever may be consming this delicios meal.
To answer this initial qestion qantitative and qalitative tests were condcted. Seen in the reslts below! A taste test was performed along with a viscosity test condcted with a homemade consistometer. T o narrow the breadth of reslts and make a more manageable comparison!
Two cheeses were chosen for the experiments! Goda and chedda r!
Two mac and cheese favorites. #t was fond throgh these tests that goda is generally a more desirable cheese concerning taste and textre. $dditionally it was determined that goda has a higher viscosity than cheddar!
Meaning it has a more liqidy consistency.%oth viscosities were relatively low! So they were still extremely g ooey. hen comparing the taste test reslts to the viscosities determined! It can be assmed that generally a mac and che ese with a slightly thicker cheese sace sch as a god a based mac and che ese is more desirable. These reslts can be helpfl for $merican's everywhere wishing to make their own mac and cheeses bt being nsre what cheese to se.
(rther taste testing wold be helpfl in creating a more accrate representation of the cheese preference of a greater poplation. $long with frther taste testing we wold have liked to perform tests with other types of cheese this wa y we cold have a larger range of data! Leaving the reader more edcated abot their cheeses.
The prpose of this investigation in its most simplified form! Is to find the gooiest cheese for se in mac & cheese. Mac & cheese is a favorite food and a comfort food for many people! So why not explore some of the preferences of the consmer! And find the gooiest cheese. $long with that first goal we will also be considering the taste! When we collect or qalitative data.
#n order to measre the gooeyness of the different cheeses sed dring this investigation we will measre the viscosity of each of the cheeses. )iscosi ty is measred in.ascal+ seconds. The higher the viscosity means the harder it is for the flid to flow! Lower the viscosity the easier it is to flow! (inding the viscosity of the different cheeses is critical becase all cheeses have different characteristics that can affect flavor and sharpness.,ifferent cheeses also melt in different ways! Yong -oda is a good melting cheese!
Whereas a cheese like (eta is not a good melting cheese. This is becase of mltiple factors! Bt generally the yonger and more moist the cheese is the better it will melt. $ll of thes e things are considered to find the best possible mac & che ese in a controlled environment.,ring the investigation we will be completing a few important tasks. Samsung srp-770 drivers for mac. We will be making mac & cheese. We will be condcting pblic taste tests to collect qalitative data on the two d ifferent dishes.
The different dishes will be presented in the same way. The original recipe will be called Mac & Cheese $/ the recipe with -oda will be called 0Mac & Cheese%./ This is to remove any bias that the creator may have that cold sway the opinions of the taste testers. 1ach of the things that were tested for as qalitative data were defined in a certain way to remove as many discrepancies in perception as. 1ach qestion was answered with a one to five rating. Taste and color had no definitions since both were thoght to be fairly simple qestions.ooeyness was defined as the stickiness and creaminess of the cheese. Textre was defined as the feeling that each cheese has on yor tonge.
a s it lmpy or was it smooth and creamy' $long with the qalitative testing that was listed above certain tasks mst be completed in order to find the viscosity of each of the cheeses. e m st bild a consistometer.
T his mechanism allows s to calclate the viscosity of the two cheese saces so that we can then tell the world which cheese is the gooiest and best for mac & cheese making. $ consistometer is a mechanism with 2.3 cm markings that can be sed to find the viscosity of a liqid. $ consistometer works by releasing a door that allows the sbstance to flow down the channel becase of the forces of gravity. hen the door releases a timer is started for thirty seconds. hen the timer is p!
The distance the sbstance moved is recorded. Then we know the viscosity of the flid.
For years I relied on a tweaked version of a well-known recipe for custard style mac & cheese. What I love about custard style is how easy it is to throw everything in the same pan and bake it. It was cheesy and deliciously comforting and always pleased whatever crowd I served. It was perfect for barbecues and holidays when I was doing a lot of cooking and the last thing I wanted to be doing was whisking lumps out of a white sauce.
The original recipe called for a considerable amount of Velveeta in it. Say what you will about Velveeta, but it has its place in a handful of trashy traditional dishes. I’m not here to debate that or deny that I’ve ever enjoyed them. However, what I can’t feel good about is including processed cheese in what I’d consider one of my signature dishes. Despite my best efforts, nothing I tested really ever came close to giving my custard style mac & cheese the same gooey melt. If I wanted a creamy baked mac & cheese, it was going to be necessary to return to the traditional way of going about itmaking a roux.
Runnier/gooier Cheese Sauce For Mac N Cheese
Just as I was ready to throw in the towel and go back to Velveeta, my mom inadvertently saved the day. On this particular night, she had cooked a batch of mac & cheese to take to a neighborhood party (she does a version of my custard-style recipe) On her way out, she let me know that there was extra cheese and a box of noodles leftover if I wanted to make some for dinner. Now, if there's one thing my mom and I don't see eye to eye on it's often food, specifically on spending extra money for gourmet or organic ingredients. So I knew when she said there was extra cheese leftover, it would be the basics and to be honest I wasn't too excited about it.
I nodded and went right back to settling in front of the TV for the night. Well, it didn't take long for that nagging voice baby in my head belly to tell me to get off the couch and figure out what to eat. Now that I'm living back home with my family, I rarely get the kitchen to myself on the weekends, which can make it a little hard to get 'in my zone' when I need to work.
I decided to take advantage of this quiet night and try to finalize my recipe. I looked in the fridge and sure enough saw a big block of store brand cheddar cheese and Muenster. I dug a little deeper and found half a block of pepper jack and some grated Parmesan leftover from my last batch of gourmet mac & cheese. No half & half, but we had organic whole milk.
Regular elbow noodles, not the brand name Cavatappi I'd taken a liking to. Regular flour was all we had left, as I had used up all the at Thanksgiving. It wasn't much to work with (quality-wise), but as far as quantity goes it was exactly enough ingredients to make a full recipe. I took that as a sign and went to work. A surprisingly satisfying, amazingly creamy, flavorful baked mac & cheese that I would be proud to serve at any event.
So.maybe my mom was right (this time) and I didn't need to use anything more than 'regular' cheese after all to make a good mac & cheese. I'm not going to say I'll never find the need to put a gourmet spin on this for special occasions, but I will say that it's kind of cool not having to drop $50 on five cheeses that to be honest, the average person isn't going to distinguish from one another. All that practice wasn't for naught though, as getting the right technique down is ultimately what helped me perfect my recipe, and that's what I hope you take away from this more than anything else. Classic mac & cheese certainly isn't a quick dish to make, and I'd hesitate calling it easy, but it's one that's worth taking your time to make right! Seasonings are what will set your mac & cheese apart from the rest. I used to rely on seasoning salt, but I've found that most have a tad bit too much garlic powder that takes away from the dish.
For that reason, I add salt, paprika, and black pepper separately. Mustard, cayenne and Worcestershire sauce all work together to cut through the richness of the cheese and bring out its flavor. The onion and bay leaf add subtle depth to the cheese sauce when steeped in the warming milk, and combining parmesan cheese with seasoned panko bread crumbs adds a nice crunchy salty finish than bread crumbs do alone. Finally, buy whole nutmeg and grate it fresh for your dishes using a microplane grater. Pre-grated nutmeg tends to have lost much of its flavor. To your small saucepan add all 5 ½ cups of milk, the peeled onion (cut in half), and the bay leaf. On medium low heat, gently warm the milk until it is steaming hot but not boiling, then reduce heat to simmer.
Only 5 cups is needed for the sauce; the extra ½ cup of milk accounts for what is lost through evaporation and straining. The bay leaf and onion should steep for 10 minutes or so in hot milk before adding to the roux, so time yourself accordingly. I taste a bit of the milk after it's warmed; you should be able to detect the hint of bay leaf and onion. When all of the milk has been incorporated you'll have a thin white sauce.
Now, here's the trick that I learned in my research and ended up using. If despite your best efforts, you still end up with a few lumps in your sauce, the easiest and fastest way to fix this is using an immersion (stick) blender to blend your sauce. Who would have thought? It's such a convenient and inexpensive tool to add to your kitchen! Of course, you could resort to whisking your life away or create a mess straining the sauce or transferring it to an upright blender, but trust me.the immersion blender is a life saver. When done, the cheese sauce will have thickened up and be absorbed by the noodles.
It is creamy and silky and everything a custard style mac & cheese could never quite be! All of the flavors add to the dish without any standing out more than the other; even the peppers in the pepper jack add just the right amount of heat to complement the rich cheddar cheese. The whole milk imparts a lovely richness to the mac & cheese without being too heavy, and the light crusty topping is a beautiful textural contrast to the creamy noodles inside. Comfort food is my passion and my life revolves around the kitchen! I'm a self-taught home cook, food blogger, recipe developer, food photographer and mom of two residing in Virginia. The Kitchenista Diaries has been my home since 2012, where I've shared my personal journey from accountant to culinary entrepreneur. I'm all about taking home cooked meals to the next level.
Runnier/gooier Cheese Sauce For Mac And Cheese
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