I’m here as a macaroni-and-cheese lover, not a macaroni-and-cheese fighter. The title of the following recipe — “The Actual Best Macaroni and Cheese” — clearly indulges in hyperbole, for the actual best macaroni and cheese is, of course, made the way you like it most. In this celebration of gluten and dairy, everybody should be a winner (except those unable to partake, and sorry!).
Personally, I like most every kind of mac and cheese: Give it to me, and I will eat it, and I will be happy. I will eat it at a fancy restaurant, I will eat it at pretty much any restaurant that puts it on the menu, I will eat it from a grocery-store deli counter, I will eat it frozen from Trader Joe’s (surprisingly decent, and made with cheddar, havarti, Gouda and Swiss), I will eat it from a box, etc. The only style of macaroni and cheese that I have trouble getting behind is the pasta-in-a-slick-and-shiny-Velveeta-type-sauce variety; I find the gluey factor a little off-putting, but if that’s your thing, all due respect to you.
And while the “comfort food” bromide has gone beyond overused, macaroni and cheese is undeniably helpful for blanketing the stomach when other food and/or life in general seems challenging. Mac and cheese from a box not only pleases nearly all children, it is the ideal thing to consume between a violent 24-hour bout of food poisoning and a family-mandated outing to the musical “Cats” immediately following. Macaroni and cheese from a hospital cafeteria might be the best food possible if you’re coming to after terrifying surgery and you’re more hungry than you’ve ever been and also quite high on pain meds and you order it plus a chocolate shake and then while eating it you feel more intensely than you ever knew possible the urgent amorphous beauty of just being alive.
The love of macaroni and cheese has led me to experiment with different kinds of recipes, from the easy three-ingredient type incorporating evaporated milk, to those with the inclusion of eggs for a more custardy situation, to the likes of Balthazar’s macaroni gratin (which, unexpectedly, convinced me that macaroni and cheese doesn’t need bacon). Noodle consideration has occupied more of my time than it should; classic large elbow is classic for a reason and quite wholly pleasing, but penne has those external ridges for minute additional cheese-adhering pleasure and also a bit more chew.