baked velveeta white mac and cheese recipe

At this stage, the sauce should be smooth but relatively loose. Raise the heat to high and bring to a simmer, whisking constantly, then immediately reduce the heat to low and continue simmering until the sauce lightly coats the back of a spoon, 2 to 5 minutes. Add the flour and cook, whisking, until smooth like gravy, about 1 minute. Melt the butter and simmer, whisking occasionally, until the butter stops spurting and quiets down, 2 to 3 minutes.

Return the empty pot to the stove (no need to clean it) and set over medium heat.

Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until just past al dente.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and season generously with salt.

But I’d like to think I gave options: If you’re one of those people who hates Velveeta, whether the flavor of it or what it represents (that’s for another conversation), I’d say go out and buy sodium citrate and experiment. Jesse told me that food stylists use sodium citrate to stabilize mixtures like that, so the key to keeping this sauce creamy, gooey and together is Velveeta, which has sodium citrate in it. The texture was grainy and watery, or the noodles had soaked up all the moisture, which tends to happen with many baked macaroni and cheeses that don’t have stabilizing agents in them. I was testing the recipe and had baked off maybe 10 pans of macaroni and cheese that day and was going a little crazy, and the cheese kept separating. I have to give some credit to my food stylist friend Jesse Szewczyk. The biggest lesson I learned has to be how to get that perfect cheese sauce texture, almost like nacho cheese.

What's the secret to copycat Stouffer's mac and cheese creaminess?

Baked velveeta white mac and cheese recipe