Baked Southern Macaroni and Cheese Casserole Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between Southern mac and cheese? ›

Southern-style mac and cheese is typically made with a milk-and-egg base rather than a roux. Here, the milk component is an infused milk-and-cream mixture reserved from cooking the noodles (which adds even more richness to the dish). The finished macaroni and cheese is firm enough to slice into solid squares.

What Is the Best Cheese for Mac and Cheese? Sharp cheddar is the overwhelming popular choice, but for extra-creamy results, we think medium cheddar is even better. Other delicious options include Gruyère, smoked Gouda, and Monterey Jack.

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.

Since 2002, Velveeta has been labeled as a "pasteurized prepared cheese product." What does that even mean? Because of the ingredients and the way it is prepared, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not consider it real cheese.

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 highly concentrated source of milk protein micelles—bundles of proteins that can act as powerful emulsifying agents—which help to keep the sauce creamy and smooth.

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.

Heavy cream is, in my opinion, the best milk substitute for kraft mac and cheese. It's thicker and more luxurious than milk, so I actually think this makes a better end result! just add the heavy whipping cream in the same way you would add the milk.

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.

Just be careful to add the sour cream slowly to get the right texture, and consider taste differences. Sour cream can be a good macaroni and cheese milk substitute, but it will obviously be more sour and perhaps not the most kid-friendly mac and cheese you can make.

What is the difference between northern and southern mac and cheese? ›

It's not southern mac and cheese if it doesn't have eggs in it- this is one of the primary differences between northern and southern. I also suggest mixing everything together before pouring into your casserole dish for better distribution.

Food historian Adrian Miller points out that while Thomas Jefferson often gets credit for popularizing macaroni and cheese in the United States, it was of course his enslaved black chef James Hemmings who learned to cook it. In the Antebellum South, mac and cheese was a weekend and celebration food.

The best known "types" of traditional Southern cheese are pimento cheese (which is a dip, not a cheese itself), and hoop cheese, which is now a relative rarity, but was ubiquitous before the 1960s in local stores.

The inclusion of macaroni and cheese in “The Virginia House-Wife” helped to popularize the dish in the South and cement its place as a staple of Southern cuisine.