Today, we are making the Baby and Johnny of recipes,
the Jim and Pam,
the David and Victoria,
the perfect couple recipe,
pizza mac & cheese.
That's right,
some things are just meant to be together.
I'm Erin from wellplated.com
and let's hang out while we celebrate the love
of pizza and mac and cheese,
in one dish.
(gentle upbeat music)
To start, we're gonna boil water
and cook our whole wheat pasta until al dente.
I like to use whole wheat
for an additional nutritional boost
and a fun curly shape,
this is cavatappi.
Now, for the mac and cheese mix-ins,
or if you're pizza centric, the toppings.
I loved mac & cheese growing up,
could not get enough of it.
Anytime that my mom asked me
what I wanted for dinner,
the response was predetermined and instantaneous,
"mac & cheese, please!"
Moms out there, I bet that sounds familiar.
Right now, I am chopping up a red bell pepper
and a green bell pepper to saute.
I'm keeping the pizza theme here fairly classic.
Feel free to swap in other vegetables
that your family prefers.
In fact, I remember as a kid
grocery shopping with my mom,
I would try to sneak Velveeta,
AKA the fancy brand mac & cheese,
into the store cart instead of the store brand.
Oh boy, did I ever get a scolding?
Now we are going to saute our peppers and onions
in a bit of olive oil.
These are classic pizza toppings.
We'll cook them until they are crisp tender.
That will take about two minutes.
Next up, I am going to add a can of diced tomatoes.
I drained off the extra liquid.
I like to add the tomatoes here
because it is a nod to the red sauce in pizza.
Let this cook for five minutes
until most of the remaining tomato
cooking liquid has evaporated.
Now for the foundation
of this ultimate couple recipe,
the cheesy sauce.
Adding a couple of tablespoons of butter.
Let that melt, just a little.
Some garlic.
I tend to go pretty heavy handed here, it's pizza.
And now, I'm gonna sprinkle
one quarter cup of flour over the top.
This is going to help the sauce thicken.
At this point,
you wanna stir and cook constantly
until of the white bits of flour disappear
and it starts to smell a little bit nutty.
That is going to make sure
that we don't have any off raw taste of flour
in our resulting mac & cheese.
Every year for my birthday growing up,
my grammy would make me a special dinner
of whatever I wanted.
And can you guess what my longest tenured request was?
Are you sensing a theme here?
That's right,
macaroni & cheese.
I asked for her homemade macaroni & cheese
every year from the ages of four to 18.
And you know what?
If I were going to be home for my birthday this year,
I would ask her to make it for me again, pretty please.
In fact, I love my grammy's mac & cheese so much,
it was the inspiration
for the Ultimate Creamy Mac & Cheese
in my Well Plated cookbook.
I've added some milk
and some half and half.
This macaroni & cheese is mostly milk-based.
I like to keep things on the lighter side,
even though I promise you can't tell.
And then just a quarter cup of half and half
will give us the perfect macaroni & cheese richness.
We're gonna bring this to a simmer
and then let it cook and tell the sauce has thickened.
That will take about seven-ish minutes.
This looks glorious.
I am going to turn off the heat.
And then now season up our tasty sauce.
We have some red pepper flakes.
I add a full teaspoon
because our house can really handle a kick.
It makes it spicy,
so if you're not as much a fan of spicy food
or some members of your household aren't,
definitely dial that down.
Oregano, gives a little herbaceousness.
It also reminds me of the herbs shakers
that they sometimes put out at Italian restaurants.
And I mean that in the best possible way.
Now it would not be pizza
and it would not be mac & cheese
without of course, cheese.
I am using it two different kinds,
mozzarella, which is just very mild and melty and gooey.
It is the pizza classic.
So that will be my first cheese.
And then for the second one, I'm going to add Fontina.
Fontina is also nice and melty, just like mozzarella,
but it has a slightly more complex flavor.
You'll notice that I am grating the cheese and myself.
That is because as convenient as the pre-shredded cheese
that comes in bags may look and seem,
it is actually coated with a powdery substance,
meant to keep it from sticking,
and that means that it will not get as nice and melty.
And if you don't have nice melty cheese
in your macaroni & cheese,
or on your pizza, what are you even doing?
This adds up to about a cup of cheese total.
I might've put a little bit of extra in.
But I find that nobody's ever mad about that.
Now it is time for one of my all time MVP,
healthy swaps that is, plain Greek yogurt.
It makes the sauce tastes thick and creamy,
just like it would if I used heavy cream.
But Greek yogurt is high in protein and lower in calories.
Just look at this sauce.
I could like put a chip in this right now,
but no.
It's destined for a higher purpose.
All right, here we are.
Time to add our cooked whole wheat noodles.
I pulled these out about a minute early,
and that way there's still a little bit too chewy right now.
But once this bakes in the oven,
they will be absolutely perfect.
Under cooking them on the stove means
that your macaroni & cheese won't be too mushy.
Now all that's left to crown this as a pizza is pepperoni.
Part of the inspiration for this recipe,
aside from my childhood obsession, with mac & cheese.
And let's be honest,
my adulthood obsession with mac & cheese,
is when my husband, Ben and I,
were living in Madison, Wisconsin.
He was in law school and I was working
a super boring desk job.
So by Friday night we really needed some laughs.
One of our favorite things to do
was to hit up our local comedy club for some standup.
Then we'd walk home and we always pass a local pizza joint
where they served macaroni & cheese pizza.
I know it sounds a little bit odd,
but I tell you what,
nothing hits the spot at 11:00 P.M. on a Friday night,
quite like that pizza did.
I have lightly coated a nine by 13 casserole dish
with nonstick spray.
And now I just gotta go for it.
There's no super classy or super graceful way to do this.
You just gotta get in there.
You'll notice that I left out
a little bit of our pepperoni,
and I'm going to arrange that on top like so.
And then when this bakes in the oven,
the pepperoni gets really nice and crispy on top.
This is actually turkey pepperoni.
It is another, just really easy, healthy swap
that you can make at home.
Yum.
Top it off with some Parmesan cheese.
Whenever I would go to Italian restaurants as a kid
and the server would come around with the Parmesan
that they would grate right for you over the pasta,
I think I almost made my server's arm fall off.
I asked for so much cheese.
And then last but not least, olives.
I know that not everyone loves olives.
If it is not your thing or not your family's thing,
you can totally just leave them out.
A really fun thing about pizza mac & cheese
is that you can use all of your family favorite toppings.
Whoo! Fantastic.
Now, all that is left to do
is pop it into the oven for 20 minutes
until it is hot and bubbly
and the pepperoni is crisp on top.
See you shortly.
Creamy mac & cheese meet pepperoni pizza,
now this is a match made in heaven.
If you love creamy pastas,
don't forget to check out my turkey Tetrazzini.
Hmm.
Now that is Well Plated.