Modernist Macaroni and Cheese

The Modernist Cuisine Cookbook was one of the biggest cookbooks released in recent history. One of the more popular recipes from it is the Modernist Mac and Cheese. Instead of making a cheese sauce from a roux-base, the modern cheese sauce uses an emulsifier and a thickening additive. This allows for two things: more intense cheese flavor without the sauce breaking, and the ability to perfectly melt all types of cheese, even aged, hard cheeses. The cheese sauce begins by warming water and wheat beer (I used Hefeweizen).

I used three different cheeses for this recipe: a pungent, mature white cheddar, a slightly softer, nutty Dutch Robusto, and an extremely nutty, hard 5-year aged Gouda. I also used sodium citrate as the emulsifier to have a perfectly melted and creamy sauce, and iota carrageenan to thicken the sauce.

As you can see, even the hard, non-melting aged gouda melts thoroughly. The carrageenan thickens the sauce nicely as well.

The most delicious block of Velveeta cheese ever.

Boil the noodles until just before al dente. I used cellentani, a corkscrew-shaped, ridged pasta.

Per the recipe, you refrigerate/freeze the cheese so that you can grate it into the final sauce. I forgot to freeze it, so I just cut it into small pieces and it was fine.

With the residual water in the pan, the cheese sauce coats the noodles beautifully. Most of my water evaporated while the noodles cooked, so I found that I needed to add a fair amount of water to achieve the right texture.

We had the pasta with a simple salad. We found this to be more of a side dish, rather than having a full bowl of it. The cheese is very intense, much cheesier than any other mac and cheese that I've had. I think I would use a more typical, sharper cheddar next time, as all three cheese were quite nutty. Others have frozen the cheese for lengths of time without negative effects, so it can make for an incredibly easy dinner. We will definitely be making this in the future.