How this tasty dish will bring peace in these turbulent times
In these troublesome times, when brother fights against brother, when children rise against their parents, when Kardashian struggles against Kardashian—we, the good citizens of the land of the free and home of the brave look out across the amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty for a soothing balm to heal the divide that cleaves us asunder.
We seek comfort amidst the storms that rage and cry out for a dose of cosmic ‘Tussin to cool our inflamed hearts.
Some seek relief in the arms of digital communities, warming themselves in the embers of their own tribe’s outrage; others find solace in the downy-soft cradle of avoidance, while still others look to religion, imploring Jesus through daily prayers to strap on his sandals and personally come take care of this situation.
But there is another way.
Within the pantries, refrigerators, and culinary traditions of every American lie the ingredients for a palliative panacea that celebrates what we each have in common over what threatens to tear us apart. Thomas Jefferson knew it. Patty LaBelle knew it. My grandmother certainly knew it. And in our heart of hearts, we all know and believe in the restorative power of macaroni and cheese.
Some folks insist that macaroni and cheese is an American innovation, but these people should lay off the pipe because neither cheese nor macaroni are American inventions and even a cursory look at the dish’s history offers several competing origin accounts dating back centuries before America was even a glimmer in Ben Franklin’s eye. So how did this glorious and curative combination become so ingrained in the land of milk and honey?
Macaroni and cheese’s history in the United States starts with the European elite, who, by the late 1700's were enjoying pasta and cheese dishes from Sicily, Naples and Rome that included flavors like cinnamon, rosewater and sugar, because they apparently thought cheese and pasta should taste like my grandmother’s good Sunday perfume.
America’s own elite followed Continental culture and food trends closely, and without an Instagram account among the bunch, managed to make macaroni and cheese trend in the United States, in part due to Thomas Jefferson’s well know love of the dish. Jefferson was known as a passionate gourmand and acquired a taste for mac and cheese during his tenure as American ambassador to France, even serving an early version for guests at a state dinner during his presidency.
(Although Thomas Jefferson usually gets the credit for bringing macaroni and cheese to the US, he wasn’t throwing on an apron after a long day of politickin’ and cooking up batches for the family. It was, of course, his enslaved black chef James Hemmings who learned and actually made the dish.)
For decades, macaroni and cheese was a luxury food for wealthy, upper class Americans while the slaves who did the actual cooking and other poor citizens of that era were never able to enjoy the dish themselves because the main ingredients were rare and expensive.
That is until the Industrial Revolution made pasta and cheese, the sacred dyad of mac and cheese ingredients, available to the unwashed masses.
The emergence of pasta factories put one piece of the mac-and-cheese-for-the-masses puzzle in place, but the key that opened the gooey, cheesy floodgates was the advent of processed cheese. Processed cheese is essentially cheese that’s been emulsified and cooked to render it dramatically less perishable.
The upside is that this is a good way to make food for soldiers and to make crappy cheese into something edible while getting as much food as possible from every drop of moo juice. The downside is that now we have generations of Americans that have never had macaroni and cheese made with real cheese. These poor souls not only have to deal with living in a country scarred by the divisiveness of the day, but have been deprived of the very thing that could smooth the rough edges of warring tweets and combative countrymen.
They have grown up on a powdered orange lie, a twisted deceit wrapped in a bright blue box that promises satisfaction and convenience but only delivers an illusion. What’s so heartbreaking is there are entire generations who have come to accept the idea that mac and cheese with real cheese is limited to trendy restaurants with moustache logos, out of reach Instagram photos, or when Aunt Barbara can manage to heave herself out of her Jazzy and prop herself against the kitchen counter long enough to make up a batch of her famous 12 cheese, butter poached, macaroni and mortality for the holidays.
The smooth, cheesy images that grace the front of every mac and cheese box and every cheese-porn Pinterest pin have created a misconception that all cheeses will melt gloriously into a smooth, creamy sauce-like consistency or photo worthy cheese-pull.
But if you’ve tried to just heat up some of your favorite aged Venezuelan Beaver Cheese to pour over nachos or into a pot of macaroni, you noticed that it probably separated into a greasy, clumpy pile of failure.
The reason for this lies in how the cheese is structured. Cheese gets its structure from clusters of the milk protein casein, which form a web that entraps fat and moisture. Cheeses with loose, flexible structures melt nicely; while cheeses with tighter, more uptight networks have a hard time melting or they’ll separate into a greasy mess.
Young, high-moisture cheeses like Gruyere and young cheddar will melt into a beautiful, macaroni-clinging layer of deliciousness, while cheeses like moisture-deficient aged cheddars or añejo do not want to cooperate with the melting process.
The most common solution is to make a Mornay sauce, mixing the cheese into a cooked mixture of flour, butter and milk. The starch molecules that thicken the sauce also keep it from separating, but the problem with Mornay sauce is that it can easily taste too much like cooked flour – and the dish is not called macaroni, cheese and flour.
This Canadian guy you may have heard of, James L. Kraft, figured out that if you add a little bit of sodium phosphate to cheese as it melts, it won’t turn into a pot full of cheese chunks swimming in a puddle of oil. He proceeded to use his power for evil and created shelf-stable cheese that ultimately led to crimes against nature such as Velveeta, Easy Cheese, and pretty much the entire universe of processed cheese products.
But you can use this power for good to create cheese sauces from any of your favorite cheeses without fear of messy cheese-oil separations that traumatize the kids. Because sodium phosphate isn’t easy to find, use the much more common sodium citrate to keep your water and oil together in that most common of stable emulsions—solid cheese.
Put on your goggles and let’s get all Bill Nye for just a minute. To make cheese sauce for mac and cheese like a serious food nerd, Scott Heimendinger, the director of applied research for The Cooking Lab, recommends adding a little less than 2.5 grams of sodium citrate for every 100 grams of finely grated cheese and 93 grams of milk.
This method of stabilizing melted cheese eliminates the need for Mornay sauce, so the final cheese sauce is really just melted cheese—rich, gooey, melty, and above all—cheesy.
If a previous incident in your high school chemistry lab means you’re prohibited by a court injunction from participating in anything that even sounds like a science experiment, you can still take the Mornay sauce route.
This method has served me well for years and my macaroni and cheese has been known to bring grown men to tears and young children to their knees begging for more. This recipe has been approved for all ages—happy cheesin’!
Mike’s Mac & Cheese
Ingredients
- 1 lb dry elbow macaroni
- 5 tbsp unsalted butter
- 5 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 4½ c whole milk
- 6 oz grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
- 4 oz grated Gruyère
- 6 oz grated young sharp cheddar
- 4 oz cubed mozzarella
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375˚ F.
In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil, add the elbow macaroni and cook according to the package instructions until just al dente. Drain and set aside.
Heat the butter over medium-high heat until it foams, stir in the flour and continue to stir steadily for about two minutes or until the mixture begins to turn golden brown. Whisk in the milk and bring the mixture to a light boil, making sure to scrape any hunks of flour or milk from the pan that begin to stick. Reduce to a simmer and continue cooking until the mixture is slightly thicker than heavy cream.
Add half the Parmigiano-Reggiano (reserve the rest to sprinkle over the top), all of the rest of the cheeses, and stir until the cheese is completely melted. Stir in the cooked macaroni and mix well. Remove from the heat and stir in the salt and optional pepper.
Spoon the mixture to a casserole dish, top with the remaining Parmigiano, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the mixture is slightly bubbling.
Mike McJunkin is a native Chattanoogan who has traveled abroad extensively, trained chefs, and owned and operated restaurants. Join him on Facebook at @SushiAndBiscuits