Mac & Cheese

Method

1. grate5 min
   from a block, coarse holes
   cheddar grated (+ gruyère, + American cheese). Grate it yourself: pre-grated cheese is coated with starch or cellulose to stop it caking, and that coating interferes with a smooth melt. Small pieces also melt before the pan has time to get hot enough to hurt them
2. boil7 min
   well salted, 2 minutes short of the packet, drained
   pasta, deliberately underdone. It keeps absorbing liquid from the sauce afterwards, and pasta cooked to package time here turns soft and swollen by the time it reaches the table
3. saute3 min
   medium-low, butter melted then flour stirred in, cooked 1-2 minutes
   butter + flour cooked to a blond roux that smells of biscuits rather than raw flour. Do not let it colour — browning the roux costs thickening power and this sauce needs all of it
4. whisk4 min
   warm milk added a splash at a time for the first third
   + warm milk, whisked smooth between additions. Warm rather than cold: cold milk chills the roux so the starch granules clump before they can disperse, and those lumps are gelatinised outside and dry inside, which no amount of whisking fixes
5. simmer5 min
   low, stirred, until it coats a spoon
   until the sauce thickens and a finger drawn across the back of the spoon leaves a clean line. Starch thickens over a narrow band above about 85°C — below it the sauce stays thin however long it sits, and the extra minutes also cook out the pasty taste
6. temper4 min
   OFF the heat, cheese in three handfuls, each melted before the next
   + cheddar + mustard + salt + pepper + nutmeg (+ hot sauce, + cayenne), stirred off the heat until smooth. This is the step that decides the dish: above roughly 65°C the casein network contracts and wrings out the butterfat, and a smooth sauce turns grainy with an oil slick in seconds. You should never see a bubble after the cheese goes in
7. fold2 min
   drained pasta into the sauce, off the heat
   + pasta turned through until coated, and served at once, looser than looks right — it tightens as it cools and the pasta keeps drinking. If it does break, whisk in a splash of cold milk off the heat, which drops it below the coagulation point and adds fresh protein at the same time