The Creamiest Mac and Cheese You've Ever Tasted!

All right, folks, listen, I'm not gonna fake. I know why you're here. You done seen that thumbnail, right? I'm gonna show you how to make a Southern holiday mac and cheese. Let's get it. Now, even though I said, let's get it, let's look at these ingredients real quick. As you can see, it's not a whole lot to it. And again, I say this in videos that don't have a whole lot of ingredients. Please don't let the simplicity of these, the lack of ingredients, you know, tell you that this is not good. Sometimes simple just works. All right, so look, obviously we doing pasta noodle, right? So first thing we wanna do is, I got my water already boiling. I wanna put maybe just a couple of generous pinches, right? Of salt, if I didn't say already. So got that in there. Let's work this around, right? Now I'm getting ready to add my noodle. I mean my, yeah, that's what they are. You know what I mean? So look, we add these, right? What we wanna do is we wanna make these per the instructions on our box. And we want al dente. For these particular ones, they want nine to 10 minutes for al dente. Then we gonna shock it and stop that cooking process, right? Cause we going in the oven, folks. All right, so we gonna go ahead and get started. It's real simple. And listen, I really like giving you guys a double size, right? Cause we filling up a 13 by nine. But I wanna tell you, if you just cut the recipe in half, this is perfect for like, if you got a small family, you know what I mean? Or you making this for yourself, this will give you some great over the top tasting. All right, now look, my cream cheese, everybody should know by now. Listen, you wanna have this stuff right here, room temperature, right? So I usually take mine out first thing in the morning. And then for best practices, you know what I mean? It depends on when you gonna cook, right? But it's still better probably to take these out and let them just sit on your counter at night. You know what I mean? Cause look, as you can see on how I'm struggling opening this, they got this super sealed, right? So we put these two in there. Now, when it comes to these right here, your evaporated milk, you just wanna go ahead and just pour these in here, right? Then you wanna get yourself a whisk. You know what I mean? We got to break this down. So before I even add that, let's grab this. Let's just start working this around. So look, as I was whisking this, you guys can hear right now, my timer just went off, right? So that mean I better stop this, cause remember we doing it al dente style. So I turn that off, let me check these. That's a little bit on the hot side. Let me get my pot holders. Now we wanna stop this cooking process, right? So we take this, I'm gonna go ahead and turn this water on so it's gonna get a little noisy, right? We dump it, right? And now we just hit it with this cold water cause we don't want it to cook anymore. Now look, this time I used a whisk. Usually, I guess because I'm making this right now, just making it simple for everybody. Everybody don't have all of the tools, all of that, right? So then I'm gonna add my last one. But my point was, I could have did this with a hand mixer. You know what I mean? So right now I'm just working out the lumps, just doing a little whisking, right? Look at that right there. All right, now that we're done, now we just move forward. And if you guys didn't know, I'm sure everybody mostly knows, man, making mac and cheese is so elementary and so easy. All right, now we wanna add this, which will be our whole milk, right, to the mixture. Now you guys are starting to be able to see how it's gonna form, and it's gonna be nice and creamy and cheesy, right? So once we got all of this, you know, combined, you can look, you can see, like, if little pieces are sticking, that's kinda okay, cause we're not finna whip this and keep doing that and making it, like, super light for it to start having whipped peaks, right? So now we're gonna add our salt. We're gonna add, you know, our mustard powder. And tell me down in the comment section below, do you guys be using nutmeg? All right, now come here, take a look. You guys know it. You should know it by just seeing the colors, right? I'm using the Creole kick. For me, you can't say Southern without having this blend of spices, right? And you guys all know this is my go-to. So I'm gonna put a couple of teaspoons in here, just like that. And then we just get this to combine. Now, everything we have in here, cause listen, I always tell everybody, listen, to have success when cooking, what you wanna do is you wanna taste as you go. Now, before I put this egg in here, we gonna taste this, folks. Up to this point right here, I just tasted it. Everything is fine. I love the way it tastes. You know what I mean? But here, if you wanna make any type of adjustment, you can when you put your dry ingredients in, right? So now, the next step is, instead of me getting another like dish or something like that, cause I wanna beat these, right? So we just take this. Even though it has milk in it, it's okay. Why? Cause we just put the milk in there, right? So what we gonna do is mix, you know, scramble. I'll just say it that way. Now, after having it, you know, beaten, whisked or whatever, scrambled, however you wanna do it, I just add that in here right now, right? That's why I went ahead and, you know, tasted everything before we got to the egg. You know what I mean? They say you're not supposed to eat no raw egg, but if you ever, you know, watched any movie or know anybody that does any type of fighting, they eat raw egg every day for the straight protein. All right, now listen, now would be a great time for us to go ahead and preheat, right? So we gonna hit bake. We gonna use the standard 350. As it starts to build up its heat, turn my oven on, cause I like to look at it. We finna do the final steps, right? And that will be, we got two cheeses here. We wanna put half and half. I'm gonna whisk it together, and then we gonna do it in a 13 by nine, right? So we just take it. All right, so this is a dish I'm gonna, you know, present, you know, present this for the holiday, right? Use this one right here. I'm not gonna stick this in here. Of course, this would all burn up, dry out, become brittle. I just wanted to show you the presentation. Don't forget, it's the holidays, folks. So you want everything to be, you know, look nice. Now I'm showing you this right now. You guys can use Pam, if that's what you wanna do, or you guys can use butter. Now I just got through seeing this for the holiday, right? So we wanna level up like our flavors. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just take this out and do it old school. Remember how grandma used to do it? And we just gonna take it, and we just gonna run this along the edges, the sides and the bottom, right? Cause butter brings that holiday flavor to it. You know what I mean? Everybody likes that buttery flavor. You know what I mean? I know we don't eat like this all of the time, but come on, folks. We got to be able to do it every now and then, right? So you can see how it is on the bottom. No stick, that's gonna melt, become part of the Southern Mac, right? All right, so I know this has been absent for a minute, right? But we are making mac and cheese. I know some of y'all are trying to figure out like, hey, when is that coming back? So now I'm gonna take this and just add this down here like, just like you see. I'm gonna give you guys a little heads up right now. What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna put a little bit of that mixture down here, right? And I'll put just a little bit of this cheese cause we saved half of it back, right? We just add it over there like that, right? Even though we have some in our mixture that's getting ready to come in here right now, but that's okay. Now I'm just gonna pour a little bit, y'all. Might get a little messy, depends on how fast I pour, but this is okay, just a little bit. Now the reason I did that is I just wanna make sure it's down here and then I added a little cheese to it. And then you can see everything that on the cream cheese, it didn't like fully, you know, blend or melt. Don't worry, that's where the heat comes in, right? Now I'm gonna grind me a little fresh black pepper right here. And the reason I'm doing it like this cause I like to have it in them layers. I just wanna ensure that this gets mixed properly, right? Now I'm getting ready to add the rest of this here. Now I'm getting ready to, you know, make my pour, right? Now imagine if I didn't put all of the cheese down at the bottom, like I did, like in that layer, right? Not at the bottom, but that first layer that I put down, the noodles, if you put them all in there like that, it'll act as a strainer and keep everything on the top. You know, I just wanna explain everything so it makes sense to everybody. You know what I mean? Okay, so we got that there. Now I don't have to really worry about too much as far as what's in here, cause this right here is full of cheese. You know what I mean? Some went in there, most of it didn't. That's why we did what we did. Now I'm gonna take it and we just pour this in like this. Let's get a little bit more cheese, right? Oh man. Talk to me, folks. You can just see right now what we're gonna be working with in just a second. Now, I'm gonna tell you this. Look, right in my mouth and talking, look how big when I did the shred. You know, I like to do, especially if you've been following this channel, I love to do it when it's the smaller size, right? It just helps melt easily. You know what I mean? That's for best practices, folks. All right, so once we got it in there, and I don't know, I can see the butter over here on the top. Listen, you wanna take some of your cheese and just put a layer here just over the top. This is for the cosmetic, obviously it's for the taste. You know what I mean? We're not gonna put it all, everything that we have left over, right? So right here, then we'll come with this cheese right here. The oven is up to temp. Yeah, I'm ready to get this in here. Oh, and let me just tell you guys this. We're gonna do it uncovered. All right, so remember, 30 minutes, we wanna take a look at it. We'll decide if we wanna add a little bit more cheese. What are we looking for? You know what I mean? And then when it comes to this fresh black cracked pepper, I'm gonna put just a little bit of this on the top. Just like that, folks. See you in 30. All right, folks. So look, I'm finna pull this masterpiece out. It's starting to get ready. This is what it looked like after 30 minutes. You know? Remember, we had, it was a lot of wetness in the inside. And I'm gonna tell you guys the truth why I'm making sure I got this on here, because I dropped one of these before. You know what I mean? So I don't wanna do that. Now, I'm gonna show you just a couple of things. We going back in the oven, right? This is 30 minutes, but I want you to look at this right here. This is what everybody trying to achieve. Look at that golden, you know, brown crispiness. Let's see if we can hear it. You hear that? That right there is the crispiness. I know we all gonna fight. I want to edge, ooh, ooh, me. I'm first, all of that. But the beauty of me cooking this is the fact that I made it, so if I really wanted to, I could get mine first, right? So now I'm gonna take the remaining of my cheese, right? We just gonna add this in here, just like this. We gonna go back in there for about another 15 minutes. And again, I apologize, you guys. I was just rushing through, talking to, you know, a couple of people as I was prepping, and I made these large grates, right? But you know, the thinner it is, the easier and quicker it is to melt, right? But that's neither here nor there. You gotta do it like how you guys like it. Some of you guys like to, you know, grate this size anyway. All right, so when you look like that, you want to put that fresh and the remainder of your cheese, right? Now we getting ready to go back in here. I'm gonna set a timer for 15 minutes, but I promise you guys, I'm not finna leave this. I'm gonna stay with it, and then once I get that desired look that I like, and to get them edges on here a little bit more, like that golden brown, guess what, folks? We got a Southern mac and cheese. Okay, folks, so now let's take this out. I don't think I'm gonna go in there no longer. You know what I mean? This right here is cool. I can get a crispier edge, but right now I don't want to talk, folks. I want to make sure that I don't burn myself, and my reaction make me drop it, right? So I'm gonna set this here right now, just like that. Look at that right there. All right, so when you don't put that excessive amount of cheese in there, you don't have so much oil, right? But you guys can see it boiling, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just take this, just push down just a little bit, and let the paper towel absorb some of it, you know? I know you guys want me to cut this. You know what I mean? Somebody asked, we got to talking about macaroni. You know what I mean? I said I was finna make some, and then they asked for this, but we gonna go ahead and get in the inside, right? So now you see it, let me go ahead and get it set up, and then we're gonna go ahead and pull some out. I took some of this out here, and I put some, obviously, in the bowl right here. I done tasted it already. I'm telling you, this right here is great. I'm gonna have to make another one for them, you know what I mean, because now everybody here, everybody want to taste it, right? So without no further ado, let's go ahead and taste it, right? So it's kind of like starting to sit up a little bit, you know what I mean, but you guys can see. If you like to be creamy and cheesy, you guys can see this right here. Oh yeah, that's a part of the corner right there. I'm gonna go ahead and take it like this. We're gonna blow it, let it cool. Cheers, y'all. Forgive me for talking with food in my mouth, but when I tell you it's fire, it's fire. Now, since I said the ham, now I'm thinking like, man, since this is gonna be ours, I might just go ahead, because I keep ham steak, folks. I might cube that up, hit it in the skillet, drop and mix some of that in here. That gives it like a nice, unique, you know, flavor. You know, it's something that I really, really enjoy. Now, I want you guys to tell me down in the comment section below, what would you add to this after seeing this? Even before you make it, what do you think that you can add to this mac and cheese that's gonna make it right? Now, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say, thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and tell everybody out there, there's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking a mystery out of cooking. And you know how I leave all of my videos, ooh, it's just warm enough to pick it up. I'm out.