13 Celebrity Chef Tips For Making The Best Mac And Cheese Ever

It can be hard to approach making a dish as famous as mac and cheese. Although it's relatively simple once you have the concept down, you might have some initial questions about which method you should use or which ingredients you should buy. For example, you may ask yourself: What is the best type of cheese for homemade cheese sauce? Should you make it on the stovetop or bake it in the oven? For newer home cooks, it can be tricky to get the noodles to the ideal consistency or to find the right balance between too much sauce or an overly dry dish. Not to mention, you need the perfect amount of seasoning for it to have that extra oomph you're looking for.

Luckily, you've come to the right place, because we have many clever tips from celebrity chefs who can help you make the absolute tastiest mac and cheese. From David Chang to Sunny Anderson, these cooks have years of kitchen experience under their belts, so they know all the best ways to take this comfort food up a notch. Take note of a technique from one chef, or combine a few different methods, and you no longer need to worry about the quality of your dish. It'll be creamy, flavorful, and full of cheesy goodness.

Dry mustard is Ree Drummond's mac and cheese pantry staple because it elevates the flavor of the dish. The celebrity chef mentions that when using dry mustard, the finished mac and cheese is a combination of cheesy, tangy, and rich flavors. She uses 2 teaspoons of dry mustard but claims that you can add more if you need to. If you try this trick yourself, make sure to do a taste test so you can adjust the seasonings from there. Ideally, you don't want to add too much mustard powder. It is pretty sharp, depending on the kind you use, so a little goes a long way.

On her website, "The Pioneer Woman" suggests that you can also use other substitutes — such as Dijon mustard or mustard seeds — if needed. Keep in mind that these substitutes will slightly alter the consistency of the meal.

Ina Garten's tip for tasty macaroni is to use truffle butter, which is essentially regular butter that's infused with the flavor of truffles. Truffles are a type of fungi that grows underground. They have a distinctly savory, musky flavor that works well with various dishes. 

Some truffle butters have actual truffle chunks mixed into them, while other kinds are made using truffle oil. Since most mac and cheese recipes require butter for their roux — a sauce made from a combination of fat and flour — Garten is clever to suggest truffle butter, because it's easy to incorporate. You can simply use truffle butter in place of regular butter in your recipe.

On the Food Network's YouTube channel, Garten shares her mac and cheese tip, explaining how she prefers to use white truffle butter. She heats it in the pan with the flour before she adds milk, cheese, and seasoning to finish the sauce. If all you have is black truffle butter, you can use it. However, it will make the sauce taste different, because black truffles have a slightly different flavor profile from white truffles. 

Regarding mac and cheese, Sunny Anderson prefers that hers has some heat. While she includes cayenne in the seasonings, Anderson also has another tip to make the pasta dish spicy, which is to use pepper jack cheese in your cheese blend. According to the celebrity chef, pepper jack adds a fiery flavor, as some varieties are made with mixed-in jalapeño and pimento pepper pieces. 

This cheese isn't necessarily the most common type that cooks use when they make classic comfort food. Still, Anderson swears by it in a YouTube video posted by Food Network. "What really works here is that low hum of heat," she says, attributing this, in part, to the pepper jack cheese that was used. If you want to give your pasta dish some pizazz, take her word for it and use subtly spicy ingredients. These ingredients won't overpower the whole dish.

Out of all the different ways you can make cheesy pasta sauce, Wolfgang Puck has a most creative method: using a blender. In a TikTok video, the famous chef demonstrates how to make mac and cheese sauce in a countertop blender and why he recommends trying it out. Puck notes that it's straightforward, and takes just over 5 minutes — which is lightning-fast compared to other sauce-making methods. He also says the final product is exceptionally creamy and full of cheesy flavor.

You might wonder what he uses to thicken the sauce, since Puck uses this unconventional blender approach, instead of the traditional method of making a roux on the stovetop. Instead, Puck uses pieces of bread. He even tosses in some carrots for added color. Amazingly, his technique doesn't make the cheese clump or turn into a funky texture. As he removes the sauce from the blender, it has a smooth consistency. 

Remember that you will still need to bake the cooked noodles for a few minutes after you mix them with the sauce. This way, everything comes out at the same temperature and your topping has time to brown.

For mac and cheese that has more substance, take Marcus Samuelsson's advice and mix sautéed collard greens into the pasta. Samuelsson mentions on his website how the dish tastes much better when you combine the two components, instead of serving the greens as a side. Specifically, he cooks the veggies with coconut milk, soy sauce, bacon, and garlic, so they supply the noodles with extra flavor. With the veggies and some meaty bacon mixed in, it creates a hearty entrée that keeps you satisfied for longer.

The vegetables provide nutrients, too. Healthline states that collard greens contain an impressive 128% of the daily recommended value for vitamin K. It also has high amounts of vitamins A and C. If you want to try the celebrity chef's take on mac and cheese, just make sure that you set aside at least 20 minutes for the greens to cook thoroughly before you incorporate them with the rest of the meal.

For celebrity chef Rachael Ray's show, fans submit cooking questions, which Ray then answers on camera. According to Ray, the secret to making the best mac and cheese is nailing your sauce. In a YouTube video, she explains that you should heat your milk with some crushed garlic before you add it to your roux.

Some folks might not heat their milk at all; they just dump cold milk into a hot pan containing their roux, but that isn't the most efficient way to go about it. This can sometimes cause your roux to become lumpy. It's better to heat your milk to a similar temperature, then slowly mix it in. Furthermore, when Ray warms the milk and garlic mixture, it gives time for the crushed garlic to steep, which adds a delicious umami flavor to the sauce. If you don't have fresh crushed garlic, you can use jarred minced garlic, which gives you a similar effect and saves time.

Emeril Lagasse throws in a dash of his creole seasoning blend (which is a product called Essence) into his breadcrumb topping when he makes mac and cheese. The famous chef mixes his breadcrumbs, shredded cheese, and seasoning mix together before he scatters it over the top of the cheesy pasta. On his website, he mentions that the seasoning works great in all sorts of savory meals. The blend includes cayenne, thyme, oregano, paprika, salt, onion powder, and more. When you put it in the pasta dish, it adds a lot of flavor.

You can easily make a creole seasoning blend at home and adjust the taste to your preference. The small amount of spice it contributes will instantly take plain breadcrumbs from bland to delectable. The seasoning even adds a bit of color, so if you want your baked macaroni to have a nice golden-brown look, this certainly does the trick.

Celebrity chef Carla Hall explains on her blog that you should try to use a different topping for your mac and cheese. Where many people use Panko breadcrumbs, Hall recommends using cheddar and parmesan cheese crackers. Because the crackers are cheesy, it makes the dish taste richer. If you use Cheez-It crackers, for example, they contain extra seasonings too, which gives the topping plenty of flair. It also provides the creamy pasta dish with some crunch.

It's pretty easy to transform the crackers into breadcrumbs. You can simply run them through the food processor until they crumble into pieces. After pulsing the crackers in a food processor for a bit, you should add some melted butter, and then pulse them for longer. Hall also mentions that the mixture shouldn't be super fine (like sand). Instead, you want it to be coarser in texture. 

While it's common practice for people to use al dente pasta for macaroni and cheese, Paula Deen explains in a YouTube video why that is a bad idea. You might think that it's better to par-cook the pasta for baked dishes so that the noodles can finish in the oven and not become soggy. However, Deen states: "If you cook elbow macaroni too al dente, the liquid in your dish is going to soak up very, very fast because those noodles are going to try to complete their cooking process." As a result, the final product is very dry; it seeps into the noodles instead of simply coating them.

Don't worry about removing the pasta from the boiling water early. You can cook it all through before you incorporate the sauce. This helps the dish have plenty of sauce after you remove it from the oven, which is how comfort food should be. In fact, Deen uses this technique for the mac and cheese recipe at her restaurant.

You likely use whole milk, cream, or a combination of both for your mac and cheese sauce. But in a YouTube video, Alton Brown recommends using evaporated milk instead, as it makes the sauce's consistency extra creamy. Don't worry, evaporated milk isn't super sweet — that's condensed milk. There are differences between condensed and evaporated milk, such as texture and sugar content, so be careful when you pick out the ingredients for your pasta dish.

Simply put, evaporated milk is exactly what it sounds like. Manufacturers remove much of the water from milk through evaporation, which makes it thicker — and they don't add sugar to it, unlike with condensed milk. Since this product is a different thickness than regular milk, don't just use it in any macaroni recipe. Instead, find a recipe with evaporated milk so the sauce turns out right.

Home cooks that make their sauces from scratch know that the standard process is to create a roux, so the sauce is nice and thick. However, Alex Guarnaschelli gives entirely different guidelines for people who want to make mac and cheese like she does. Guarnaschelli says that the roux distracts the palate and makes the cheese taste less prominent. She avoids skipping it altogether. Furthermore, on her blog, she explains that the starchy qualities in the pasta are enough, so the flour in the roux is unnecessary. When the celebrity chef makes her famous macaroni, she only heats the cream and pasta water, adds seasoning, and melts the cheese to create an extremely rich sauce.

Since she includes pasta water in the base, the sauce is a perfect consistency. If you try this method on your own, just make sure to use enough cheese for the sauce to be thick — you can always add more if you feel it is too loose. Then again, when you add the reserved pasta liquid and allow the noodles to rest in the sauce, it helps bring everything together.

If you're a fan of taking clever shortcuts when you cook, you'll love David Chang's recent advice on how to make one-pot mac and cheese in a wok. Specifically, he says to use a hybrid wok rather than other types of cookware. This facilitates the evaporation process, as the pasta simmers in the water. He explains that almost all the water is gone once you cook the pasta, so you don't need to strain any liquid. You can then build off of the remaining water to create the sauce with flour, cheese, milk, and other components.

Chang demonstrates how to do so in a short Instagram video, where his caption explains that he actually tried this technique because he was in a pinch, but the final product turned out impressive. If you try this yourself, just remember that the water should slightly cover the raw noodles when you begin. Otherwise, you have a surplus of liquid, which defeats the whole purpose of making it in a wok.

Everyone has their favorites when it comes to which type of cheese they want in their macaroni. While Sunny Anderson says to use pepper jack cheese, Jean-Pierre Brehier has a different tip. In a YouTube video, the famous chef makes his mac and cheese using sweet butter, flour, nutmeg, and four different kinds of cheese. His tip for having abundant moisture in the pasta dish is to use Brie cheese (specifically triple cream Brie). 

Brehier is passionate about this ingredient since it has a high water content, which benefits the sauce. For instance, creamy brie has over 50% water. This stands in contrast to cheeses like aged cheddar, which have 35%. The extra moisture in Brie makes a difference, contributing to how soft the cheese is and how effortlessly it melts. 

The chef also mentions how removing the rind from the cheese is easy if you freeze it beforehand, then use a vegetable peeler to remove it. If you plan to use Brie in your macaroni meal, it doesn't need to be the only cheese, you can mix it with a combination of other types, and it still contributes to a silky sauce.