[upbeat groovy music]<\/p>\n
I’m Chef Claire Malfitano,<\/p>\n
the chef de cuisine for Murray’s Cheese,<\/p>\n
and today I’m gonna show you how to make the world’s<\/p>\n
best mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
[bell dinging]<\/p>\n
Here at our Bleecker Street location,<\/p>\n
the flagship store,<\/p>\n
we make upwards of 30 tons of mac and cheese every year.<\/p>\n
We’re bringing our expertise in cheese to mac and cheese,<\/p>\n
so we’re very intentional<\/p>\n
with the ingredients that we choose,<\/p>\n
whether it be the pasta,<\/p>\n
the cheeses that we shred for inside,<\/p>\n
and the way that we prepare the mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
[smooth groovy music]<\/p>\n
For our cheese sauce,<\/p>\n
we’ll start by infusing some whole milk with aromatics,<\/p>\n
and that fat that you get in the whole milk<\/p>\n
is really gonna add flavor, but it also isn’t too fatty<\/p>\n
so that it will break the sauce.<\/p>\n
Using onion is a great way to infuse some flavor<\/p>\n
that’s a little bit of a kick.<\/p>\n
The thyme really adds some savory notes,<\/p>\n
some herbiness that we need.<\/p>\n
Just to layer, I think these two flavors<\/p>\n
really complement cheddar.<\/p>\n
We’re making a sachet, so I’m just adding the sliced onion,<\/p>\n
and then I’ll add the thyme to some cheesecloth,<\/p>\n
and that’s just gonna make the infusion very easy.<\/p>\n
And when I’m ready to remove<\/p>\n
and feel the flavor’s been imparted enough,<\/p>\n
I can just pull it out.<\/p>\n
And we really just wanna put it over medium-low heat.<\/p>\n
We’re not trying to bring it to a boil.<\/p>\n
It’s really below a simmer.<\/p>\n
I would just stir it occasionally because you will see<\/p>\n
that the milk could stick to the bottom.<\/p>\n
Infusing the milk really adds flavors<\/p>\n
at the very start of the recipe.<\/p>\n
Really, any recipe,<\/p>\n
you wanna build flavor from the beginning.<\/p>\n
Now that the milk is infused,<\/p>\n
we’ll begin our roux by melting some butter.<\/p>\n
A roux is a thickening agent.<\/p>\n
It really just allows for a sauce to thicken.<\/p>\n
Once it’s fully melted, we’ll begin adding the flour.<\/p>\n
You really wanna stir;<\/p>\n
make sure you’re getting everything mixed together.<\/p>\n
You’re honestly going for almost<\/p>\n
what looks like an applesauce texture.<\/p>\n
This is gonna add some structure and stability to the sauce<\/p>\n
that really helps it coat the pasta.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna begin bubbling, and I’ve always been taught<\/p>\n
that it smells like Christmas cookies,<\/p>\n
and that’s how you know that a blond roux is done.<\/p>\n
So we’ve been cooking the roux for about five minutes.<\/p>\n
You can see that we’ve achieved this texture<\/p>\n
that almost looks like pancake batter.<\/p>\n
So this is the exact color that we want.<\/p>\n
Now that our roux is ready,<\/p>\n
our next step will be adding in the infused milk.<\/p>\n
We wanna make sure we’re stirring the whole time,<\/p>\n
otherwise, it could get lumpy.<\/p>\n
You do wanna have a plastic spatula handy<\/p>\n
just to scrape the side so you don’t get<\/p>\n
pieces of roux like that stuck.<\/p>\n
It will thicken up very quickly,<\/p>\n
and that will give us a bechamel.<\/p>\n
Bechamel is just cooked milk that’s been thickened<\/p>\n
and infused with aromatics.<\/p>\n
There’s no shame in eating boxed mac and cheese at home.<\/p>\n
I’m a big fan.<\/p>\n
That’s what I grew up with.<\/p>\n
And I would say you can easily doctor it up<\/p>\n
by adding, like, sour cream, cottage cheese,<\/p>\n
another shredded cheese that you love,<\/p>\n
and really amping up the cheesiness.<\/p>\n
So it’s been about seven minutes<\/p>\n
since we infused the milk into the roux.<\/p>\n
We’ve been patiently stirring,<\/p>\n
and now we’ve got a great thickness.<\/p>\n
You can see it’s not dripping like water.<\/p>\n
It’s having more resistance and clinging to the whisk.<\/p>\n
Now we can make this bechamel into a Mornay sauce.<\/p>\n
Mornay sauce is just a fancy word for cheese sauce.<\/p>\n
So high-moisture mozzarella melts really, really nicely,<\/p>\n
and the flavor isn’t overpowering,<\/p>\n
and that’s what makes it a great blank canvas.<\/p>\n
We’ll add more shredded mozzarella in later<\/p>\n
when we mix our pasta and sauce together.<\/p>\n
And that is really for the cheese pull<\/p>\n
and less about the flavor.<\/p>\n
We’ll add some cream cheese.<\/p>\n
It really adds a nice tanginess and acidity.<\/p>\n
Really balances out the salt,<\/p>\n
takes away any sweetness<\/p>\n
that might be present from the cooked milk.<\/p>\n
So we’re just making sure that the cream cheese<\/p>\n
is fully melted.<\/p>\n
So it didn’t look too thick<\/p>\n
when we removed it from the stove,<\/p>\n
but now, adding the cheese, the cream cheese,<\/p>\n
it’s really added a lot of body to the sauce,<\/p>\n
and that’s really gonna cling to the pasta.<\/p>\n
Takes a little arm strength.<\/p>\n
It’s really almost like a cake batter at this point.<\/p>\n
Worked out all those lumps, and now we can add the mustard.<\/p>\n
The acidity really lightens it up.<\/p>\n
It makes it possible for you to eat<\/p>\n
a good helping of mac and cheese in one sitting.<\/p>\n
I am gonna add kosher salt as well.<\/p>\n
So we’re gonna hit really a lot of different flavors,<\/p>\n
and that will create complexity in the sauce.<\/p>\n
I think another mistake that people make in the kitchen<\/p>\n
is not tasting their food as they go.<\/p>\n
So I think that’s perfect.<\/p>\n
A pro tip that we do recommend<\/p>\n
if you’re using your sauce today, like we are,<\/p>\n
is to make a cartouche<\/p>\n
to avoid a skin developing on top of the sauce.<\/p>\n
From here, we’ll start cooking the pasta<\/p>\n
so we can mix our mac and cheese and bake it in the oven.<\/p>\n
[smooth groovy music] [pasta clattering]<\/p>\n
Here at Murray’s Cheese, we use radiatori pasta<\/p>\n
for our mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
As you can see, it’s shaped like an old-timey radiator,<\/p>\n
and those grooves really allow<\/p>\n
for maximum cheese sauce coverage.<\/p>\n
It’s very important to salt your water<\/p>\n
before cooking your pasta.<\/p>\n
You wanna be very generous with your salt.<\/p>\n
I’d say close to a tablespoon per quart of water.<\/p>\n
Don’t be afraid to taste your water;<\/p>\n
if it doesn’t taste salty,<\/p>\n
probably not enough salt to infuse into your pasta.<\/p>\n
Our cook time is very short, only six minutes.<\/p>\n
In the first minute of cooking,<\/p>\n
it’s important to stir the pasta.<\/p>\n
This will prevent it from sticking to each other<\/p>\n
and then also sticking to the bottom.<\/p>\n
We cook it to al dente,<\/p>\n
so it’s still gonna have a bite to it,<\/p>\n
and it won’t be fully cooked through.<\/p>\n
We’re gonna cook our mac and cheese<\/p>\n
with the sauce in the oven.<\/p>\n
So we don’t want it to become mushy.<\/p>\n
We still want the structural integrity of the pasta.<\/p>\n
Don’t be afraid to experiment with fun shapes.<\/p>\n
If you can’t find radiatori in your local grocery store,<\/p>\n
I definitely recommend a cavatappi.<\/p>\n
Fusilli is nice.<\/p>\n
It has a lot of grooves that will catch the sauce.<\/p>\n
Even a shell is really fun<\/p>\n
’cause it does capture that sauce,<\/p>\n
but it’s not gonna capture the sauce in a heat bomb<\/p>\n
kind of like a rigatoni would.<\/p>\n
I love macaroni.<\/p>\n
I think it doesn’t capture the sauce<\/p>\n
in the same way as our radiatori does.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t have grooves.<\/p>\n
The holes are a little too small<\/p>\n
to even really take in very much, but it’s a fun shape.<\/p>\n
We’ll leave the stove to strain the water from our pasta.<\/p>\n
You don’t wanna rinse your pasta.<\/p>\n
That really washes the starch away from the pasta<\/p>\n
and makes it much more difficult for a sauce to cling.<\/p>\n
And especially for a mac and cheese,<\/p>\n
you really want that sauce to cling to the pasta.<\/p>\n
If you’re not using your pasta immediately,<\/p>\n
we recommend spreading it out on a sheet pan<\/p>\n
and allowing it to cool in an even layer<\/p>\n
so that it doesn’t overcook.<\/p>\n
Once the pasta’s cooled, we can assemble our mac and cheese<\/p>\n
and get it in the oven.<\/p>\n
[smooth groovy music]<\/p>\n
So these are the three cheeses<\/p>\n
that we use for our classic mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
I think a great rule of thumb,<\/p>\n
kind of like cook with the wine that you would drink,<\/p>\n
is cook with the cheese that you would eat,<\/p>\n
while keeping in mind that high moisture<\/p>\n
is what’s gonna make it really, really silky and smooth.<\/p>\n
You wanna avoid cheeses that are heavily aged<\/p>\n
because they won’t melt in the same way<\/p>\n
that these cheeses do.<\/p>\n
So we already have our pre-shredded<\/p>\n
high-moisture mozzarella.<\/p>\n
We add even more at this point,<\/p>\n
not really for the flavor, but for the cheese pull.<\/p>\n
So this is our Red Wax Gouda.<\/p>\n
It is very high moisture and delicious.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna impart a lot of buttery flavor<\/p>\n
and add richness.<\/p>\n
It would contribute similar flavors<\/p>\n
as a Havarti, I would say.<\/p>\n
I’m using a box grater.<\/p>\n
I’m going on a finer shred.<\/p>\n
This is our New York State white cheddar.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna add some great acidity<\/p>\n
that we want to balance the other flavors.<\/p>\n
So Gouda does have a little bit of sweetness.<\/p>\n
That acidity is gonna temper that down.<\/p>\n
Now we’ll mix them so we can top our mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
So we’ll add all of our cooked pasta to the bowl.<\/p>\n
I would say we can probably serve about 30 to 40 people<\/p>\n
with this amount of mac.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna add the cheese sauce into our pasta<\/p>\n
and shredded cheese.<\/p>\n
Now, with gloved hands, I’m gonna mix everything together<\/p>\n
so every piece of pasta is coated with sauce.<\/p>\n
At this point, the sauce is still warm,<\/p>\n
but it’s not hot enough to melt the cheese.<\/p>\n
We want the oven to melt the cheese that’s inside<\/p>\n
and then also on top of the mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
I always find this very relaxing.<\/p>\n
Mixing, making sure everything’s incorporated.<\/p>\n
This is the point of no return,<\/p>\n
so we wanna taste our cheese sauce on our pasta,<\/p>\n
and that will let us know if we need to add<\/p>\n
any last-minute salt before we begin baking.<\/p>\n
I think it’s good.<\/p>\n
So we’ll be using a small baking dish<\/p>\n
to make our mac and cheese today.<\/p>\n
We recommend a baking dish that isn’t too tall.<\/p>\n
You really wanna make sure that your mac and cheese<\/p>\n
is heated all the way through<\/p>\n
before it gets too brown on the top.<\/p>\n
You don’t wanna really mound it<\/p>\n
because that kind of makes it hard<\/p>\n
to heat all the way through.<\/p>\n
You also don’t wanna push it down too much<\/p>\n
’cause, again, it’s gonna be very dense,<\/p>\n
hard to heat it all the way through<\/p>\n
before the cheese browns all the way.<\/p>\n
Now we’ll top our mac and cheese with our remaining cheese<\/p>\n
and then bake it in the oven.<\/p>\n
We do not add breadcrumbs.<\/p>\n
We let the cheese do all the work.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna toast in the oven<\/p>\n
and become golden brown and crispy,<\/p>\n
and you’ll actually get the really delicious cooked,<\/p>\n
toasted cheese flavor of Cheez-Its.<\/p>\n
I promise this isn’t a Cheez-Its commercial.<\/p>\n
This is actually an item that we referenced quite a bit<\/p>\n
as we were developing the recipe,<\/p>\n
as we were aiming for the end goal<\/p>\n
of what we wanted the cheese crust to taste like.<\/p>\n
So our classic mac and cheese is ready for the oven.<\/p>\n
We’ll bake it at 375 for about 10 to 12 minutes.<\/p>\n
And it’s gonna get nice and golden brown on the top<\/p>\n
and be really nice and warm and bubbly around the edges.<\/p>\n
And that will tell us that the inside is heated through.<\/p>\n
So we’ve got perfect golden-brown deliciousness.<\/p>\n
This is exactly what we’re looking for<\/p>\n
when we’re baking the mac and cheese in the oven.<\/p>\n
So all of that caramelization<\/p>\n
is gonna give that Cheez-It flavor that we want.<\/p>\n
And you can see it’s kind of bubbled over a little bit.<\/p>\n
We’ve got those nice crunchy bits to snack on.<\/p>\n
But it’s just absolutely perfect.<\/p>\n
You can enjoy this right out of the oven.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna be very hot.<\/p>\n
You don’t need to wait for it to settle<\/p>\n
or anything like that.<\/p>\n
The great debate: fork versus spoon for mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
I am team fork.<\/p>\n
[groovy jazz music]<\/p>\n
Gotta get a crust piece here.<\/p>\n
Mm.<\/p>\n
Totally getting the Cheez-It notes, really creamy.<\/p>\n
The sauce is so smooth.<\/p>\n
The pasta is not mushy.<\/p>\n
That al dente cook that we did on the stove<\/p>\n
makes it perfect in the end.<\/p>\n
As somebody who’s eaten mac and cheese<\/p>\n
probably every day for the last 7 1\/2 years,<\/p>\n
I could eat this whole thing.<\/p>\n
So you can see the radiatori<\/p>\n
really has a ton of cheese sauce.<\/p>\n
The cheese on top, you can see the crust.<\/p>\n
Like, look at that crispy piece.<\/p>\n
Cheez-It flavor, nice crunch.<\/p>\n
In contrast with the pasta, so good.<\/p>\n
Mac and cheese is a simple dish.<\/p>\n
So putting intention behind the ingredients you’re using,<\/p>\n
it really delivers in the end product.<\/p>\n
I think a velvety sauce, a pasta that still has texture,<\/p>\n
a lot of flavor complexity from cheeses<\/p>\n
really is gonna make an absolutely delicious mac and cheese.<\/p>\n
And I feel like cooking for yourself<\/p>\n
is the greatest form of self-care.<\/p>\n
So putting intention into that self-care<\/p>\n
really makes a beautiful end product.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[upbeat groovy music] I’m Chef Claire Malfitano, the chef de cuisine for Murray’s Cheese, and today I’m gonna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-308813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}