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You’ll be surprised how much the sauce thickens during the broiling phase. This serves 2 purposes: browning the crunchy topping while the pasta finishes cooking using the residual heat, and the sauce thickens. Oh – the other very specific steps I do are:Ī) Stirring the cheese in just before grilling/broiling to brown the top (if you add it beforehand, it takes forever for the pasta to cook) andī) Sprinkling the panko and parmesan on at the end, then broiling/grilling it to brown. Making it this way requires an exact amount of liquid to macaroni ratio, specific water + milk combo (too much milk = takes far too long for pasta to rehydrate) and following the cook times specified in the recipe. I make this in the oven so that way you can make it all in one pot, rather than cooking the macaroni separately and mixing it into the sauce. Sounds fancy (it’s French!), but it’s just melted butter + flour whisked into milk to create a creamy sauce. So the Mac and Cheese I make at home that’s suitable for serving as a meal is made without cream by using a roux as a base. It’s also so rich that I can’t have more than a couple of (generously heaped) spoons of it. Any Sydney-siders tried Neil Perry’s Mac and Cheese at his Rockpool Bar & Grill restaurant? It’s utterly incredible. If I see it on a menu, especially at posh restaurants, I have to have it on the side. 🙂 Plus chicken + pasta + cheese = complete meal. And you don’t even need to steam it separately, it gets cooked right in the same pot with the mac and cheese.
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There’s a whole giant head of broccoli in this. What more can you ask for? Oh – maybe just a cooking video to see how EASY this is to make? 😉 Baked macaroni and cheese that’s gorgeously creamy but made with no cream! Loaded up with chicken and broccoli so it’s a complete meal.
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