The Orange Strainer: Blasé Mac and Cheese

Recipe: Alton Brown's Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Time: 1 hr 5 min*

Ease: 2

Taste: 4

Leftover Value: 4

Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Down the Drain

*Needs additional resting time at the end

I am always on the hunt for the perfect mac and cheese recipe. I should probably just stop while I'm ahead. I have two perfectly good recipes that I use, one which Hubby likes, the other which he does not.

I've been making Slow-Cooker Mac and Cheese since we were first married. It is, as with most things in the slow-cooker, insanely easy and incredibly delicious. My family loves it, I love it, but Hubby is not impressed with it.

Then I discovered Healthy Mac and Cheese and he fell in love. Nothing else can measure up to it now.

Though I love Healthy Mac and Cheese it requires a decent amount of active work, and I much prefer a mac and cheese that everything can be tossed into the pot and left to melt together into cheesy goodness.*

Only to drive myself crazy, I continue to experiment with different mac and cheese recipes. I expected this recipe to be amazing because it was not only by one of the Food Network's famous chefs, but it was also listed as the most popular Food Network recipe of all time. Of course, this was based on page views on foodnetwork.com and perhaps the viewers who actually made the recipe all had the same experience as me.

Or perhaps not. We'll never know.

*That rarely happens with any mac and cheese recipe, save for boxed mac and cheese.

The major plus with this recipe was that the directions were easy to follow. If you know anything about me by now, I followed them exactly. My first issue was when it called for stirring in the cheese. Most mac and cheese recipes will explain to let the cheese melt to a certain point of smoothness, this one did not. So I let it warm and melt a little, but didn't wait until it was bubbling with cheesy gooeyness.

If it doesn't tell me to do it, I assume I don't need to waste the time. In this case, it didn't seem to make a difference.

My last issue was the resting time for the dish. After the macaroni is pulled from the oven the recipe states it should rest for five minutes. I'm going to admit, the resting time is usually something that I fault on. Instead of letting my meat rest before slicing, I dig right in. Instead of letting bread cool to a temperature that will not burn human hands, I brace myself for burns and begin cutting. Perhaps it is a patience issue, but I think it might really be a food/hunger issue. However---this time, I waited the five minutes to let the mac and cheese 'rest'.

But this still happened:

I'm pretty sure that there shouldn't be a lake in the dish after I scoop out a serving. When I went back about twenty minutes later to give the mac and cheese a second try, it scooped out much cleaner. That said, if you plan to attempt this recipe, let it rest longer. It not only prevents cheese floods in your dish, but it also provides a better texture to the noodles.

Ultimately, no matter how long this dish sat it wouldn't compensate for the overpowering onion flavor and crunch of onions throughout. I thought it was odd that the onions were added at the same time as the milk, typically they are fried alone so that they will soften before other ingredients are added.

The bread crumb topping was unnecessary additional calories. While I love to use panko breadcrumbs in many different dishes, mixed with butter and sprinkled on top of oniony mac and cheese is simply a waste.