Pioneer Woman's Mac & Cheese Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Should I use condensed milk or evaporated milk in mac and cheese? ›

Just make sure you're working with evaporated milk and not condensed milk. While both of these canned, shelf-stable milks are made by the same process, condensed milk — also called sweetened condensed milk — has added sugar, which has absolutely no place in a pot of mac and cheese.

Cheddar, Gruyère, Monterey Jack, mozzarella, Fontina, and Gouda cheese are good options.

It is better to use heavy cream for Mac and Cheese instead of milk, or better yet, use evaporated milk which has the thickness of heavy cream without all of the fat! Furthermore, it is more stable than heavy cream so your Macaroni and Cheese is less likely to curdle or separate.

Start your cheese sauce by making a roux. Add 1/2 stick of butter to your sauce pan and melt. Add sweet condensed milk (1-2 tbsps) and combine with butter. This step is optional, but the sweetness helps balance the natural acidity from all of the cheese and ties all of the flavors together.

The remaining ingredients are simple: butter and flour (which makes the sauce thicken), milk, spices, salt, and pepper. For the milk, I prefer whole milk since it makes a creamier sauce, but I've used reduced fat milk plenty of times without complaint.

An overview of Food Network's mac and cheese roundup reveals that most recipes have one type of cheese in common: sharp Cheddar. Sharp Cheddar —especially the inexpensive, mass-market block you can buy at the supermarket —strikes just the right balance between meltability and flavor.

Gordon Ramsay's mac and cheese is a simplified recipe. Just boil pasta in milk and then, add butter, cheese, salt, and pepper to it. Merge all the elements and Gordon Ramsay's mac and cheese will be ready in no time.

I think sour cream is a great substitute! However, it may change the flavor just slightly. For sour cream, mix it in just like I outlined in the cream cheese example, but with far less or no extra liquid. Sour cream is slightly sour (duh), so this may impact the final flavor a bit.

What's in Bob Evans mac and cheese? ›

Cooked Enriched Pasta (Water, Elbow Macaroni [Semolina (Wheat), Niacin, Iron (Ferrous Sulfate), Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid]), Milk, Water, Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread (American Cheese [Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes], Water, Whey, Sodium Phosphate, Contains Less than 2% of ...

You can thank James Hemings, the enslaved chef of Thomas Jefferson, for the mac and cheese on your table. The truth behind America's favorite cheesy pasta dish.

The remaining ingredients are simple: butter and flour (which makes the sauce thicken), milk, spices, salt, and pepper. For the milk, I prefer whole milk since it makes a creamier sauce, but I've used reduced fat milk plenty of times without complaint.

Evaporated milk is a great choice for making boxed mac and cheese. However, there are many other options. For a standard box of kraft mac and cheese, you can use heavy cream, pasta water, yogurt, oat milk, soy milk, cream cheese, and more!

As Leal explains: "Evaporated milk offers creaminess without sweetness and is suitable for savory dishes and some desserts. On the other hand, sweetened condensed milk is intensely sweet and used in desserts and sweet treats, thanks to its thick, syrupy texture."

These items are essentially the same with one big difference: no sugar is added to evaporated milk. Sweetened condensed milk also has 60% of the water removed, but contains 40% sugar. Due to the big flavor difference, they cannot be substituted for each other.