The Cheesiest Mac and Cheese

It’s comfort food season! The time for steaming bowls of pasta, soups and curries is here, and it happens to be my favourite food season. But wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? 

Between a continuing global pandemic, the death of a close family member and the fact that I am in the final stages of sending my first book off to the printers (yes that’s right! Where We Ate: A Field Guide to Canada’s Restaurants, Past and Present is almost ready for pre-order), 2022 has been a whopper. 

And while there are those that continue to roll their eyes at food bloggers who write 1500-word essays on the minutia of their daily lives (which I fully support and adore, by the way, just please give me the ‘jump to recipe’ button), I’ll spare you a diatribe about my goings on and get to the reason why you’re really here — a recipe for the cheesiest mac and cheese! 

Where is the cheesiest mac and cheese?

A few weeks back, I was the guest on CBC Crosstalk, the daily lunch-hour radio show, hosted by Adam Walsh (you can listen here). We talked about Where We Ate, how I got into food writing, and my recent restaurant reviews for The Telegram and then Adam opened the lines so we could answer some culinary questions from listeners.  

Then the question came — I couldn’t have planned it better! The question was so appropriate, my family members asked me later if I had planted it. 

Where is the best mac and cheese in the city? 

I’ve talked about this before, but No.4 Restaurant & Bar and Get Stuffed Restaurant serve up the winners in my book. 

As I drove home after the radio show, a flutter with thoughts of mac and cheese, I realised that I don’t have a recipe for my favourite dish on the blog — the thing I love most in the world (we all know about my love for cheese noods). I don’t have a ton of recipes on the blog; for me, this has been a place to talk about the restaurants I visit, the hotels I enjoy and the history of my favourite dishes (like eggs benny) but there are a few. But to not have a mac and cheese recipe feels a bit blasphemous! 

For the home cook, the cheesiest mac and cheese recipe is hard to attain. Sometimes the noodles are overcooked, absorbing too much of the bechamel sauce; sometimes the bechamel is too runny so it doesn’t form that pleasantly gelatinous bowl of comfort, and sometimes there just isn’t enough cheese. 

If you’re interested, a history of Kraft Dinner and my 9-box taste test can be found here. You’ll be surprised which box was the cheesiest mac and cheese.

All about the cheese

My recipe is not fancy, it doesn’t have extra things in this dish — there is no spin. It’s macaroni and cheese. 

The trick to my recipe is to mix in a cup or so of grated cheese in the casserole dish, just before you top the dish with even more cheese. I also never put anything on top of my mac and cheese other than more cheese. Always more cheese. Never breadcrumbs, or gasp, tomatoes. This recipe is all about cheese (like many things in my life). 

So, after a decade of The Food Girl in Town (yup, that’s right, I’ve been on here for ten years and didn’t even post about my anniversary — what kind of blogger am I?), here is the recipe for the cheesiest mac and cheese.