Is my homemade mac and cheese better than the most expensive restaurant’s version? In the red corner, we have the cheapest mac and cheese we could find. Well, cheapest, but also best, because we got to get Stouffer’s. Sporked loves Stouffer’s. I love Stouffer’s. I grew up eating this. Look at that liquid yellow gold right there. In the blue corner, we have to add red and blue in post. I’m so sorry for making post do all this work, but I don’t know how to actually do it live. So we, someone give me a Sharpie. I’ll color the counters. In the blue corner, we have the most expensive mac and cheese that we could find in Los Angeles, a metro area of 14 million people to 94 distinct cities inside of it is from Maccheroni Republic or Maccheroni Republic as they spell it the Italian way. This is made with Khorasan wheat. It is incredibly fancy. It has tubetti pasta. It costs $19. It’s the most expensive mac and cheese, sans lobster, that we can find, as yet to be seen, the very average mac and cheese I will be making right smack dab in the middle of these price points to see if we can take normal ingredients and elevate that when you take out the ambiance, when you take out the clout, when you take out the name brand and see if we can beat it in a blind taste test. We got a judge from sporked.com Jordan Myrick’s going to come in, taste all these blind and see which one they prefer. I think mac and cheese is maybe the thing I’m best at in life other than professional dog walking, but I’m going to go ahead and take these. If you guys need dogs walked, hit me up. The key is, leashes. This tastes incredibly fancy. Tons of olive oil in there, really high quality olive oil. Damn, good show, Maccheroni Republic. I thought Maccheroni Republic was just an Italian Banana Republic. So I went there trying to buy high waisted pants. I walked in without my own pants because I was like, I’m buying pants here. I’m not allowed back. Jesus Christ, tasting these back to back is nuts. You’re immediately assaulted with the chemical cheese flavor, which I do love. I’m curious, when blindfolded, because like, this tastes of the Earth with all that heirloom wheat. This tastes straight out the freezer section. Mine right in the middle, I think it’s gonna throw a big wrench in the system. I’m really curious to see what our judge has to say when they taste these blind. Can we get cooking? To understand the state of mac and cheese in America, first you need to understand American nation building in the late 18th century. Enter Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, and his cook, James Hemings. They had a lot of new product. It was called cheddar cheese out of Vermont. They wanted to create an upscale dish that also featured American product. Thomas Jefferson was one of the first people to bring back a pasta maker from Western Europe. He made macaroni, or as they call it, shoot, what do they call it in Italy? What do they call elbows in Italy? It’s something dumb. No, nobody tell me. Nobody tell me. Nobody tell me. Come on, come on. Okay, tell me. Tell me, tell me. Alboa. Alboa. Made elbow noodles. No, for real. Someone look this up. It’s like rigoti. He made elbow noodles and then he took Vermont cheddar and he melted it on top. Now, mac and cheese, big staple in soul food. Big staple, barbecue restaurants. Everybody grew up eating Kraft mac and cheese. We have, what? Gomiti. I should have known that because Måneskin has a great song called Lividi Sui Gomiti. Anywho, shout out Måneskin. Eurovision 2021, never forget. Mac and cheese style, it is very personal. I love making a sort of béchamell, but adding in some processed ingredients like evaporated milk. Grandma Helen said so. She’s been living with her special friend, Barbara, for the last 20 years. They’re just roommates. They’re just roommates after her husband died. You know, they’re just special friends. So, we’re starting with a roux right now, right? This is the basis of a béchamel. We’re also gonna be adding a little bit of Velveet’r. That Velveet’r cheese there, man, I’ll tell you what. That is great. It has what I refer to as, the god chemical. You guys remember The God Particle, Higgs boson? This is the god chemical of cheese sauces, cause that’s all. I don’t really concern myself with the quandaries of the universe, but cheese sauce is sodium citrate is a chemical that is found inside Velveeta that gives it that signature texture. It’s effectively going to act as an emulsifier for your sauce. We’re gonna let that roux go for about two minutes. You want it to cook down a little bit so then the flour can absorb all that liquid. Give me a sec. Who else wants to talk about, Måneskin’s first album that was all in Italian except for one song. It was so much better than the stuff they’re putting out now. It bums me out. It’s called Teatro d’iro. What does that mean? I don’t know. Can someone Google it? D’iro D apostrophe I-R-O. This isn’t going to make the cut. Every time I say this isn’t going to make the cut. It makes the cut. Thanks, Taylor. Where’s Taylor at? Do you mean, D-E-space-O-R-O? Just look up Måneskin first album. Nicole, my roux is burning. Can you just Google faster? Hold on. Alright, the roux has started foaming. That’s how you know it is ready to add the liquid to turn it into the béchamel. We’re going to add our liquid slowly. We got an equal part milk and cream mixture. There you go. You want to add your liquid slowly. That way you can sort of build that paste there. Make sure you’re thinning out all the little lumps. The lumps. We really let Fergie get away with my lovely lady lumps, dude. How did that make the final version of that song? Evaporated milk, courtesy Grandma Helen, is going in the pot. If you cannot add your own love to cooking, add the love of a fictional grandmother. There we go. It can be any fictional grandmother, too. Who’s your favorite fictional grandmother? That is coming up. We’re gonna go ahead, the order in which you add your cheeses are important. We’re gonna add the Velveeta because that has got those chemical emulsifiers in it, and that’s gonna like, make the sauce nice and silken. It’s gonna prevent the sauce from breaking when you add your other cheese. We’re also gonna add spices. Here’s the thing, some people don’t spice up their mac and cheese, and you’re just missing out on a whole world. Onion, garlic, black pepper, a little bit of cayenne mustard powder. To me, mustard and cheese is like such a fantastic combination. We’re popping that in there. The other key to mac and cheese, a little bit of chicken bouillon. Anytime you can add that like little MSG sort of meat flavor, all those glutamates, right, you got all those proteins breaking down, into new flavors. That’s just going to like add that little, my mouth is watering thinking about the MSG. Also, MSG is not bad for you. Listen to our podcast. We dropped a link. Can you put like the clickable link in YouTube? Do they still do that? You gotta click right here. Click right there, there’s gonna be a link right there. We’ll do it in post. Now we reach the inflection point. This is the point at which your cheese sauce can go from silky to grainy, despite the flour holding everything together, despite the Velveeta. If you add your cheese too quick and too hot, all of those proteins are gonna separate from the fats. You get a broken, grainy cheese sauce. Nothing is worse than that. Well, no, there’s like a million things worse than that. But this is bad enough to where you go like, man. Or if you want to hit them with like a, rats, that might happen to you. Nobody wants to be in a rats situation. We’re going to take this off the heat. We’re going to dump in all of our cheese. I actually like to add a high volume of cheese. Some people say to add it slowly. I don’t really believe in that. I think you need enough like volume of cheese to sort of cool down the sauce. And then that is going to get it to melt gradually with all of that latent heat. And if the cheese isn’t melting with that latent heat, just hop it back on the burner. The cheese, it gets this sort of stringy consistency, but if you just keep sort of folding that in, and a great way to fold it. Check this out, the Mythical Kitchen, what do we call this? Smatchula. It’s like a, it’s a, it’s a spatula, but our logo, it’s an M for Mythical. Smatchula, it’s a good cooking utensil, and you can use it to scrape down the sides of your pan, and just gently fold in the cheese. Just fold in the cheese. If you don’t know what folding the cheese in means, just watch me, I’m folding in the cheese. Never seen that show, but I’ve said fold in the cheese enough to where I know that it’s a great, Catherine O’Hara bit. Anyways, look at how, look how silken this cheese sauce is. Took it off the heat, added it back on. We’re gonna taste for seasoning. Oh, God. Oh, God, that is good. Like an Herbal Essences commercial from 2004. Google it. Great ad campaign. People just going wild in the shower. Shampooing their hair. We’re gonna add in a little bit of hot sauce. Just one little bap in there, like a Tyga song. This is a half an hour of non sequiturs and inappropriate references. This cheese sauce is perfect. I think we’re ready to fold in our macaroni. Get to biggity baking. Let’s do it. More mac and cheese theory with Josh as I’m just fingering the noodles. I, dude, I gotta stop. We have our beautiful Mornay sauce, right? That like creamy, cheesy, super silken sauce. You could just toss macaroni with that to get like a lovely stovetop macaroni. However, what I like to do is I like to take some handfuls of cheese, and you kinda just eyeball and intuit it, and I add it directly to the macaroni before I toss it with the sauce. The cheese isn’t gonna melt until it melts when we bake the macaroni. I’m also gonna top it with more cheese. That way, though, you get the beautiful dual texture of silk and creamy sauce, stringy, cheese pulley cheese. I think it’s the perfect mac and cheese, dude. I think we’re gonna freaking smoke this one, man. I didn’t think I had a vendetta against the Maccheroni Republic, but ever since they freaking banned me, I was just in there trying to look like Jeremy Allen White. You know? And they’re like, no man. Also, why don’t you have shoes? I was like, I thought Italians made good shoes. So, and take the sauce. Going to dump that over pasta. Let’s save some. Let’s toss it, see where we’re at. We don’t want it too liquidy, but you do want to overestimate the amount of liquid because when you bake it off, it’s all going to evaporate. Pasta is cooked perfectly al dente, which is actually the name of Måneskin’s second album. Hell yes. Oh, that is the sound of love. That is the sound of Grandma Helen. Nevermind. Nevermind. Old people need love too! All right, we’re gonna butter this pan. You want to use the latent heat of your hands. Butter it that way, the edges, the butter is gonna kind of brown. You can also use butter as a daily moisturizer. I think the Liver King said to do that. How would you do that? Can you try? No. No, no, I’m not getting baited into covering myself in butter. Not again. All right, dump your macaroni into your casserole dish, hell, yeah, brother, like Hulk Hogan before he had a reality show and then we found out what he thought about the world. We didn’t need that. You know, Hulk Hogan opened a pasta restaurant called Pasta Mania back in 1994, I believe, and it was like the Chipotle of pasta. It seemed like a pretty good idea, but if we’re being honest, there’s no reason Hulk Hogan needed to be attached to that, and I think it probably hurt their chances of surviving. The world’s fun. I’m gonna make some more cheese, top it. Some people do breadcrumb toppings, in like a traditional baked mac and cheese. I don’t really like doing that, man. I’m kind of here for the cheese and the mac. So now we’re just gonna give this a nice hefty layer. We’re gonna bake this all at about 425. Also, this is Nicole’s recipe that she developed, in the Mythical Kitchen like a while ago. And it is still probably the best mac and cheese you’ve ever had, right? That’s just, I think I’m adding, did I do anything different than you normally do? A little bit, but that’s the beauty of cooking. You can always interpret it to your own, like heart’s content. – You know? It’s a guideline. – Yeah. Yeah, it’s like interpretive dance. Cheese top, boom, this is going in the oven. I gotta like, I gotta wash myself before I put this in the oven. Going in the oven, 425, we’ll check it after about half an hour, see how browned it is. We’re gonna plate up and eat. Jordan, welcome to our WNBA gossip podcast. What do you think about Caitlin Clark being fouled hard? I have thoughts that people are not gonna like. Let’s talk about mac and cheese instead then. Jordan, we got three mac and cheeses in front of us. Okay. One is the most expensive that we can find in Los Angeles. One is our best effort at great mac and cheese made with accessible ingredients. The other is the cheapest mac and cheese I can find. Your job, Don that blindfold, I’m going to feed them to you blind and then you’re going to rate them out of 10 and guess which one is the fanciest and which is the least fancy. Okay, and just for a quality question, the one that y’all made, who made it? You or like, Lily? I made it, my hands touched it, but it is a recipe that Nicole developed that is, I mean, I really love it. Okay, great, great, great. I was just curious. – It wasn’t weighted. – Yeah, no, I get it. It is weighted. I was just wondering. I’m just saying, like, rookies, take hard fouls. All right, put the blindfold on. Okay, I’m gonna take my glasses off so it’s like I’m already blindfolded. Hold my hat. Wait, hold on. Hold my hat. Do you remember when Candace Parker beat Josh Smith in the high school dunk contest? – Yeah. – That was a good moment. Remember when Candace Parker was straight? Yeah, she was married to Shelden Williams. Really crazy stuff. Anyways, tune into our WNBA podcast. Jordan, first mac and cheese up. You ready to eat it? Yes. This is called, creating new verticals. This is a big bite. Do you want a big bite? If you guys ever do this to me and it’s not what you’re telling me you’re putting in my mouth, I’m gonna be so mad. I feel like I just have to flag that right now. I think you and I developed a rapport of consent and trust and I would never do that. Oh my God. I just, sorry. Relax! I like taking big bites. Okay. My initial thought and guess is that maybe that is the homemade one. What are you tasting? What are the flavor notes you’re getting? It’s very rich, it’s very melty and cheesy, but I am getting a hint of like a flouriness, which is making me think maybe it’s homemade. Interesting. What are you scoring that out of 10? It’s so hard not compared to the others. I’m gonna say seven? You can wait to score that until you get the other ones. Jordan, airplanes coming back into the hangar. You ready? This is one of the ones that flies into the private hangar where Jay Leno keeps his plane. I host a late night talk show! It’s so vulnerable to have your mouth open that long. Yeah, especially when we’re talking about Jay Leno. I think that is frozen. It just tastes like frozen mac and cheese to me. The texture of the noodle, the way the sauce tastes, I think that’s frozen. Do you enjoy frozen mac and cheese? Yeah, why not? What do you give it out of 10? I’ll give that a 7. Not bad. Equal footing. But a different seven than the other one. Alright, coming up with one more. One more. This is from the private Burbank airplane hangar where Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer, keeps his plane. Okay. You have to take control. That’s the most insular Burbank reference, he’s always walking around. It’s true. Okay, that one’s my favorite. What are you tasting? There’s crunchy, there was cheese crunchy, which I love. It’s very creamy. I don’t get the floury note of the first one and it tastes more rich, just more depth of flavor. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me maybe there was some like Worcestershire sauce a little bit or like something in it that’s giving it a little more depth of flavor. Jordan, what are you giving it out of 10? Also, you can re-rank the first one you ate. I can re-feed you any of them as well. Let me do seven, eight, nine, I think is the, right? That’s the right order? Nine. That is correct. Yeah. Okay. Is it the best mac and cheese in LA or the most expensive? It is the most expensive. It is one that I had never had before. Oh, that’s not a good sign. Okay. Coming back in, other local Burbank celebrities. Who else we got? Who else we got? Who do you guys? I saw Craig Robinson once at a Whole Foods. I was in Hot Tub Time Machine. Okay. Okay. One doesn’t taste as expensive as three. So I think one is, but it could be like, I wish it was like the best one, not the most expensive one, but I don’t. Well, we want to see if price actually matters, Jordan. Inflation’s on the rise. I guess so. Okay. So I’m going to say, okay, one is, one, you made it. Okay. Two, frozen. Three, most expensive, but I also think one in three could swap depending on the situation. Jordan, take off your blindfold as I hold your hat down. I’m just gonna wrassle it off. Number one, this is the most expensive. This is from Maccheroni Republic, a fancy pants store that also has macaroni. The flouriness you’re tasting is, they’ve just drenched this in expensive olive oil, so you’re getting those kind of floral notes. I like almost knew this would happen, right? That’s why I asked if it was the most expensive or actually the best. I’ve been to this restaurant before. Their pasta is unbelievable. I don’t think that’s that good. I think it’s a really interesting dish. They’re using heirloom wheat. It’s fascinating to me. But like when you’re thinking mac and cheese, this is our homemade version that you ranked the highest. We are very proud of this recipe. Shout out, Nicole. You rule, dude. Very classic. A little bit of gruyère in there. The savoriness you’re tasting was actually chicken bouillon straight up. Okay, yeah. I knew it was something. A little punch of chicken. And then we got classic Stouffer’s, which is like. I mean, tastes good too. Yeah. It’s delicious. I’m disappointed by that one. I don’t ever want to be fascinated by mac and cheese, personally. Well, I do! Yeah, and that’s the difference between us, but I think, you know, I mean, yeah, this one is the best. And I knew, I knew, last minute I almost made the switch, but. Why do you seem ashamed of your performance? I think you did a great job. I just was so close to being right, and then I wasn’t, but this is good and thank you. I thought maybe you just didn’t have enough time to cook this one and didn’t cook the flour out of the roux all the way. Is what I was like. Like pasty flour. It tastes like pasty flour. Yeah, well, I guess the fact that you didn’t believe in me is ultimately what led you to making the wrong decision. I didn’t not believe. I just wasn’t sure. Thank you all so much for stopping by, and let me know what dish you want to see us make next. Jordan, thank you so much for stopping by, and cool hat. Let’s not dwell on it. Tell them where they can find you. You can find me on sporked.com and whatever else comes up when you put my name into Google. I’ll see y’all next time. Whisk up your next fire meal with the Mythical Kitchen Utensil Set. Available now at mythical.com