sarah's mac'n'cheese

To go with the astonishingly simple beer can crock pot chicken, Sarah made this relatively complicated mac n cheese. I tried to tell her that I would have been just fine with the box stuff. But she insisted on this, and I am glad that she did.

But, because it does seem like it is a little more complicated than macaroni and cheese needs to be (it's an alton brown macaroni and cheese recipe), I wouldn't recommend making this on a regular basis. But if you need a dressed up side dish, I think this is a good bet.

Sarah's Mac'n'cheese

1. 1/2 pound macaroni: get it boiling and cooked
2. roux: melt 3T of butter in a saucepot. whisk in 3T of flour and 1T of mustard powder and keep mixing for about a minute or so. then, add 3C milk and 1/2C minced onion. season with some paprika and a bay leaf. Mix and then cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it starts to thicken. Then keep it on low. 
3. add egg: the recipe says to temper in 1 egg. I asked Sarah if she did this, as I didn't think that she would know what that meant. She tells me that she beat the egg into the bowl, and then put some of the roux in the bowl, and then put the contents of the bowl back into the saucepot. She said that she did this because she was worried about putting raw egg into something hot. She then asked me if that was tempering is.
4. add cheese: stir in 12 oz shredded cheddar. the recipe also says to season with salt and pepper, but Sarah skipped this.
5. combine maraconi with cheese: once combined, Sarah then put it into our large class baking dish.
6. make topping: melt 3T butter and mix with 1C panko breadcrumbs. Then, scatter it over the top.
7. bake: 350 for 30 minutes

This recipe turned out really well. It needed a lot more salt, which I expected since Sarah doesn't add salt to her food when she cooks. I also particularly like a lot of pepper with my macaroni and cheese, even if I am eating the box kind.

The macaroni and cheese was very flavorful. It had a nice crusty texture on top because of the panko, and the mustard powder gave it a nice, savoriness. It did lack a little of the creaminess that you might normally get with box macaroni, so kids may not really appreciate it. 

We had this macaroni and cheese with the beer can chicken that sarah had made, and the flavors really seemed to complement each other well. We had leftovers of it for days, too, which was nice.