The Ultimate Five-Cheese Macaroni and Cheese ｜ Lodge Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven

When I was growing up, my favorite dish was my mom's macaroni and cheese. My dad did most of the cooking in the house, but when it came to holidays and my mom's macaroni and cheese, she definitely reigned supreme. She passed this recipe down to me about 20 years ago, and since then I've added some tweaks to create what I now call my ultimate five cheese macaroni and cheese. It's a recipe that I said I'd never give away, but today I'm going to share it with you. Here's what you'll need. We'll start with our cheeses first. Sharp cheddar, Monterey Jack, mozzarella, grated Romano, and grated Parmesan cheese. You'll also need elbow macaroni, eggs, butter, whole milk, sea salt, white sugar, Hungarian paprika, dried basil, and extra virgin olive oil. Let's get started. Okay, the first thing we're going to do is shred our cheeses. I like to buy blocks of cheese rather than cheese already shredded, because when you buy the shredded cheese, it's coated with something that keeps it from sticking together, and I want just the cheese. So I go through the trouble of shredding it myself, and I think it's worth it. Alright, one down, two to go. Alright, now for our Monterey Jack. I worked for quite a while trying to figure out what cheeses work together, and these five seem to give the best taste. One of the great things about this dish are the variations that you can add on your own. Alright, the Monterey Jack is done, and I tell you, shredding this cheese is really a labor of love. And now for the mozzarella. How much cheese you'll actually need depends on how large of a dish you're making. I'm using about a pound of the sharp cheddar, Monterey Jack, and mozzarella. Alright, all the cheeses are grated now. I'm going to set them in the fridge until I'm ready to add them to the dish. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add a little bit of sea salt, a little bit of olive oil, and add your macaroni. Once you add your macaroni, you might want to kind of keep it moving so it doesn't stick together. Now, when cooking your macaroni, you definitely don't want to cook it to death. You want to cook it to where it's just shy of al dente. The best thing is to just taste the piece as you go along. That's perfect. It still has a little bit of chew, but it's not soggy. Alright, we're going to take this off, drain it, and I'll show you what to do next. After you drain your macaroni, while it's still hot, add about three quarters of a stick of butter, and stir until it's melted. Okay, I'm going to set this aside for about twenty minutes, just to allow it to cool off a bit. Now, we're going to build our macaroni and cheese. Before you do this, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. I'm going to be doing this today in my Lodge 3-Quart Cast Iron Enamel Dutch Oven. Now, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to come in, and I'm going to butter the inside of this dish. Get every nook and cranny. Next, I'm going to pour a layer of macaroni in the bottom. Let it cover the entire bottom. Try not to double your macaroni up too much. You want a layer of macaroni, then a layer of cheese, then a layer of macaroni, then a layer of cheese. You don't want too thick of a layer of macaroni. Alright, that looks pretty good. Alright, and then we're going to start with our cheeses. Now, I start with a white cheese first, and then I go to my sharp cheddar, and then I do my other white cheese. I do it this way so I can see where I've been. Okay, so we're going to start with the mozzarella, and we're just going to put a nice layer of that in. It might be a good idea, we're going to do three layers, so it might be a good idea to divide your cheese into three small piles. I've done this a million times, so I can kind of eyeball it. Alright, that looks good. Now we'll come in with our sharp cheddar. When you do this, you need a dish that's going to be at least three and a half inches deep. And now our last white cheese, and you can see what I mean about being able to see where you've been with each cheese. Okay, that looks good. We're going to take our dried basil, and we're going to sprinkle a really fine layer over this. You don't want a lot, but just sprinkle it. If you can see that, I'm just kind of rubbing my fingers together, just to get a really fine layer of that. If you want to put it in a shaker or something, that's fine too. Okay, another layer of macaroni. You can already start to see why you need a deep dish for this. A shallow dish, you might be able to get two layers, and it'll be good, but not quite as good. All right, and then we're going to go down with our cheeses again. Our mozzarella, our sharp cheddar, and the Monterey Jack. And then once again, we're going to go in with a fine layer of our dried basil. One more layer of macaroni. Now you can really see why you need a deep dish for this. Our macaroni has cooled down a lot, so it's not melting our cheese right away when we put this together. That's what we don't want. On this last layer, we want a mixture of the white cheeses and the yellow cheese on top. So we're going to kind of alternate back and forth between the three cheeses, but I don't want the yellow cheese to be completely covered up, because I think it adds a nice color and adds to the presentation of the dish. So we'll put a little bit of that. That's our mozzarella. A little bit of sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack, and we'll just kind of keep alternating it just so there's a nice mix of cheeses on the top with that clump, and kind of leave a little bit of room around the edges so this cheese has somewhere to run without overflowing. A little more sharp cheddar. That's pretty. It's a nice mix of the yellow sharp cheddar and the Monterey and the mozzarella. Okay, one final layer of basil, and now I'm going to do a really light dusting of the parmesan cheese, and you just do this on top. And now the Romano. Okay, and lastly, I'm going to come in with my Hungarian paprika and give this just a really, really light dusting. Okay, that looks great. In a blender, combine four eggs, three cups of whole milk, three teaspoons of sea salt, and three teaspoons of white sugar. And give that a good blend. Okay, now we're going to pour our egg and milk mixture really slowly into the center of this. You don't want to mess your paprika up on top. And you're going to keep an eye on the sides. You want to fill this just below the macaroni. Starting to see it come up. And for this dish, this is a perfect amount. How much of this you'll need, once again, will depend on how large of a dish you're making. Okay, I'm going to add the lid to this. If you don't have a lid, use foil. And now we're going to put this into our 375 degree oven for 30 minutes. Okay, this has been in the oven 30 minutes now. We're going to uncover it, let you see what it looks like. Amazing. Now, it's a little full, so we're going to have to be really careful that this doesn't run and drip into the oven. If yours gets a little full like this, you can just put a little bit of foil right under it, just in case it drips, but I think we should be okay with this. But this is why you want to leave a little bit of space in between the rim and the actual dish. Now, this is going to go back in the oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes. When you get to about 20 minutes, take a peek at it, because you definitely don't want to scorch the top. If the top starts to get brown before the end of the 30 minutes, put the cover back on or tent the dish with foil. Okay, here's the finished dish, and I promise you, it tastes just as good as it looks. I'm going to let this rest for about 5 minutes, just to let it sit up a bit, and then we'll dive in. When you make this dish, you may need to add a few tweaks in order to make it work for you. I did this in cast iron, but I also do it in glass. I find that cast iron cooks a lot quicker, so you may need to adjust your times if you use glass. One way to tell if your macaroni and cheese hasn't cooked long enough is to take something like a bamboo skewer, stick it in the center. If liquid comes out, it hasn't cooked long enough. Simply cover it, and put it back in the oven at the same temperature for about 10 minutes or so, and check it again. Easy, simple, and really good. Thanks for watching.