Homemade Mac N Cheese

Comfort Food At Its Best

 Warm up with homemade macaroni and cheese,

with just a hint of smoky flavor

and a little bite of chipotle peppers.

 

Well, now I've done it - I can never go back to the foil pouch of orange goo again!

As another kitchen challenge, I tried my hand at making homemade macaroni and cheese. Be warned; you won't want to eat it any other way. It's really fairly easy and doesn't require fancy ingredients (depending on just how fancy your mac and cheese will be) but it does take a little time, as do most things that are worth the extra effort.

 

Two things to remember to make great homemade macaroni and cheese: start with the best cheese you can get (obviously!) and slightly undercook the macaroni.

 

For the best cheese, grab a block and start shredding it by hand. No pre-packaged shredded cheese in a bag. It is coated in anti-caking agents and doesn't make the most optimal cheese sauce. Plus, shredding your own cheese is more cost-effective in the long run. For this recipe, I chose an apple and hardwood smoked Gouda cheese, and a sharp chipotle Cheddar cheese. I prefer strong, sharp flavors in macaroni and cheese but the choice of cheese is up to you.

 

Ingredients:

2 cups dry macaroni noodles

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

1-1/2 cups milk (whole milk, or a very good 2% milk like Oberweis)

1 teaspoon dry mustard (Colman's)

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon salt

freshly ground black pepper to taste

3/4 pound cheese, shredded

 

Directions:

First, cook the dry macaroni noodles. Most package cooking directions will suggest cooking for 8 to 10 minutes. To get the best results for macaroni and cheese, however, you'll want to cook the macaroni for a little less time, about 7 minutes. Otherwise, you will have mushy macaroni in the finished dish; it has to stand up to combining with the cheese sauce and baking in the oven for about half an hour. So, undercook slightly, drain and rinse with hot water. Set aside.

 

Beat the egg in a small bowl and set aside.

 

Next, make a simple roux to begin the cheese sauce. Melt butter in a large saucepan and quickly whisk in the flour until it is completely incorporated. Slowly whisk in the milk and cook, whisking constantly over medium-low heat, until the mixture has thickened. Stir in the dry mustard.

 

Add the egg by first adding 3 tablespoons of sauce to the beaten egg in the small bowl. Whisk very quickly - this is called tempering the mixture. If you were to add the egg directly to the large pan of sauce, the egg would cook almost immediately and you would have little bits of scrambled egg in your sauce. Not quite the way it's supposed to work!

And why the egg, anyway? The egg mainly serves as a binding ingredient, allowing you to more neatly cut your mac and cheese into squares. If you don't mind your mac and cheese spilling out everywhere in freeform cheesy glory on your plate, you can omit the egg.

Above: tempering the egg.

 

When the tempered egg mixture is nice and smooth, add it to the sauce. Stir in salt and freshly ground pepper. And then... stir in all that glorious shredded cheese and keep stirring until smooth and totally incorporated in the sauce. Reserve about a half of a cup for sprinkling on top of the mac and cheese before it goes in the oven.

Butter a 2 to 2.2 quart baking dish. Pour the macaroni and cheese into the dish and top with the reserved shredded cheese. You can also use dried bread crumbs or cracker crumbs, but I really just like lots of extra cheese on top. It will become nicely browned after baking in the oven!

 

Bake the macaroni and cheese uncovered in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes, then turn up the oven temperature to 375 degrees for 5 to 10 minutes to lightly brown the shredded cheese topping. It's finished when everything is bubbling hot!

Approximately 6 servings. 

 

Cheesy detail of "Better With Age" by Lonesome Road Gallery.



Lonesome Road Kitchen Challenge: French Onion Soup

Cold... icy... snowy...you need comfort and you need it now.

 

You need homemade soup.

From scratch.

A soul-satisfying, steaming bowl of fragrant homemade soup made with lots of TLC, what better way to celebrate the cozy cocooning of the long winter months?

If you're like me, you love to experiment with all sorts of new ideas, but mastering the classics is a challenge in its own right. To make it even more compelling, sometimes the classics become a little... cliched. Rushed. Or pushed aside in favor of a trend. Morphed into something they were never meant to be: overly processed, lacking in fresh quality ingredients and unrecognizable in their current state.

Who hasn't had a cup of the local restaurant's version of French Onion Soup of the Day? A salty brown liquid tinted with caramel coloring, with giant hunks of tough old onions and pre-made onion-powdery croutons from a resealable bag with a shelf life of three years?

You deserve better. Reacquaint yourself with the real French onion soup, an old favorite that, when made as it should, will warm your tummy and your heart and make you wonder why you ever settled for less.

First of all, start off with the best beef stock you can. That is, make your own. It's not difficult. Get a couple of large beef soup bones at the store, and add some celery stalks with fresh leafy tops, a couple of cloves of garlic, an onion (peeled and quartered) and a large leek; parsley and black peppercorns. A couple of medium-sized carrots are nice, too, but keep in mind that carrots do make a stock or broth taste a little sweet.

If you're really trying to be frugal, freeze leftover beef bones from cooked bone-in roasts and steaks to use later for your beef stock. 

Cover the whole tasty melange with 8 cups of fresh water and let it simmer, partly covered, for as long as you have time. The longer the better, but even a little bit is preferable to using store-bought stock. A couple of hours is a good place to start.

If you have an extra day, let the finished stock cool down and store it overnight in the refrigerator so you can skim off any fat that will rise to the top. Carefully strain it and discard the vegetables.  

The difference between "stock" and "broth?" Generally, stock is made with meat and bones; broth is made primarily with meat only.

The next thing to remember about making fantastic homemade French onion soup is to slowly and patiently caramelize the onions.

Thinly slice two large yellow onions and three small leeks (white parts only). Many people add garlic to French onion soup, but I prefer adding leeks, with their complex flavor somewhere between onions and garlic, and their amazing aroma. Heat two or three tablespoons of olive oil in a large soup pot and add the onions and leeks, cooking over medium-low heat until evenly browned (not burned).

When onions are perfectly caramelized (about 30 to 40 minutes), add six cups of beef stock, two bay leaves, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves, and salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. I know that many people add adventurous seasonings to French onion soup, but I like to keep it simple and let the flavors of the homemade beef stock and richly caramelized onions shine through.

Simmer everything together for at least an hour, then add three tablespoons of sherry or dry white wine and let the alcohol cook off a bit. (The wine is totally optional but adds so much to the flavor of the finished soup, in my opinion.)

Discard bay leaves before serving.

To serve, either spoon the French onion soup into ovenproof crockery bowls and top with a slice of toasted French bread smothered in cheese (preferably Gruyere, Fontina, Provolone, and a sprinkle of freshly grated Parmesan). Briefly broil until cheese is bubbly. Or, if you don't have ovenproof soup bowls, you can simply broil the bread and cheese on a baking sheet and drop into the hot bowl of soup.

Another option, if you're serving several people, is to pour the soup into a large ovenproof casserole dish and cover the top with toasted French bread slices and cheese, then briefly broil until cheese is bubbly.

Makes approximately five to six servings.

"Ooh La La" by Angie Cornelius at Lonesome Road Gallery.

Soup, bread and cheese... what could be more gratifying on a cold winter day? Even better that it was created with love in your own kitchen from first-rate ingredients and techniques!

cheap eats - the comfort food edition

Chilly Nights and Frost on the Pumpkin...

it's time to put on a big, comforting pot of hot lentil & sausage soup!

I literally do not eat soup in warmer weather; being someone who is fussy about seasonal foods, temperatures and the like, I can't just sit down to a hot steaming bowl of soup when it's 90 degrees outside. But in the fall, that all changes, I can't get enough warming, homey soup!

Lentil soup is one of my favorite comfort foods, especially when it's prepared with spinach for added flavor, vitamins and iron. Since lentils do not require soaking it's actually very quick to prepare and so full of fiber, high in protein, and low in fat. And, the price is right too; a bag of dried lentils costs around $1.50 and will make so many delicious main dishes in less time than it takes to go out and grab a big, fattening, artery-clogging burger and fries.

Ingredients:

• 12 oz. Italian sausage, cut into slices (I use turkey Italian sausage but you can use a traditional pork sausage, or even seasoned veggie crumbles)
• 1-1/2 cups dried lentils, picked over and rinsed briefly
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 large cloves garlic, minced
• 8 cups vegetable or chicken broth
• 10 oz. package of frozen chopped spinach
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• one large russet potato, chopped (I leave on the peel for more nutrition)

Begin by browning the sausage slices in a large soup pot; turkey sausage and veggie crumbles will yield little or no extra fat so you will probably have to add a bit of olive oil after browning in order to cook the onion and garlic.

Cook onion and garlic until wilted then add the lentils, broth, spinach and seasonings. Bring to a medium boil then turn down to a medium-low simmer. Partly cover and simmer for about 45 minutes; taste seasoning and correct if necessary (the amount of thyme and basil you use will depend on the seasonings in the sausage, and the amount of salt you need will be determined by the broth used).

Add the chopped potato and cook until potato is tender (another 20 to 30 minutes or so). Serve steaming hot with crusty French bread and butter. A sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan cheese is a nice touch for the soup, or some crispy homemade garlic croutons.

Makes about six servings.