Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Best Mac and Cheese

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Starting point is 00:01:15 Hello, everyone out there. This is Paul, back with another Quick Takes episode. And as I have said previously on these, you know, I'm very quickly running out of video games that I have played since I have not played nearly as many games as Josh. And I was soliciting some suggestions on our Discord server, and a few people asked if I would do a quick take on cooking. And so I don't think that podcasting is the best medium for this. You know, obviously something like YouTube works an awful lot better, but I figured what the heck, I can talk a little bit about my love for cooking and also give you guys a couple of immediate tips that you can use if you want to maybe venture out and do a little bit of cooking of your own.

Starting point is 00:02:01 One person on Discord, you know, Legendary Jake, who we have mentioned on the show, suggested that I call this segment Nom Noms and Paul, a cooking show. Really love the name. Definitely made me laugh. I don't think it'll be a permanent name for this segment, but at least for today, welcome to Nom Noms and Paul, a cooking show. So first of all, I just wanted to say that I did not grow up doing any cooking really at all. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. She did some cooking, and my dad liked really bland flavors. We did not cook with a whole lot of salt, even if we did something like hamburger helper for dinner, instead of using a whole pound of ground beef, we would cut it down to like a quarter pound. And so my upbringing was on

Starting point is 00:02:51 pretty basic traditional American food, nothing really outside the ordinary. And once I hit adulthood and then married my wife, I ended up really falling in love with Food Network. And I just started watching a ton of cooking shows on cable, and then kind of just started teaching myself how to cook. And over the last few years, it's actually become one of my most favorite hobbies. I love to eat. I love to cook. My background is in chemistry, and I feel like it just really led into my passion for baking and cooking and all things like that. Now, if you're listening to the show and you haven't really done a whole lot of cooking,

Starting point is 00:03:32 one thing that I would suggest to start out with is messing around making some homemade macaroni and cheese. Now, the best thing about mac and cheese, it is incredibly simple. It is incredibly cheap, and you really can't screw it up. I mean, as long as you've got some melted cheese and you're throwing it on pasta, honestly, it really cannot be bad, and it's incredibly forgiving. You can also play around with it as much as you want. You can add things to your heart's desire, make it any way that you'd like, and it's going to come out great. So I'm not going to give you guys an exact recipe, but I'll tell you how most homemade

Starting point is 00:04:11 mac and cheese works, and then you can play around with it. Maybe even just Google and find a recipe and work off of that. Now, there's two main ways that most people will make their homemade mac and cheese. One of them is going to be by using flour to thicken the cheese sauce. And then there's another method, which is normally called like using a double cream, where you basically boil cream down until it's so thick that it'll be thick enough for a sauce. I actually am not a fan of the double cream method. I remember I had tried a recipe from Iron Chef Michael Simon, and it tastes great, turns out fine. I just prefer the other method, which I think is more popular

Starting point is 00:04:52 anyway. So with a basic mac and cheese recipe, really all you need is some source of fat, which is probably going to be butter for most people. If you save things like bacon fat, you can use something like that. But you really just need butter, flour, milk or cream, a couple of cheeses, and pasta. I mean, that's honestly all that you need. So what you do in the beginning is you're going to mix equal amounts of flour and a fat like butter, and you are going to cook that over medium heat. And this is called a roux, which is spelled R-O-U-X. It's a French word, I believe, but basically when you just cook together equal amounts flour and fat, that is going to really thicken up whatever kind of sauce that

Starting point is 00:05:38 you make. And so if you've ever had like really clumpy gravy or something like that, it's probably because they tried making some kind of sauce and then threw in a whole bunch of flour and tried to mix it, and it comes out super clumpy. If you cook the flour with the fat and make a roux, that is impossible. It will not come out to be clumpy whatsoever. Now, you just want to be careful that you don't cook the roux too long. If it starts to get really dark and gray, that is how you make something like a very dark gravy. But for a mac and cheese, you're just going to cook it a little bit, just a couple minutes.

Starting point is 00:06:11 That way you're not going to have any raw flour. And then you're just going to pour in whatever dairy you're going to use. You can use milk. You can do half and half, something like that, a mix of milk and cream. And then basically you're just going to cook it a little bit until it starts to thicken. And then you're just going to hit it with whatever kind of cheese you want to put in there. You can feel free to mix and use different cheeses. One of my favorite combos is a sharp cheddar with Gruyere. Gruyere is very similar to Swiss cheese. And if you want a little bit of a pro tip here, try to grate your own cheese. You'll find that

Starting point is 00:06:46 it just melts a lot better. You can use the pre-shredded stuff and it's a lot easier, but it's just not going to melt quite as well. So here, basically, you've just made your roux, you pour in your dairy. If you were to stop right there, that would technically be a bechamel sauce, but now you're going to throw in your cheese, let it melt, and then you're just going to pour that over your cooked pasta. I would recommend, you know, adding a couple of things at this point here. I love putting a little bit of cayenne pepper in there with my mac and cheese. It just kind of like wakens it, makes it a little bit more alive. Not necessarily to make it spicy, but it does give it a little bit more flavor. Of course, you're going to hit it with some salt and pepper until it's a level that you like. I really love the mix of pepper with cheese, so I like to add a lot of black pepper to mine.

Starting point is 00:07:34 And you can even add some herbs if you wanted to. If you wanted to add some rosemary or something like that, you certainly could. If you want to add any kind of protein, you certainly could. I've talked before about how I love using like leftover pulled pork. I'll just toss that in with the mac and cheese and you've got a very easy dinner that is actually going to be quite delicious just using something that was leftover. So, you know, this is where you just get to play around. I think this is a great way to start cooking if you have no experience whatsoever. And then also don't be

Starting point is 00:08:05 afraid to cook the same dish a few times and just play around with it a little bit. You know, either try different mixes of cheeses, try using cream instead of milk, and just kind of figuring out what you like. And it's mac and cheese. I mean, come on, you really can't go wrong. Anyone's gonna love it. And you can even use this kind of sauce for other things. It doesn't have to be mac and cheese. You can pour it over broccoli or cauliflower or something like that. You know, so I think that's a great way to get started. If you've literally never cooked anything before, I would Google a recipe and start off there just as a jumping point. But if you have a little bit of experience cooking, this is not like baking where if you use a little bit extra fat, then your cookies are going to basically melt and be really flat. It's nothing like that at all. You really can't go wrong.

Starting point is 00:08:55 Don't be afraid to just jump in there and start messing around. And the only slight downside is homemade mac and cheese, I think, doesn't hold over too terribly well. I think it's best if you eat it hot. And you can also play around with the type of noodles that you use. You know, macaroni is classic, but if you want to mess around and try using shells, you know, that's pretty classic as well. You can go for penne pasta, whatever you want to use, and it's going to be just great. So anyway, not sure if we'll do

Starting point is 00:09:26 any more cooking ones here, but this one was at the request of Jake, Ace of Shame, and Dr. Good Guy. So hopefully you guys can learn something here and improve your cooking. All right, guys, happy gaming. We'll see you next time.

Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Best Mac and Cheese

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