How to Make Lobster Mac & Cheese Bites! | LIVESTREAM w/ Anna Olson

Well hello everyone and welcome to another episode of my holiday live stream. I'm thrilled to be here with you in southern Ontario and I'm starting to really feel the holiday vibes. It's American Thanksgiving this week if you're tuning in live and macaroni and cheese is often a part of the Thanksgiving tradition in the United States. So I thought that would be fun to create an appetizer inspired by that. These are my lobster mac and cheese bites, a pick up and eat appetizer. Before I get into the recipe I have to say my hellos and thank yous. First thank you to Rolling Meadow for making this live stream possible and hello to my mom Esme. Hi and little Lori if you're watching this someday. Can't ignore the little sister of course. So I'm so glad you're joining us. To Aunt Cecile in Edmonton, Lisa's aunt, hello and happy birthday to you. I know it's coming up soon. Kathy and Craig thank you for joining us and I see lots of familiar names popping up from all over. So it's this is something a little bit different. A savory bake today of all things. Now I'm going to get my stove heated up here and who loves macaroni and cheese? Please let me know in the thread. Do you love your macaroni and cheese? What kind of cheese do you favor in your mac and cheese? I'm going to walk you through a classic recipe. If I may say this is a cheesier version because I want the cheese to actually set the mac and cheese so I can cut it into squares once it's cold and then bread it and then bake it. You can use your air fryer. It's a great way to make use of your air fryer to crisp up the outside and then the inside is so soft and creamy. So let's start by making a traditional mac and cheese sauce and I love Cheyenne. Woohoo everyone! Davo's down with the mac and cheese. Wesley from New Jersey maybe? Think about making this for Thanksgiving on Thursday. So a basic white sauce is at the heart of a mac and cheese. In culinary terms it's referred to as a bechamel and the first thing we have to do is make a roux. So what I'm doing is first weighing out my butter. I need 45 grams so three tablespoons of butter and you are probably accustomed to me saying oh whenever you bake you have to use unsalted butter but you know when it comes to cooking I leave that choice up to you. You can use salted or unsalted. Typically the butter you're using is in a smaller amount that it's not really going to transform the seasoning of your dish and of course we're melting so much cheese into this. So I'm going to melt my three tablespoons of butter in my pan and Michael has stove cam set up because we've got lots of action happening over by the stove. I'll melt out the butter. I do like to use a wooden spoon when I'm cooking a roux for that gentle stirring. You can use a silicone spatula too but I think because I was taught to make a roux using a wooden spoon I stick with it. This is one of the first sauces my mom ever taught me to make. You know when she teaches you those basic the survival things you need to know. Learning how to make mac and cheese of course was an essential and so I learned how to make the roux from her and then what a discovery to go to cooking school and I think I made bechamel on the very first day of class in my sauce class. Now for this sauce I like an equal amount by volume butter and flour. So I've got three tablespoons of butter, three tablespoons of flour and I'm stirring the two together. Are you on the stove cam Michael? I see we've got lots of people joining in. If you're just signing in now I am making lobster mac and cheese bites. Oh my gosh absolutely delicious, crunchy on the outside, creamy in the middle. So as the butter melts it's softening up the flour, coating it and now I'm going to just play with my heat a little bit and I think turn it up a touch and I'm cooking out the raw character of the flour. If I were to add my milk now without cooking out the flour and butter together first two things would happen. You would taste the raw taste of the flour. It would never really cook out and you actually wouldn't get the full thickening power of that butter and milk together. Now if you are making a gluten-free cheese sauce you can do that but what I like to do is I stir in a tablespoon of cornstarch into the cold milk. You don't cook it out first and then I thicken it up but what's important is you want to work in some extra flavor because this roux, this cooked flour and butter mixture is going to add a nice background taste to this basic sauce. So what you would do if you're doing the gluten-free version with the cornstarch is you would add a little Dijon mustard which I am to this sauce anyhow but also you could melt in after you thicken it, melt in a little bit of butter so you really get that flavor. Oh and Devo I see you're picking up on the lobster edition. Well I am stepping this up. This is a holiday appetizer. If you don't want to use lobster in this recipe you can leave it out and just make good old creamy mac and cheese bites and it would be delicious. Hey cheers to you Wesley. Thanks for the shout out and Wesley you're joining us from New Jersey so Wesley's asking what everyone's cooking for Thanksgiving this weekend. I know I turn on the parade and then I love watching football so football stays on all day long. Now you can see the bubbling just to go back from football back to cooking my roux here. You can see it's bubbling up so it's not a dry or heavy roux and I find it makes it easier to add the milk and what you have to do is follow your nose here. So I'm going to get in there. You're looking for just a subtle toastiness. It should smell like lightly toasted almonds. You don't want to see a color change so I am very very close. I'm going to measure my one cup of two percent milk. There we go. You can use full fat milk if you want but two percent works just fine. Hey Uzma I saw you in Vancouver. You came to the show this weekend. Fantastic. I've been really traveling around the last few weeks haven't I? So I've got my one cup of milk that I'm going to pour in about a third of it at first so this now thins out the roux, warms up the milk, it turns into a paste very quickly and then as soon as you see it thicken you add your next addition of milk. I don't believe you should ever have to strain a bechamel sauce if you add your milk gradually. So as I mentioned this is a cheesier sauce than I would use if I was just making a bowl of macaroni and cheese to serve creamy although it is delicious to serve right out of the bowl and as this begins to thicken I'll take a minute because I like to add a little extra richness to the sauce with the addition of sour cream. Whoa! So two-thirds of a cup of sour cream in lieu of cream. You could use whipping cream if you wanted to but I like the tang you get from the sour cream. It keeps the sauce from being too heavy tasting and now what I'm waiting for as I thicken up this sauce is for a few bubbles to break the surface and then I know that the flour has done exactly what it's intended to do at that point. Just a few bubbles come on you can do it. Great opportunity to take a look at your comments. Oh Cindy's asking can plant-based milk work? Yes it can 100% but go for a richer one something with at least a two percent up to a three and a half percent fat content. And hello from Kelby in Missouri so you'll be planning for Thanksgiving. Oh Rob is pointing out that my necklace might be rubbing against the microphone let me just get rid of that now thanks Rob. Rob is our channel manager and looking out for for us here and I've got butter on my fingers. I wonder if I tuck it in. There we go. I wore it because it's a reindeer so I thought it was holiday appropriate. Now Michael if we can get one last shot of our sauce you can see it's bubbling so now I'm going to turn down my heat a little bit take it off the heat just so you can see easier here because the lighting is just a bit brighter and now I'm going to stir in my sour cream and that sour cream will dissolve into the milk and it already has a natural thickness to it and now if you have your heat on say medium to medium high to have thickened your your base sauce. Okay thanks Rob glad the sound is better. When you're melting your cheese you want to turn down the heat you want to melt it in a little gradually in little bits and so where that's my butter that I'm melting. So I have four cups of old cheddar cheese so I'm going with a white cheddar of course if you want to use a more traditional orange cheddar that is 100% fine. I do like using the white though when I plan on adding lobster so that way you can see the pink of the lobster against the whites of the mac and cheese. Sounds gritty you're asking a good question what should be the temperature of the milk for your bechamel? You know what I'm I was taught in cooking school to heat the milk but I'll be honest if it means dirtying an extra pot to heat the milk I have added it I added the this ice cold milk I just made sure I added the milk in little amounts and I have never ever had a problem with it. So cold or room temperatures are absolutely fine but you don't have to eat the milk and hello to Marisa from Montreal we've got people joining from all over. Oh Lisa's thinking of applying to the Great British Bake Off and if I could inspire you and you get on the show that would be absolutely amazing and you'll have to let me know if you make it I hear the audition process is quite arduous so good luck to you Lisa. I'm stirring some more of my cheddar cheese so I've added about two-thirds of it now I am using a whisk to make sure it stays nice and smooth pardon me and it is smoothing out I'll keep looking at the questions Wesley's asking is Gordon Ramsay a judge not a British Bake Off so you'll be in good hands Lisa a gentler treatment definitely pardon me oh Louisa's watching from Mexico because even macaroni and cheese is just one of those ultimate comfort foods isn't it oh so delicious and that latest edition of the cheddar cheese is almost melted in so in goes one more and I should let you know that oh there's a note from Brad about my three cheese bake oh my gosh it's been ages since I've made that but yet it's your go-to that's amazing I love hearing about recipes I've created in the past that are so much of a staple that they're a part of your your current everyday repertoire that is fantastic Brad let's talk about the pasta while I finish melting in this remaining cheddar cheese I have tubetti pasta so they're little short tubes and what they kind of look like are cooked macaroni but straight and cut into smaller pieces and I find when I'm cutting these bites into bite-sized squares I like the tubetti because you get a cleaner cut and a denser more densely packed chilled macaroni and cheese so you really get a precise square out of it and I should let you know I wanted to make this recipe today even though we are still over a month from the official Christmas week because this is one of those recipes you can make now you can portion your mac and cheese squares you can bread them then you can freeze them and all you have to do is pull them out as you need them and bake them and they're ready to go they're perfect perfect perfect I'm gonna pull this off the heat look at this beautiful creamy cheddar cheese sauce now to finish it up with a little extra seasoning I don't find I need to add salt to this recipe at all because you've got all the salt that's in the cheddar cheese itself but I do add a little extra flavoring it's up to you if you want to add a little dry vermouth just two tablespoons is all that's called for in the recipe and it gives the cheese sauce kind of a fondue taste if you want that oh and it changes the aroma that smells amazing but you can leave it out altogether you don't need to substitute it from any with anything else oh Cindy's saying she uses the tubetti for soup too that's really good because it fits on your spoon again I really want to pack in some extra flavor into this so I've got a little bit of Dijon mustard and has everyone heard of Old Bay seasoning it's a Maryland seafood spice blend it's got paprika lots of celery salt I think some garlic powder and salt this too because this adds salt I don't need extra salt if you don't have access to Old Bay seasoning you could simply use a little bit of celery salt and a pinch of paprika so I whisk that in at the same time and now I'm going to warm up the lobster so I splurged and this is cooked lobster meat I bought it already cooked and out of its shell if you don't want to use lobster crab meat is a great option if you still want to stay in that shellfish world you could take cooked shrimp and chop it up or use baby cocktail style shrimp but as I mentioned you could leave it out altogether other foods that would work really well in here could include cooked mushrooms finely chopped that with the mac and cheese if you're into bacon some cooked bacon stirred in so we're just looking for something that takes it out of the ordinary switch from my whisk to my spatula stir in the lobster just to warm it up a little bit so that it breaks apart into little pieces Wesley's asking how about tuna or salmon 100% certainly you could I know it used to be a rule and this is when I was taught to make bechamel sauce in cooking school I was also taught to not put cheese with fish or shellfish but that was in a day when you couldn't guarantee the freshness of the fish and some they would say that it was this strength of the aged cheese might make the fish taste off but we've got beautiful fresh produce you can buy so much that's frozen I'm just going to set that pot aside so I don't feel that rule applies because I find this combination of the cheddar cheese with the lobster absolutely fantastic and so my tubetti this was two cups of raw tubetti pasta cooked and then you want it you don't want it chilled you want it about room temperature so that you don't seize up your cheese sauce as you stir it in but it doesn't have to be hot and then for a little pop of color some green onions you know what I have to say it's lots of fun to be making something different for you you're so used to seeing me do traditional baking sweet recipes I think this is lots of fun to do something savory because guess what I don't eat cookies for breakfast I eat lots of savory food and cheese well that is one of my favorite ingredients to cook with. Oh since Kriti is asking an interesting question what should be the ratio of salt to water when cooking pasta that whole notion of salted like the sea I think is almost too much salt so actually I'm going to put that question to you Michael because he is a culinary professor professor he teaches culinary students here in Niagara how how do you guide the students to season their pasta water how do you but as a home cook how would you calculate for oh okay I like that it is a lot so a tablespoon for every liter is what Michael is saying so I'd say yeah I tend to just sprinkle it in but I think that makes sense consistent with what I tend to do when I'm cooking the pasta and you do want to salt the water when you cook your pasta so now I'm tipping you could eat you could re-warm now that I've added and taken this off the heat and the pasta is cooled if you wanted to eat it right now with the spoon you certainly could you would just want to reheat it on low but I've got the pasta in a nine inch pan you could use an eight inch pan equally for something like this unlike a cake batter that inch difference in a pan is not going to have consequence but I have lined the pan with parchment so that I can pull this out and now what I'll do is let this cool for a little bit and then you want to chill it for at least two hours if you want to make this ahead of time you could make this chill it pop it out of the pan and then wrap it and freeze it to then cut into pieces and bread later if you wish so you have so many make ahead options which I think when it comes to holiday baking is absolutely key so I'm going to set this aside to cool and now it's time to cut the squares I am making use of my live stream and getting ahead on my holiday preparations at the same time I'm going to have lobster mac and cheese bites all the time I've got a batch that is already chilled right here and actually Cheyenne is asking a question she gets it that I don't eat cookies for breakfast but what is my favorite savory breakfast actually it's a bit of a kooky recipe but what I when I need a real power breakfast I make oatmeal and it can be rolled oats or steel cut oats I stir in spinach and I stir in pesto and then I put a poached egg on top of it sometimes too and wow between the protein from the egg you've got the vegetables from the spinach I love the flavor of the pesto that is one of my all-time favorite breakfasts and Wesley you can deep fry these bites if you want to so I'm going to go into the breading process so here is the pan of mac and cheese already chilled grab my cutting board and then I'm going to pull this out so it pops out easily and you can see between the cheese and the pasta this has set perfectly I'm not going to bread all of these I know you like joining the live streams but let's not be legal you don't want to watch me bread lobster squares for half an hour well it won't it wouldn't take half an hour but I find I get 36 nice size squares tip that out in the pan so I'll cut this half of the pan into three this way rotate and then let me center it for you here oh well good morning Robbie thank you for joining us from Singapore there we go 18 squares that are easy to slice again if you want to freeze them at this point you can but I do have my breading station so let me bring over my components a common way to bread and you'll see of course the full recipe for these lobster mac and cheese squares is right below the screen here a common breading station I'm going kind of with these traditional techniques you're taught in cooking school you start with dry you move to wet and you end with dry in this case I've got panko breadcrumbs you could use regular dry breadcrumbs but you want to make sure they're dry not fresh breadcrumbs if you are baking or using your air fryer what you want to do is melt some butter and stir that into your dry breadcrumbs so because you're not immersing your lobster mac and cheese squares in hot oil you need to add a little fat to the breadcrumbs so that you get a nice even browning and you also get a really good seal on the outside but because this is a firmer style of mac and cheese you'll find it these squares hold their shape they won't collapse they won't be overly squishy and now that I've got that butter stirred in I can bread a few of these so how's everyone doing here oh Ilana it's okay I'm so glad you could join us I'm using tubetti pasta cooked so that way you can really see if I hold it here Michael do you see the overhead shot you can really see the density of the square but you get the nice little holes to remind you that there is pasta in there now first thing I do is I dip the square and a general rule try and keep one hand out of the dipping bowl so I always try and keep one hand clean just in case never know you might have to reach for something like your phone at the wrong time tap out any off any extra flour so that it's not too gummy and then you want to fully immerse the square in mixed egg and then into the buttered breadcrumbs to coat like so and I'll keep doing this I think I'll do six if that's okay that should be enough for us for a little appetizer tonight Michael don't you think you're ready for a little bite oh you can smell the lobster ah very good yes and since gritty you could use roasted vegetables in place of the lobster very easily you bring up a very good point anything you stir in you want to make sure it's fully cooked that way you're just focused on making sure that you get a nice crisp breading that's evenly browned you don't have something inside your mac and cheese that you have to worry about cooking full because everything else within there is fully cooked as well now I picked up a recent trip a recent trip on a recent trip I picked up a tip and I haven't tried it with this recipe so I didn't want to do it live and have it not work out for you but when I learned how to make arancini in Sicily you know those little beautiful cheese filled rice balls I learned in a cooking class that instead of doing the flour egg breadcrumb they would make a flour paste equal parts by volume flour and water to make a paste then rub that over the chilled rice ball and dip it in the breadcrumbs and it really did a great job so I'd be curious to try that to see how it would work too and it's true Ahmed Ahmed thank you for joining us and one is never enough I'll just do two more here and as you can see there's a good reason you only do this one handed of course if you did two at a time it would work a lot faster but these this is one of those activities you take on early in the holiday season when you have a little more time you don't want to be doing this on Christmas Eve at eight o'clock at night no you want to be able to pull these out of the freezer and know they're already done and ready to go Bonnie knows she'll be getting a little batch of these I'm going to bread them for her freeze them and then drop them off in a day or two no rush at all I'm glad everybody is enjoying this we've got so many people signing on if you're just signing on I am making my lobster mac and cheese bite a delicious appetizer for the holiday season and there we go the last one now I did I wet this towel so that one's going in the laundry right away didn't want to have to disappear the sink is actually just in case you need some perspective yes our kitchen sink is behind that camera so I didn't want to have to leave if you're oven baking your mac and cheese bites you want to put them on a tray but you want to put a rack on the tray and have them sitting on the rack so that way the air is circulating around the oven if you have an oven with a convection fan I know I'm always nervous about convection baking with my desserts I would I wouldn't want to put a convection fan on a cheesecake or the dessert recipe I'll be making this time next Tuesday but when you want something crisp and browned that is when you turn on the convection fan so you want to preheat your oven to 375 you can even do 400 and if you're using an air fryer you don't preheat it you just put it in the little tray some have the toaster oven type model some have the um the sort of it looks like r2d2 the baskets you put in um my oven actually has an air fry feature so it amplifies the air as it circulates around so you want the air to circulate around if you wanted to deep fat fry these only take about two to three minutes dropped into vegetable oil but in an oven or an air fryer they will take about it'll take 10 to 15 minutes and then depending on your air fryer but I find generally 15 to 20 minutes so I've got top even but lucky us I did a few right before we went live and here they are let me just slide this forward and can we see these all right Michael hot from the oven these delectable thank you for helping look at these delicious bites oh and I want to take a bite of them and I know it's going to be 1 million degrees but they're easy to handle and what is nice is they will stay hot for a while so you can either do them in batches or after you've heated them through and you have that beautiful browning turn down your oven to about 300 fahrenheit so 150 celsius and then you can just hold them warm and then restock if you're having a party where you need to be filling up the plates now and again oh there's one little I love when you get a broken piece oh it's hot I told you it was gonna be hot well I got a nice piece of lobster in there too there it is something completely different for you but let's just to let you know I cook and I bake and these delicious lobster mac and cheese bites are something I know that you can make you've got some fundamental techniques and even if you don't make these mac and cheese bites now you know how to make a decadent and delicious macaroni and cheese if you're watching from the states I wish you a happy thanksgiving if you're watching from Canada and anywhere else in the world I'm so happy you could join this week and don't forget I've got three more holiday live streams coming your way this time next week I am making an individual plated dessert I know you're going to want to join me for but in the meantime dive into this recipe I know you've got this you'll you'll just be a hit with your family and friends thank you everyone thank you rolling meadow and I'll see you soon oh someone's asking for a fruitcake recipe okay