DoctorOz: Decadent Mac and Cheese Recipes with Daphne Oz & Jamika Pessoa

We are back with the dish on Oz and Jamika and I are about to compete for the title of Big Cheese as we put the two most decadent mac and cheese dishes on Pinterest in a taste-off for the ages. We have our table ready to go here and we actually have a table full of cheese lovers. They have bravely volunteered to taste our dishes and decide. So to remind you, here's what I'm making. I'm doing a Cuban sandwich mac and cheese which has all those flavors of a classic Cuban sandwich. The ham, the Swiss, the tang of that mustard, those vinegary pickles and a little bit of hot sauce rolled into the lusciousness of cheesy pasta. Jamika, what are you bringing to the table? Yours sounds good but I am doing a New Orleans inspired spicy Cajun gumbo mac and cheese. Oh yeah. New Orleans. Yes, we're going to the New Orleans today because it's all of the great things that we love in gumbo which is like you know the stew that has the sausage and the seafood in there. Taking all those ingredients, I'm going to mix it in with the pasta and the spicy cheese sauce. Boom. Sounds delightful. You're going to love it. It is time for the smackdown between these two dishes to begin. Get ready. I both started our easy mac and cheese the same way. We made this basic cheese sauce which starts with a roux. A roux is a fancy word which basically just means equal parts fat and flour. Okay, so it's one part flour to your fat which we use butter. I took this the milk and the flour and the butter that I had and I actually added some dry mustard. You can also just take a scoop full of Dijon mustard if you have that if that's easier and I whisk that together. Now I'm going to start to build in these extra layers of cheesy goodness. Okay, I'm stirring in some shredded cheddar and I put gruyere which is Swiss cheese like an alpine Swiss cheese. It gives you a lot of stringy pull and that's what we're talking about here. Now I'm going to start to add the rest of the sort of Cuban sandwich essentials. Some cubed ham, a nice portion of that especially if you've got, you know, growing children at home. You want to just load this bad boy up with plenty of filler. I'm gonna add some pickles. We're growing children in your belly. Who knows what this baby wants to eat right now but this looks pretty good to me. I added a bunch of hot sauce there and I'm gonna give that a quick toss together. Okay, so Jamaica what's going in yours? Alright, so in my cheese sauce if you see it's a different color because I've added in some paprika so that gives it a nice warm color to it and then I'm gonna add in my cheeses. I'm doing three different cheeses. I have cheddar, Jack and mozzarella cheese and I tell you this is one way for all the moms if you want to get your kids to come to dinner on time just take a video of you stirring this cheese sauce. Oh yeah. Like that's how I get people to come to my party on time. I just send this as the invitation. Everybody's at my house, ding-dong, on time. Thick and cheesy this is and then I'm adding in some smoked sausage. You can do undoing sausage, pork or chicken and a little bit of hot sauce. If you don't want that much heat you don't have to but it adds a nice little tanginess and that vinegar bite just kind of brings everything together. Doesn't spice boost your metabolism also? It does. So this is your fat-fighting mac and cheese? Oh please. I love it, gut-busting mac and cheese. And then we'll just add in some raw shrimp and that's gonna cook while we bake and then I add in some calatrapi. Beautiful. Now what kind of pasta do you have to ask? So I chose a penne, really simple straightforward pasta. Pretty much everyone has this in their pantry. I love the little sort of center hole in here because extra cheese sauce gets packed in there and then you get those extra juicy bites but most importantly they're easy to stab on your fork. I don't want my pasta running away from me and so I'm going in with this penne. Beautiful. And I'm gonna bring this together and I'm talking about easy weeknight dinner right now. Now I love that you're keeping it in one pot. I'm doing individual ramekins and topping them off with cheese because I feel like there's always that one person that takes way too much mac and cheese. So you give them the same portion, everybody's equal, right? And then they come back for seconds. Yes. Ensign, thank you so much. I actually, okay this was something that took me a long time to get into, this idea that you should add bread crumbs onto pasta. I was kind of like that's like putting bread on a sandwich, like more bread on a sandwich. It is the nicest crunchy textural play with those soft bathed in cheese sauce noodles. So I'm adding some buttery, crumbly. If you have that Portuguese roll that a Cuban sandwich normally goes on, you put some butter on that and toast that sucker up. Okay, these are going in the oven. In the oven for both? Yeah, into the oven for both. Off to the oven. And let's show you how they turned out, shall we? Okay, I'll pop this one in the top. Did you see this? Did you get close enough in there? You gotta get close for that. Look at that. Okay, let me go right in after you. Oh, my belly's in the way. No, no, no, be careful. It's hot, it's hot. It's okay. Teamwork. There we go. Teamwork makes the dream work. Okay, good. And then, are we ready for the big reveal? Let's do it. All right, mine first. Is that love? Yes. That is some cheesy New Orleans goodness right there. You got yours? This thing. That's heavy. It is heavy. Mama's coming to dinner. Look at this, though. Oh, my goodness. Okay, now watch that. Watch what happens when you pull this out. Oh, and you gotta get some of this one, too. I will. You still gotta go. Okay, hang on. I don't know. It's time for the taste-off, by the way, because this mac and cheese that lovers indulge in all the time, it could be made even a little better, in my opinion, as you taste. I have an idea here. I think you could actually cut the cheese in half with a little bit of butternut squash puree. It would work, I'm telling you. Okay. I thought you were gonna say Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt's good also. I didn't think about that. All right, unfortunately, we don't get to decide who wins this taste-off. We have picked our wonderful panel of tasters over there. You guys had a chance to munch on both of our Pinterest- inspired mac and cheese recipes. Which is the winner, and why? What do you think? Well, what I think, both of them make me want to dance, okay? Both of them are spectacular. By the way, these are both great. It's so hard, but I have to go with the Cajun, because they call me sweetness, and it's, the sweetness to it is just, you don't think about that, but both of them were absolutely delicious. What about you? I, I'm loving this gumbo with the sausage and the shrimp. Like, it's so, like, high-end and easy, and it's sweet, and it's smoky, and with the mixed cheeses, it's a good dish. The spiciness helps this. Oh, wow. And you tried the shrimp. The shrimp is perfectly cooked. It is! Ta-da! All right, I'm gonna make sure to put Daphne and Jameika's mac and cheese recipes, along with all the other recipes from today's show, on Dr. Oz.com slash the dish.