Lauren Miyashiro is the Recipe Director at Kitchn. A former New Yorker, she lives with her husband, two daughters, and dog in the Bay Area, where she is currently on the hunt for good pizza and bagels. She can turn almost anything into a crunchwrap and almost always has a batch of on-demand frozen cookie dough in the freezer.
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The secret to the best-ever homemade macaroni and cheese? Using the right cheese. If you’ve ever ended up with dry, greasy, or bland results, the reason could be your cheese. The type of block you choose to grate can seriously affect the taste and level of creaminess.
While you can’t go wrong with sharp cheddar (it’s by far the most popular choice!), we like to play around with different cheese combinations. Below are our favorite cheese duos.
Quick Overview
What Is the Best Cheese for Mac and Cheese?
Sharp cheddar is the overwhelming popular choice, but for extra-creamy results, we think medium cheddar is even better. Other delicious options include Gruyère, smoked Gouda, and Monterey Jack.
Pick a cheese that melts well. Cheddar, Gruyère, Monterey Jack, mozzarella, Fontina, and Gouda cheese are good options.
Grate your own cheese. The preservatives in the pre-grated stuff can make it tougher to melt. Plus, it never tastes as good.
Play around with the cheese combos. Homemade mac and cheese is not an exact science. As long as you’re working with cheese that you know will melt well, you can play around with the combinations and proportions.
Sharp Cheddar + Medium Cheddar
You’ll find a lot of recipes that call for sharp cheddar cheese to make the homemade cheese sauce, and we totally get it. It’s generally easy-to-find and affordable, melts beautifully, and tastes delicious. But after a lot of testing, one of our most trusted recipe developers, Patty Catalano, declared that medium cheddar is the best option for ultra-creamy mac and cheese. It has more moisture and therefore melts more easily than sharp cheddar and yields a noticeably creamier sauce.
Sharp Cheddar + Gruyère
When we want to channel our inner Ina, we go for Gruyère. It melts similarly to cheddar, but has a lovely nuttiness that tastes kinda fancy.
Medium Cheddar + Monterey Jack
If you have picky eaters, this is the mildest, very creamy, and most kid-friendly combination. Try a ratio of 1:1 in our go-to stovetop mac and cheese recipe.
Sharp Cheddar + Smoked Gouda
We recently tested six celebrity baked mac and cheese recipes and discovered our favorite included not one but two types of smoked cheeses (smoked cheddar and smoked provolone.) Smoked Gouda is generally easy to find and balances the sharpness of cheddar perfectly.
Parmesan (or Pecorino Romano) + Any Flavor Combo
We’d never make mac and cheese with just Parmesan, but just a quarter cup adds a lot of sharp depth of flavor.
If You Don’t Want to Make a Roux, Use Any Combo + Cream Cheese
For a quicker, easier, one-pot mac and cheese, use pasta water as the base of the sauce and cubed cream cheese as the binder. Then use any combo of melting cheese from above that you’d like.
Brie is instantly recognizable with its downy white rind and soft, gooey paste. Its creamy counterparts—including camembert, Fromager d'Affinois, and triple crèmes of all kinds—are similarly bloomy and beautiful.
A lot of heavy cream can create too thick of a sauce that doesn't contain enough water content to keep everything saucy. Make sure to use primarily whole milk for your cheese sauce, and if you do use cream, use it sparingly.
Cheeses with more moisture and lower melting points make for mouthwatering, creamy cheese sauces. Cheddar is one of the most popular choices, but Swiss and Gruyère are also terrific options.
While mozzarella has a more delicate taste and a more elastic texture, burrata is softer and more flavorful – but also, due to the cream, higher in calories.
It's soft and creamy, and melts well, which makes it perfect for dishes that require melted cheese like quesadillas and stuffed chilis. It is also used often as a garnish for tostadas, beans and soup.
"Stir in about 2 Tbs. of milk per 1 cup of mac and cheese and reheat," he says. The milk loosens up the pasta and helps create the creamy sauce as it's reheating. Heavy cream works well in this case too and adds an extra touch of richness to the mac and cheese.
Gruyere is a classic addition because it melts much like Cheddar, but has a lovely nutty flavor. Other classics include Gouda, Muenster, Parmesan, fontina, Havarti and Monterey Jack. Brie works well too, just make sure you remove the rind before mixing it in.
Milk: Keeps our cheese sauce super creamy. I use whole milk or reduced-fat milk. Mustard and spices: A combination of Dijon mustard, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt makes this macaroni and cheese extra delicious. Cheese: I use white cheddar and parmesan or pecorino cheese.
Gruyère. Named after a small Swiss village, gruyère is a rich and creamy cheese often used to make fondue, which also makes it perfect for mac and cheese. The saltiness and nuttiness of this cheese can add some complexity to this seemingly simple dish.
Introduction: My name is Duane Harber, I am a modern, clever, handsome, fair, agreeable, inexpensive, beautiful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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