Recipe Southern Style Baked Mac & Cheese using eggs as a binder.

Allison

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There has been an African American manner to preparing macaroni and cheese. It is baked using egg and flour as a binder. Since I use cheddar cheese, there is no reason to use additional butter.

I was taught to cook the macaroni until firm, al dente. Cook and then drain the macaroni. Then let it cool.

Chopped ¾ lb of Sharpe Cheddar Cheese.

1 1/2 c. Milk.

3 beaten eggs.

Paprika

2 tsp. Flour

Dash of Black Pepper and Salt

In a bowl combine all dry ingredients: flour, salt, pepper, and paprika

Place that mixture in the 4 Quart baking dish. Pour the slightly cooled macaroni over the dry ingredients. Mix well. Pour milk into mixture, and stir thoroughly. Add the beaten eggs, and mix well. Mix until you can hardly see notice the eggs. Top with cheese. Mix once more. Place in over. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
Let it cool for fifteen minutes before serving.

Sometimes, my mom would add steamed broccoli.
 
This is a really interesting technique. I've never been able to make a good home made mac and cheese from scratch like this. At best, they've come out mediocre, but a majority of the time they come out tasting very bland and flavorless, and unless I am really lucky, the sauce becomes grainy and pasty and inedible.

What caught my attention in particular about this recipe is that you are not explicitly making a roux in advance as most recipes call for, though you are using some of the same ingredients (flour & milk).In addition, you are coating the damp cooked pasta with the dry ingredients which sounds like it may help the "sauce" bind to it better. Although 2 tsp of flour isn't very much, and I wonder how difficult it would be to coat all the pasta with it. Speaking of pasta, approximately how much do you cook for this recipe?

Cheese generally melts into eggs rather well, so that may solve the "separating" issue that I often run into when melting sharp cheddar.
 
I like this idea and generally I like to do this with my pasta bakes too, so the dish cooks itself. I've never used eggs before, only a cheese sauce and breadcrumbs on top, but I do like to add some spinach and worcestershire sauce to it as well, for a little kick. I prefer to use eggs, for more protein and I feel it may make the dish less heavy?

Let us know how it goes Tom!
 
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