Best Mac & Cheese

Back when my husband was a practicing catholic (As opposed to a performing one, I guess) I spent quite a bit of hair pulling trying to come up with meatless dishes during Lent. Being Methodist myself and only having a vague idea of these things called fish frys (fries? freeze?) I feel back on some classic recipes, one of them being Macaroni and Cheese.

There were a lot of false starts, the worst of which involved a shit ton of onion and was still the worst thing I have ever made for dinner. It was like eating an onion vaguely flavored with cheese and noodles. Blech.

But then, salvation, I found a simple recipe for some of the ooiest gooiest mac & cheese to ever grace the lips of a pretend Lenter.

The trick is to barely cook the macaroni and let that soak up the cream/milk over night.

First, move your ground breaker who was getting minor surgery off the kitchen counter.

I use a combination of Sharp Cheddar and Gruyere or Emmentaler.

 It's a nice fondue cheese that melts and combines well with the ol' cheddar for a super cheesy mixture with a bit of a bite.

Get out a large bowl and grate your cheddar in.

Take 8 ounces of macaroni and boil that for just 4 minutes - you want it super of tooth.

Now grate in your white cheese with a funny name.

Hey, it's been 4 minutes! Drain your pasta - well unless you want a watery mess then don't bother.

Got all your cheese grated? Good, divy up half and save one part in a smaller bowl for tomorrow.

To your large bowl add in 2 cups of cream and 1 and 1/4 cup milk:

Dump in the macaroni and add salt and pepper to taste and taste and taste and okay that's enough now.

Cover your two bowls and put them in the fridge overnight to soak up the creamy goodness.

Tomorrow it'll come out looking like this. You'll want to pull it out an hour before baking to get it up to room temp or so.

Dump your gooey macaroni into a 2 quart dish and top with your leftover cheese:

I like to include a bread crumb topping where I melt about 2 tbsp of butter and mash in a cup of bread crumbs with a fork.

Now in she goes to the oven at 400 for 30-35 minutes.

And once you're done doing whatever hell people enter when waiting for food to finish on baking shows (I imagine there's a lot of screaming and wailing and melon baler fights) here's the finished product:

It's about a billion times better than the crap out of the blue box and not a lick of velveeta in sight as well as rich as the 1% and may haunt your dreams at night.