Let me get this out of the way: If you know how to make Kraft Dinner, this post might not be for you.
If you haven’t made Kraft Dinner since you were a kid, maybe this will give you a bit of nostalgia. If you are someone who never (or only rarely) cooks for yourself and it’s more of a “throw it in the microwave” or “turn the oven to 400 and set the timer to what the box says”, well, this post might help you figure out how to use the top of the stove. And if you’re one of those always-eats-at-a-restaurant pinky-extended kinda people and you find yourself with ingredients but a sinking feeling that you’d rather be eating something decadent, then you are exactly the person that this is for. (Additionally: if you make Mac&Cheese all the time and want to see how someone else does it and get some ideas (or feel smug about how they’re doing it wrong), then this is also a post for you.)
First off, we’re going to be making a bunch. Two boxes at once. (This will allow us to grab a spoonful or three from the container throughout the week and heat it up in the microwave and get some food fast without thinking about it. Under non-quarantine circumstances, we’d be able to put an individual serving into multiple little containers for easy transport for lunch at work.)
So start by boiling some water and looking at the instructions:
Hrm… 6 cups of water, half a stick of butter, and a quarter cup of milk. Okay, first off, I’m not going to use milk. And since we’re making two boxes, we want to double that, right? Wrong. We want to use 6 cups of water for two boxes. (Seriously, it’ll be okay.)
So get your water to a nice slow rolling boil and open your boxes and remove the cheese packets and dump your macaroni in there. Give it a stir. It’s going to want to stick to the bottom of the pot, so stir it and unstick all of the little macarons.
Now get a pyrex measuring cup and a colander.
We’re going to save some of the delicious carby water for after the pasta is cooked.
Put the pyrex in the drain then put the colander on top of the pyrex.
Now we just have to wait. Oh, and stir the pasta every minute or so. Some people prefer it a little al dente, some people want it done until it’s squishy. You know how you prefer your pasta. Let it get to maybe just a hair under where you think it’s perfect.
Now that that’s done, let’s look back at the instructions. 4 tablespoons of butter per box… wait. That means we’re going to throw a whole stick of butter in there! (We have a butter ribbon tool that squeezes out a ribbon instead forcing you to use a knife like some medieval peasant. $15 from Amazon. Watch out: if you get this, you’re going to use a lot more butter than you used to.)
Now dump the pasta into the butter and collect that carby water. Oh, look at it! Look at those delicious carbs! Seriously, when you make pasta you probably use too much water and you probably just dump the water down the sink when you’re done. You shouldn’t. This stuff is liquid gold for sauces. Rich flavor, good body, and calories.
For what we’re doing here, you only need about a cup’s worth. Dump out the rest without guilt.
Now dump the cheese packet into the macaroni…
And pour the cup, yes, the cup of carby water into the cheese.
Stir it around and put it back on the (now cooling) burner for making this stuff really, really good:
It doesn’t have to be the 4 Cheese Blend. It can be your personal favorite kind of shredded cheese. Mild cheddar if you don’t want it to be too spicy, the spicy habanero cheese if you do, you know the shredded cheese that you like. Well, dump it in there and start stirring. You want it to get melty.
Okay, once that’s done, realize that it needs a little something:
Throw a handful of bacon crumbles in there:
Once you’ve stirred that in, remember that you’ve got some garlic/herb goat cheese left over from a snack the other day:
And now stir THAT in:
And stir and stir and the carby water and the cheese should all start getting a really nice texture that can only be improved by one thing:
Now, you don’t need a quarter cup or anything. Just put a splash in there to even everything out and give it a good color and good texture.
I have been told by reliable sources that the texture is like Velveeta rather than ordinary from the box Kraft Dinner.
Now, this stuff will stick to your ribs and we’ve turned a meal that might feed six into a meal that might now feed 10. So fix up a bowl for tonight and put the rest in a container for the rest of the week to spoon out as needed and watch out because your cat will want to lick the bowl:
There are a handful of other things you could do, of course. Add salsa “to taste” (I like adding a half cup of Pace Picante Hot). Instead of adding bacon, warm up a pack of hot dogs and cut them up and dump the wienies in there instead. You know what you like. (And be careful with the salsa. It’s easier to add more than to unadd more.)
But that stuff? The stuff I made tonight? It’s not tough to make, and you can make it and it turns it from a vaguely depressing Bachelor Chow (Now With Flavor!) into something that will stick to your ribs and feel like luxury and keep morale high. And give you a little bit of nostalgia to boot.
So… what are you cooking?
(All pictures taken by the author.)
Another thing that helps about this is that Big Cooking is a fun change from the usual routine, and you freeze what you don’t eat.
Note that you need things to freeze stuff in, which means a sufficient quantity of storage containers and sufficient freezer space. Check that you have these before you start.
If worst comes to worst and you run out of tubs, you can use plastic bags, so long as you let the stuff cool first. Best to do this in the fridge; plastic bags aren’t very temperature-stable so you can’t just throw it in right from the pot, but if you let it cool on the stove it sits in the bacteria-breeding zone for quite a while and that’s not good.Report
This max and cheese never makes it a week.
I’ve never used anything but plastic bags. I don’t trust the cheap (er, “affordable”) disposable-adjacent containers and never really felt like shelling out for the ones that I’d be willing to trust for months at a time.
I suppose that that was a mistake, in hindsight.Report
I have to ask, since you’ve customized the standard mac and cheese from the box, why not get your own pasta and then just follow the rest of the post? You could use what ever noodle variety that you like and allows the cheese to cling to it.
Recently make chicken curry soup.Report
Good question! It has to do with getting comfortable with cooking on the stovetop. This ain’t a post for people who can look at a box of Kraft Dinner and say “I could do that with my own ingredients”, it’s for people who look at a box of Kraft Dinner and say “even if I don’t mess it up when I make it, it won’t be very good”.
It’s the assumptions hidden behind “even if I don’t mess it up when I make it” that I’m hoping to help accelerate away.Report
I think Kraft puts something in the orange powder that kids quickly get addicted to :^)
I add the odds and ends in the freezer/refrigerator and bake mine. The last of the frozen broccoli. That red bell pepper I bought for something else that got cancelled. A grilled chicken thigh.Report
Canned tuna makes a good addition to macaroni and cheese, as well. It’s like a tuna melt, but the bread is boiled instead of baked and grilled.Report
Agreed.Report
Whoa, bacon bits and moar cheese? Genius.
[side eye about the salsa, though.]
Standard fare for Friday lunches at Brideshead: Mac’n’cheese with Tuna and … this is key … capers.
And by tuna, we’re talking mixed with mayo and spicy (dijon) mustard – but no crunchy bits like celery… that’s just evil.
Capers can be served on the side so you can self medicate.Report
This guy gets it.Report
I do. I do get it.Report
I missed the part about mayonnaise. I retract my endorsement.Report
You’re goin’ raw dog on the Tuna? OMGReport
That works. I also sometimes bake my Mac & cheese with a nice flavored breading topping to get some crunch in there as wellReport
Yeah, that’s a bonus… but usually a step too far for a one-pot Friday lunch for us. I mean, a feast day — maaaybe.Report
The salsa/hot dogs combo works amazingly well. If you don’t like the idea of adding picante, think of it as adding vegan ceviche.
Capers! Now that’s intriguing…Report
Ha! “vegan ceviche”
Still, not helping. But now on multiple levels.
This is why we need more community (Baptist) pot-luck dinners… so I could take a discreet scoop of that odd looking casserole and be amazed (or discretely hide the remainders under some iceberg lettuce).Report
I have been known to add dill-enhanced dijon to my servings of mac-n-cheese. Jaybird side eyes it like you do salsa, so it has to be a post-hoc rather than pre-hoc addition.
(I”m in favor of the tuna in theory but in practice seem to be real hoard-meister about my tuna…. even before all this.)Report
Intersting… I have a love/hate relationship with Dill.
Not sure that I could mentally commit to possibly ruining an entire batch, but I’m intrigued enough to wonder. By day 60 of quarantine: bring it on. And where’s that last jar of salsa?
edit: ps comment in moderation in other thread.Report
Is “Kraft Dinner” from Maribou’s influence? I’ve only ever heard of Canadians calling it that.Report
Wasn’t it called that in the 70’s? If not, it must be a mixture of her influence and growing up watching You Can’t Do That On Television and/or Curling on Windsor’s television station that managed to make it to Detroit.Report
Not sure. I only know of the 70s from more durable relics, like orange and avocado Tupperware™. Apparently it was originally called Kraft Dinner in the US, but it’s been Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for as long as I can remember. Nowadays they still have “Dinner” on the box in smaller print, but the Internet says it was more prominent in the past. So maybe that was it. Or maybe you got it from your parents, who remembered the older branding.Report
The using of the carb water is very intriguing and I’m gonna try that out next time I can smuggle a box of Kraft Dinner past the gimlet eyes of The Authority (hubby).Report
If there’s one thing that I wanted people to take away from this post, it’s that.
Use less water when you’re boiling your pasta. Save some of it for the sauce that you’ve deliberately made too thick up until this point. Add the carby water to the too-thick sauce and thin it out a little.
“I can’t believe I used to throw this away”, you’ll say.Report
do keep in mind that this is wheat gluten mixed with water, so don’t give it to gluten-sensitive friends.Report
Good point. (I only use it in the dishes that I serve it with, for the record.)Report
For sure but if you’re contemplating serving Kraft Dinner to gluten sensitives you’re probably a lost cause already water or not.Report
I’m going to try this tomorrow. Thanks, Jaybird!
I’m so sick of quarantine that I’m cooking for fun. There’s no way I make it three months with my sanity intact.Report
Bon appétit!Report
About the pasta water: why not just ladle it into the pyrex cup? For me, it’s way too complicated to set the colander* on to the cup, balance everything, and pour the water/pasta mix over it. Does it do a better job at capturing the carb-water?
*It took me a lot of msspells before I gave up and just scrolled back to the post to see how you spelled it.Report
The important thing is keeping the water. Keep it however makes you feel best about it.Report
There’s so much dairy in this I had to make three trips to the bathroom while reading it. (TMI???)
It. Looks. Delicious.Report