A Roux, A Bechamel, A Mornay-Oh My an Amazing Mac and Cheese Dish!

I try to make one dish on Sundays that I can freeze and use all week for dinner. The Carnivore works 2nd shift right now and it makes packing his dinner easier.

Since this is the first week of transitioning our diet I tried to use up some things we had on hand (chicken breasts, broccoli, boxed pasta, flour, butter) with some amazing, real Sharp Cheddar and Gouda I from the store.

The plan was to make a homemade mac and cheese casserole that included chicken and broccoli to take it from a side dish to an entree. I served it with a spinach salad that I dressed up with chopped prunes, orange baby bell peppers, rosemary flavored Marcona almonds and a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

For those of you that need motivation to stick with this post and proof something good happened, here's  the final plate:

Marcona almonds are the BEST almonds in the world and it has taken all my will power this week not to demolish the entire bag. I bet I could do it in 3 minutes flat.

Proof that both are still in the pantry on Wednesday

And, yes, I put prunes in a salad. I'm really 80 on the inside. I eat them as snacks and put them in meals whenever I can. Judge if you want but prunes are where it's at.

I've never made a cheese sauce from scratch and had no idea what I was getting in to. I looked up a few recipes online and took ideas from different sources- which is how I pretty much figure out how to cook anything these days.

From start to finish the sauce took about 30 minutes and went from a roux (butter and flour) to a bechamel (add warm milk) to a mornay (plus cheese, salt, spices).

Let's just say my whisk got a good work out.

I ended up with an unbelievably rich and creamy cheddar sauce that was thick enough to stay on the back of a spoon. It tasted amazing. I could have eaten the entire pan of sauce with a spoon and been happy with life.

I looked the process up after the dish was complete because I couldn't believe a mac and cheese sauce really needed all that work. Somehow I went in to it thinking that I could dump shredded cheese in to milk and magic would happen.

I covered the other ingredients, including the diced gouda because I wanted the cheese flavors to stay separate, with the sauce, topped with panko bread crumbs, and baked it in the oven. The final result:

The Carnivore went back for seconds. And I'll never by boxed or frozen mac and cheese again.