The healthy mac-and-cheese experiment, take one

Remember when I asked about healthy/healthier mac-and-cheese recipes? I finally got around to trying one, last week when we were on a “make a shit-ton of food to freeze” kick.

I opted for this recipe, and made the following tweaks:

I used caulflower instead of squash, and I didn’t measure it; I basically used a small head of cauliflower. Instead of buy both peccorino Romano and Parmiagano-Romano, I just used Parmiagano-Romano. And of course I ditched the panko crumbs and parsley, because that does not a creamy mac-and-cheese make.

The result: a rather bland mac-and-cheese that tasted of cauliflower. It’s not bad, it’s just not…not at all what I wanted.

We had some shredded medium cheddar in the fridge from a previous meal, and I tried adding a bit of that to the individual servings…and it was much better. I was hesitant to use cheddar in the recipe because it normally doesn’t cook/heat well (it’s so oily), but now I’m re-thinking that. It shouldn’t take a lot of cheddar (especially if I went for the extra-sharp kind) to bump up the recipe flavor.

I’m also pondering this recipe, which is similar to the first but uses cheddar and jack cheeses. I’ve also seen one that tosses in half a cup of gorgonzola, which sounds heavenly. (I do like a spot of gorgonzola with my pasta, Gromit!)

The experiments shall continue!