best macaroni cheese ever – really!
How many times have you read another recipe promising the “Best Mac Cheese Ever!”, rushed to make it and ended up with another disappointment?
I have, countless times. I’ve tried them all, nutritional yeast, carrots, sweet potato, pumpkin, cauliflower. All of them either wrong or awful. Most of them I tried giving as leftovers to my dog Jess, but she sensibly rejected them.
I used to make dairy macaroni cheese using a variation of a recipe by Heston Blumenthal, that used no milk just a mixture of cheese in a wine reduction and stock. It was great then, not at all gluggy, sharp and adult in flavour. I think of it as macaroni and cheese for grown ups.
So I gave it another go recently using a mixture of vegusto piquant, daiya cheddar and tofutti cream cheese. I’ve tinkered with it, veganising it obviously, but also simplifying it a bit and using less wine as the original is pretty sharp.
I think it is a winner. Jess isn’t getting any leftovers from this one, even though she’d probably love it.
It also works wonderfully as a cheese sauce for cauliflower and broccoli.
- 200 g macaroni
- ½ tsp salt
- 200 ml dry white wine
- 300 ml hot vegetable stock (I used Massel)
- 60 g vegan melting style grated cheese (I've used both Daiya Cheddar and Mozzarella successfully)
- 20 g vegan hard parmesan style cheese ( I use Vegusto Piquant)
- 10 g cornflour
- 80 g Tofutti cream cheese
- black pepper
- 1 tsp truffle oil (optional)
- Preheat the oven to 200 C.
- Cook the pasta in salted water until done. Drain.
- Mix in the truffle oil.
- In a saucepan, reduce the white wine over a high heat to 30 ml.
- Add the hot stock to the reduced wine.
- Mix the grated cheeses with the cornflour and add to the saucepan.
- Stir until the cheese has been melted and incorporated into the sauce, then stir through the pasta.
- Cook over a medium heat until the pasta is warmed through.
- Stir in the cream cheese.
- Season with freshly ground black pepper.
- Place into an ovenproof dish and bake in the oven until nice brown spots start to appear.