The Lady's Cheesy Mac

I guess I probably really don't have to tell y'all

but today's recipes that I'm using are all those rib-stickin' comfort foods

And the dish that I'm fixing to prepare now is probably the number one most loved comfort food

that we serve at the restaurant, and that's the ladies' cheesy mac

So we've got our elbow macaronis in salted water, and we're gonna cook those until they're tender

I've used a small elbow macaroni today. Now, you can use any kind of pasta that you like

but to me, this is typical of the macaroni and cheese that I've known since I was a child

Okay, our noodles are ready. They're nice and tender. Now, your important step on this part is draining your noodles

If you don't, it's going to make a watery base for your macaroni and cheese

and we want it totally and completely creamy. That water will slowly drip out of there for a while

and the water will get caught in the little elbows. So you really have to give it a few shakes

And I think we've gotten that pretty well drained. We're going to put them into our bowl

And this is a good point at which you can just set them to the side and let them cool while you doing something else But I going to cool these noodles off by adding the milk to them This is just regular whole milk

Another milk product that I really love using is evaporated milk, but your canned milk is so rich it pours like a cream

And now I'm going to add a little bit of sour cream, and this is our secret ingredient to our macaroni and cheese

People are always surprised when I tell them that it has sour cream in it

So this has chilled our noodles down nicely. We're going to add a little salt and naturally a little butter

Can't have a southern dish without butter, can we? Or at least I can't

My Aunt Glynis had us every Thanksgiving, the whole entire family, and she had macaroni and cheese every meal for us

She makes the absolute best. And I make mine just like she does

except I add the sour cream because I like the creaminess that it gives us

So now we're gonna add our cheddar cheese. And I love the hook cheese

Hook cheese is your big, round wheels of cheese, and they're covered in wax

They have a red wax or might even have a black wax And now our last ingredient is gonna be our eggs And our eggs are gonna almost give it a souffle texture

You can see how the cheese and the sour cream and the eggs are already starting to give you

a very creamy, thick, rich texture. All we're gonna do now is take our macaroni and cheese

and pour it into a sprayed dish, pop it into the oven

And when we get ready to go take it out, we're going to top it with a little bit more cheese

Look how yummy and creamy that looks. Now I've had some people call me and say

Paula, my macaroni and cheese curdled up on me. And I can't imagine why it would do that

The only thing that I can think of is that maybe they put their eggs in with the noodles

before they cooled properly. But in the oven we go. And in about 30 minutes, we're going to have the most terrific creamy macaroni and cheese you ever put in your mouth

While that's cooking, let's plate up our roast. And it just as tender and juicy as I knew it would be It just wanting to fall apart on us

Now, at this point, I would throw this into a sauce pot

and mix a little cornstarch and cold water up, and I would thicken this up

But again, that's strictly a personal preference. Some people might like their gravy thin

and I can really kind of go either way, but if I had to choose, I'd probably lean towards the thicker gravy

Looks yummy, doesn't it? Our macaroni and cheese should be ready now

so let's go see what it looks like. As I told you, I held out some cheese when I was mixing it for the top

And see how pretty the cheese looks when it covers those noodles

You know, some things you just take for granted, and maybe I'm guilty of taking this for granted

You know, there's a couple of things that you can't have too much of in a southern dish

One of them's butter and the other one's cheese. I just can't wait to taste this

It's so incredibly good