I made the Classic Baked Mac and Cheese from The Food Lab and the cheese sauce came out extremely clumpy and not gooey at all. The cheese sauce was smooth before I mixed in the noodles. Any idea what went wrong?
by Tiny-Rabbit-7965
In Serious Eats
10 Comments
The emulsion broke and the fats separated? Maybe too little moisture in the sauce?
(No idea. Just guessing.)
Did you use pre- packaged shredded cheese?
I also would be worried about the vinegar in the hot sauce curdling the cheese. That seems like a strange addition into the recipe.
Were oven temp and time followed correctly?
Was it cooled and reheated?
Also it appears to be partially the breadcrumb topping.
My basic Mac recipe is much simplified from this. 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup flour -> roux -> 2 cup milk -> bechamel -> lots of black pepper, a bit of mustard powder/nutmeg/cayenne -> 3 cup *fresh* shredded cheddar, reserve a bit for topping. Mix with 3 cup (when dry) mostly cooked pasta -> dish, top with reserved shredded cheese -> bake at 375 for 15-20 mins.
You can branch out from that but maybe give it a shot and see.
I think the recipe is broken, here’s another person with the same issue https://www.reddit.com/r/seriouseats/s/gOg473IB2R I’ve ran into this with a few of his recipes either the results are not good or only marginally better than the recipes at the top of google search. I can’t tell if it’s a git gud thing or some just don’t work
Did you add the noodles to the sauce? What temp were the noods? My guess is they were too hot (or cold) causing the protein in the cheese to seize. Next time try adding sauce to noodles to temper? I dunno, just spit balling.
I don’t always mess up cheese sauce, but I do and it sucks. When I do it’s never clumped up like yours.
They’ve revised the recipe on the website in the past couple of years to use a lower oven temperature and a bit more milk (iirc). I’m not sure how different than the book this is, but it uses a 350 degree oven, not 375, to help prevent it from breaking
https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-bechamel-baked-mac-cheese-recipe
The other important thing is to make sure your bechamel isn’t too hot when you add the cheese – 185 or so depending on what type of cheese you use – and to add the cheese in batches to avoid temperature shocks.
The sauce got over cooked. I dont know the recipe you did but my guess from experience is this.
This is one of the recipes that Kenji has said there’s an error – it should call for 1.5 cups of whole milk instead of .5 cups – maybe this is where your lack of moisture is coming from (in addition to the possible over bake)
Did you buy that cheese pre grated? Because that stuff has additives, cellulose or potato starch, to keep it from clumping in the bag but when you add it to a sauce it has the opposite effect.
Depending when and where you got the recipe from you could have the wrong measurements for the milk. I believe Kenji updated it recently saying that there was an error in the milk measurement and you need to use 1.5 C, not 0.5 C.
This reminded me of Afro Eurasia