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I'm Chef Claire Mautner Tano, the Chef de Cuisine for Murray's Cheese, and today I'm going to show you how to make the world's best mac and cheese. Here at our Bleecker Street location, the flagship store, we make upwards of 30 tons of mac and cheese every year. We're bringing our expertise in cheese to mac and cheese, so we're very intentional with the ingredients that we choose, whether it be in the pasta, the cheeses that we shred for inside, and the way that we prepare the mac and cheese. For our cheese sauce, we'll start by infusing some whole milk with aromatics. That fat that you get in the whole milk is really going to add flavor, but it
also isn't too fatty so that it will break the sauce. Using onion is a great way to infuse some flavor that's a little bit of a kick. The thyme really adds some savory notes, some herbiness that we need. Just to layer, I think these two flavors really complement cheddar. We're making a sachet, so I'm just adding the sliced onion, and then I'll add the thyme to some cheesecloth, and that's just going to make the infusion very easy. When I'm ready to remove and feel the flavors been imparted enough, I can just pull it out. And we really just want to put it over medium-low heat. We're not trying to bring it to a boil. It's really below a simmer. I would just stir it occasionally because you will see that the milk could stick to the bottom.
Infusing the milk really adds flavors at the very start of the recipe. Really any recipe, you want to build flavor from the beginning. Now that the milk is infused, we'll begin our roux by melting some butter. A roux is a thickening agent. It really just allows for a sauce to thicken. Once it's fully melted, we'll begin adding the flour. You really want to stir, make sure you're getting everything mixed together. You're honestly going for almost what looks like an applesauce texture. This is going to add some structure and stability to the sauce that really helps it coat the pasta.
It's going to begin bubbling, and I've always been taught that it smells like Christmas cookies, and that's how you know that a blonde roux is done. So, we've been cooking the roux for about 5 minutes. You can see that we've achieved this texture that almost looks like pancake batter. So, this is the exact color that we want. Now that our roux is ready, our next step will be adding in the infused milk. We want to make sure we're stirring the whole time, otherwise it could get lumpy. You do want to have a plastic spatula handy just to scrape the sides so you don't get pieces of roux like that stuck. It will thicken up very quickly, and that will give us a béchamel. Béchamel is just cooked milk
that's been thickened and infused with aromatics. There's no shame in eating boxed mac and cheese at home. I'm a big fan, that's what I grew up with, and I would say you can easily doctor it up by adding like sour cream, cottage cheese, another shredded cheese that you love, and really amping up the cheesiness. So, it's been about 7 minutes since we infused the milk into the roux. We've been patiently stirring, and now we've got a great thickness. You can see it's not dripping like water. It's having more resistance and clinging to the whisk. Now we can make this béchamel into a Mornay sauce. A Mornay sauce is just a fancy word for cheese sauce. So, high-moisture mozzarella melts really,
really nicely, and the flavor isn't overpowering, and that's what makes it a great blank canvas. We'll add more shredded mozzarella in later when we mix our pasta and sauce together. And that is really for the cheese pull and less about the flavor. We'll add some cream cheese. It really adds a nice tanginess and acidity. Really balances out the salt, takes away any sweetness that might be present from the cooked milk. So, we're just making sure that the cream cheese is fully melted. So, it didn't look too thick when we removed it from the stove, but now adding the cheese, the cream cheese, it's really added a lot of body to the sauce, and that's really going to cling to the pasta. Takes a little arm strength. It's
really almost like a cake batter at this point. Worked out all those lumps, and now we can add the mustard. The acidity really lightens it up. It makes it possible for you to eat a good helping of mac and cheese in one sitting. I am going to add kosher salt as well. So, we're going to hit really a lot of different flavors, and that will create complexity in the sauce. I think another mistake that people make in the kitchen is not tasting their food as they go. So, I think that's perfect. A pro tip that we do recommend if you're using your sauce today like we are, is to make a cartouche to avoid a skin developing on top of the sauce. From here, we'll start cooking the pasta so we can mix our mac and cheese and bake
it in the oven. Here at Murray's Cheese, we use radiatore pasta for our mac and cheese. As you can see, it's shaped like an old-timey radiator, and those grooves really allow for maximum cheese sauce coverage. It's very important to salt your water before cooking your pasta. You want to be very generous with your salt. I'd say close to a tablespoon per a quart of water. Don't be afraid to taste your water. If it doesn't taste salty, probably not enough salt to infuse into your pasta. Our cook time is very short, only 6 minutes. In the first minute of cooking, it's important to stir the pasta. This will prevent it from sticking to each other and then also sticking to the bottom. We cook it
to al dente, so it's still going to have a bite to it and it won't be fully cooked through. We're going to cook our mac and cheese with the sauce in the oven, so we don't want it to become mushy. We still want the structural integrity of the pasta. Don't be afraid to experiment with fun shapes. If you can't find radiatore in your local grocery store, I definitely recommend a cavatappi. Fusilli is nice. It has a lot of grooves that will catch the sauce. Even a shell is really fun cuz it does capture that sauce, but it's not going to capture the sauce in a heat bomb kind of like a rigatoni would. I love macaroni. I think it doesn't capture the sauce in the same way as our radiatore
does. It doesn't have grooves. The holes are a little too small to even really take in very much, but it's a fun shape. We'll leave the stove to strain the water from our pasta. You don't want to rinse your pasta. That really washes the starch away from the pasta and makes it much more difficult for a sauce to cling and especially for a mac and cheese, you really want that sauce to cling to the pasta. If you're not using your pasta immediately, we recommend spreading it out on a sheet pan and allowing it to cool in an even layer so that it doesn't overcook. Once the pasta's cooled, we can assemble our mac and cheese and get it in the oven. So, these are the three cheeses that we use for our classic mac and cheese. I think a great rule of thumb kind of like
cook with the wine that you would drink is cook with the cheese that you would eat while keeping in mind that high moisture is what's going to make it really silky and smooth. You want to avoid cheeses that are heavily aged because they won't melt in the same way that these cheeses do. So, we already have our pre-shredded high moisture mozzarella. We add even more at this point not really for the flavor but for the cheese pull. So, this is our Red Wax Gouda. It is very high moisture and delicious. It's going to impart a lot of buttery flavor and add richness. It would contribute similar flavors as a Havarti, I would say. I'm using a box grater. I'm going on a finer shred. This is our New York
State white cheddar. It's going to add some great acidity that we want to balance the other flavors. So, Gouda does have a little bit of sweetness. That acidity is going to tamper that down. Now, we'll mix them so we can top our mac and cheese. So, we'll add all of our cooked pasta to the bowl. I would say we can probably serve about 30 to 40 people with this amount of mac. I'm going to add the cheese sauce into our pasta and shredded cheese. Now, the gloved hands, I'm going to mix everything together so every piece of pasta is coated with sauce. At this point, the sauce is still warm but it's not hot enough to melt the cheese. We want the oven to melt the
cheese that's inside and then also on top of the mac and cheese. I always find this very relaxing. Mixing, making sure everything's incorporated. This is the point of no return so we want to taste our cheese sauce on our pasta and that will let us know if we need to add any last minute salt before we begin baking. I think it's good. So, we'll be using a small baking dish to make our mac and cheese today. We recommend a baking dish that isn't too tall. You really want to make sure that your mac and cheese is heated all the way through before it gets too brown on
the top. You don't want to really mound it because that kind of makes it hard to heat all the way through. You also don't want to push it down too much cuz again, it's going to be very dense, hard to heat it all the way through before the cheese browns all the way. Now, we'll top our mac and cheese with our remaining cheese and then bake it in the oven. We do not add breadcrumbs. We let the cheese do all the work. It's going to toast in the oven and become golden brown and crispy. And you'll actually get the really delicious cooked toasted cheese flavor of Cheez-Its. I promise this isn't a Cheez-Its commercial. This is actually an item that we reference quite a bit as we were developing the
recipe as we were aiming for the end goal of what we wanted the cheese crust to taste like. So, our classic mac and cheese is ready for the oven. We'll bake it at 375 for about 10 to 12 minutes. And it's going to get nice and golden brown on the top and be really nice and warm and bubbly around the edges. And that will tell us that the inside is heated through. So, we've got perfect golden brown deliciousness. This is exactly what we're looking for when we're baking the mac and cheese in the oven. So, all of that caramelization is going to give that Cheez-It flavor that we want. And you can see it's kind of bubbled over a little bit. We've got
those nice crunchy bits to snack on. But it's just absolutely perfect. You can enjoy this right out of the oven. It's going to be very hot. You don't need to wait for it to settle or anything like that. The great debate, fork versus spoon for mac and cheese, I am team fork. Got to get a crust piece here. Totally getting the Cheez-It notes. Really creamy. The sauce is so smooth. The pasta is not mushy. That al dente cook that we did on the stove makes it perfect in the end. As somebody who's eaten mac and cheese probably every day for the last 7 and 1/2 years, I could eat this whole thing. So, you can see the radiatore really has a ton of cheese sauce. The cheese on top, you can see the crust. Like, look at that crispy piece.
Cheez-It flavor, nice crunch in contrast with the pasta. So good. Mac and cheese is a simple dish. So, putting intention behind the ingredients you're using is really delivers in the end product. I think a velvety sauce, a pasta that still has texture, a lot of flavor complexity from cheeses really is going to make an absolutely delicious mac and cheese. And I feel like cooking for yourself is the greatest form of self-care. So, putting intention into that self-care really makes a beautiful end product.
