Guide for the Coziest, Creamiest, Dreamiest Mac n’ Cheese
Like many Americans, my ardent, passionate love affair with mac n’ cheese began when I was a child.
Never ones to willfully deny their child the staples of an American diet, my parents dutifully bought Kraft mac n’ cheese by the 6-pack during my childhood. From the blazing orange dust inside the packet, to the fresh butter and milk that’s added in, Kraft mac n’ cheese left quite the impression on my young psyche.
As I grew older into a teenager with far more refined tastes, my parents rose to the challenge with boxed Cracker Barrel mac n’ cheese, which was a new product back then and managed to totally obliterate any appreciation I once had for Kraft’s effervescent dust. I was a connoisseur, and Kraft was now far beneath my tastes.
Cracker Barrel was indeed a step up from Kraft’s cheese product products, and for a time during my young life, its mac n’ cheese was my very favorite dinner. When I went off to college I missed Cracker Barrel dearly, and the overcooked, mushy, chalky mac n’ cheese in the cafeteria was no welcome substitute.
I began venturing out to actual grocery stores (the horror, for a college freshman) to see if I could find any cheese that gave me the same sense of comfort, coziness, and the feeling of home that Cracker Barrel had given me for so many years prior. It was at my local Trader Joe’s that I discovered a shocking fact - planet earth offers cheeses other than shelf-stable parmesan in a shaker can and block cheddar! Who the hell knew?? I was years away from shopping the Whole Foods cheese counter, or even *gasp* stepping into a proper cheese shop, but we’ll get there.
I suppose you’re here, reader, looking for my take on the best cheeses to make mac n’ cheese with, and that’s coming. I thought it was important to share my history with this particular meal, and I never shy away from reflecting on how far I’ve come in my cheese journey. So if you’re still with me, go forth and read on!
Cheese #1 - Black Wax Gouda
Black wax Gouda is one of my favorite cheeses we carry in the shop. We have over 12 Goudas on rotation at any time, and black wax is a staple for us. It’s aged for a minimum of two years, so it has the concentrated caramel-y, nutty notes you’d expect from a properly aged Gouda, and it has plenty of the tyrosine crystals that give it a beautiful texture. It’s fatty, and it coats your mouth beautifully as you eat it.
I first made mac n’ cheese with this Gouda a couple of months ago for my family. The sauce gets to be this delicate, almost pastel yellow hue with a matte finish, different from the other cheese sauces. This first time, I made the mistake of following my base recipe, and I used the onion powder & garlic powder in the sauce. Though it didn’t taste bad - in fact, it tasted great - I didn’t appreciate how the cheese itself was masked a bit, and I got more of the onion powder than I would have liked.
This time, I didn’t use any seasonings whatsoever. Only the roux, the heavy cream, and the cheese were included. And let me tell you, it paid off! I thought this mac n’ cheese gave the cheese the best chance to shine, and it was creamy and nutty and beautiful. It’s worth noting though that the crystallization didn’t come through in this sauce that I noticed, so I’m thinking the liquid probably mellowed out the crystals to the point where I didn’t notice them in the texture.
I thought this black wax Gouda sauce was the silkiest, and had the most generous texture. Its flavor was complex and sophisticated, without being intimidating. Spoiler alert: the Gouda mac was my favorite of the three.
Cheese # 2 - Unexpected Cheddar Cheese, Trader Joe’s
Not only was this cheese nice to cook with, it was nice to snack on, too! Very affable, very friendly, would never offend anyone, the Unexpected Cheddar Cheese from good ol’ TJs was a hit. The texture was slightly aged, and a bit crumbly in a pleasant way. Plus, it was very affordable so I could load up in order the have the cheesiest mac n’ cheese ever.
This cheese had a nicely aged texture and did indeed have a bit of crystallization normally seen in higher end cheeses. It had a flavor that could stand on its own, but also took well to seasonings. So, I went ahead and used the onion powder and garlic power in this sauce recipe. It was very easy to cook with, and the grated cheese blended flawlessly with the roux & heavy cream mixture. It was a little stringy, in the way that a nicely melted cheddar (with the added benefit of parmesan!) becomes. Side note: I think this cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich with some fig jam or even sliced tomatoes would be gorgeous!
Back to our sauce. It didn’t require too much heavy cream, and I like my mac n’ cheese sauce very thick and saucy anyways, not thin at all. I let it cook down for about 15 minutes after adding all the heavy cream, just to let all the flavors befriend one another and to really get a decadent consistency.
What popped out of the oven was an ooey, gooey, stringy, delicious mac n’ cheese that would make any kid’s (and adult!) mac n’ cheese dreams come true. It coated each jumbo elbow macaroni perfectly, and I couldn’t have asked for a more classic mac. I would have paid money for this mac n’ cheese in a restaurant, it was soooo yummy.
Cheese #3 - 6-Month Gruyere Cheese, Trader Joe’s
This final cheese was the one I was most excited to try out, since in the dozen or so iterations of mac n’ cheese from scratch I’ve made over the last year, I’ve never tried to most classic cheese of all. I mean honestly, even Martha Stewart uses Gruyere for her go-to mac n’ cheese recipe! So finally, I gave myself an excuse to give it a try. I will say that while I work in a cheese shop with easy access to some of the finest cheeses in the world, I did opt for Trader Joe’s version of Gruyere. True, real, AOP Le Gruyère (“Appellation d'Origine Protégée” in French, or “Protected Designation of Origin” (PDO) in English) is mandated to be created in the same ways and traditions that it has been made in Switzerland since at least the year 1115. The AOP label guarantees that a given product is made in accordance with the standards set. To learn more about AOP Le Gruyère – which is seriously fascinating – give their website a visit.
With all of these standards and rules (which genuinely do make a HUGE difference in cheese production and the finished product taste and quality), AOP Le Gruyère is indeed quite expensive. So, I went with the bastardized, homogenized, boring and inexpensive knock-off that I found at Trader Joe’s for about $12 per pound. To everyone in the cheese community, I apologize.
This TJ’s wedge of Gruyere pays homage to proper Le Gruyère, and it cooked similarly in the sauce. It was incredibly, stunningly thick, and required not only copious amounts of heavy cream compared to the Gouda and cheddar cheese sauces, but we even started adding milk to the mixture in a desperate attempt to thin it – it was practically like glue in the pan!
Thankfully, an incalculable amount of milk later, we had our macaroni mixed in, and it was finally ready to bake. When it came out, it was definitely the heaviest mac n’ cheese of the three options. It was also the least distinctly flavored unfortunately due to all the milk we used, and of course because it wasn’t the real stuff! If I made this again, I would spring for the real thing, and would use milk instead of heavy cream to begin with. Or I’ll just follow Martha’s recipe and be done with it!
In addition to all the delicious, scrumptious mac n’ cheese we ate that night, the most gratifying thing was thing: upon tasting the dishes, my friends’ two young sons kept repeating in abject suspicion how, “this doesn’t taste like any of the mac n’ cheese we ever have!” That, my young friends, is real cheese.
