MCAH Mac & Cheese Variations

Hey guys! Long time no see; I was off school for a week so I was without internet! Anyways I've been messing around with my chef series all week and have been loving it! On another note, I made the MCAH Mac and Cheese last night and it was awesome! I don't have the option of getting a lot of good quality cheeses where I live so I used straight Tillamook cheddar and it was really good! I loved it, but my wife told me that she thought it tasted a lot like Velveeta...which crushed me! I didn't think that it did but I've been trying to win my wife over with some modernist techniques and have yet to do anything that absolutely blows her socks off. She loves macaroni and cheese and this is where I want to convince her that what I'm doing is actually awesome. Have you guys done anything with the mac and cheese recipe that was particularly stunning? I'm hoping I can do something that doesn't need any hard to get ingredients (seeing how I'm in the culinary land-lock of Eastern Idaho) but will be as far away from the just cheddar flavor of Velveeta as possible. Any help that you can offer is much appreciated!

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jim_53915

I adapted the mac and cheese recipe to make duck confit mac & cheese. I took duck legs and dry rubbed salt, dried thyme, and peppercorns for one hour. Rinsed legs, patted dry with paper towel, then combined with duck fat, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns, and vacuum sealed. Cooked sous vide @ 180F for 8 hours. Reserved cooking liquid and pulled meat from bones back into the liquid until ready to serve. You can heat in the liquid and put on the top of the mac & cheese or mix it inside, on the top is my preference. The mac and cheese I make with milk (kid friendly), aged gouda, 50%, aged/hard goats cheese 50% and smoked gouda 25%. I have successfully wowed my wife (who doesn't even like duck) and both kids. It was a hit with everyone this past Easter dinner too! Enjoy!

richard.fine

I just made the base MCAH Mac and Cheese - straight cheddar, no additions, just to work through the process and see how it comes together. Worked very nicely.

One thing I've learned: When making flour-based cheese sauces in the past, I'd use mature or extra-mature cheese to make up for the diluting effect of the white sauce. I didn't really account for that when switching to sodium citrate - which doesn't dilute the flavour like a white sauce does - so the result was a bit surprisingly strong - after a bowlful I needed something else to cut through it, just as I would if I'd eaten a slab of the cheese plain.

So next time I'll stop 'compensating' for the white sauce and use a cheese mixture with a taste closer to what I actually want in the end result - either a milder cheddar, or mixing some swiss in with the mature cheddar. I like the idea of adding apple (or maybe grape?) to the mixture as well, to cut through the saltiness of the cheese.

peter_martinezfonts_83124

I just made some cheese last night using a truffle gouda and an aged English Cheddar. It was phenomenal.

One question I had though. In the original MC, both sodium citrate and iota carageenan are used. However, in MC@H only sodium citrate is used. Do we know why? What value, if any, does the carageenan offer?

Johan_Edstrom_5586

Texture, storage and emulsification if I merember correctly.

richard.fine

There is a note on the MCAH recipe for 'perfectly melting cheese slice' that explains they removed the carrageenan from that recipe when they realised they could just use less beer instead. Maybe it's something similar in this case - the quantity of milk/water is reduced in MCAH compared to MC, and so the carrageenan is no longer necessary?

Lennard__34626

My understanding is that the carrageenan thickens the sauce and makes if freeze better