I’m obsessed with the Tillamook brand from Target, it has the BEST flavor of any cheese I’ve ever had (not sponsored, just love cheese) so highly recommend that for this recipe. You can totally fancy it up with Gruyere, gouda or even monterey jack, but for simplicities sake, we are using cheddar. I use sharp cheddar or a three cheddar blend, because I know my kiddos will love it. This recipe is seriously irresistable and so easy, the kids love it & I even love to reheat it in the morning and eat it with eggs. I’ve tried a few recipes in the past that turned out pretty blah. But after having a friend visit us a few months ago that introduced us to trottole pasta, I knew we were about to become a homemade mac & cheese household. A trendy option, for those that like spice is to add two teaspoons of Sriracha sauce to mix with the melted unsalted butter to coat the Panko crumbs before spreading on the topping.So for no reason at all, I have always been intimidated by making real homemade mac & cheese. You could cook up 4 strips of lower sodium bacon and crumble it up to mix into the Panko. I saw several options with bacon crumbled in. For our purposes, Panko crumbs are the lower sodium option. In fact it is a must have for any Southern recipe for macaroni and cheese that I could find. I could not find a single recipe that didn’t use some kind of bread crumb topping. It provides the “aged cheddar” nuance, and better yet, it gives us that super dayglo orange color we need to mentally associate it to the “boxed” version. We tried a few choices, but settled with turmeric. Finally, you need the umami that aging gives to cheddar. You need the nuttiness and casein taste of Swiss which is also the base flavors of cheddar, before they split in direction. We were close, but we needed earthiness, so out came the paprika. I thought that ground mustard would give us the tang and salt flavor. We were looking to hit a cross between the processed cheese powder and an aged cheddar. Next came the spices and seasoning for flavor and color. Just like we use in my Low Sodium Swiss Potato Au Gratin. We make a bechamel sauce by creating a roux and mixing in a lower sodium milk option (we use 1%) to give us the rich creamy base. So we started with our melty cheese sauce. We needed to copy the ooey-gooey melty goodness with our low sodium version. Hacking The Salt But Perfecting The Taste It has to be the dayglo golden orange color, or it isn’t mac and cheese. I would already be steeling myself for hate comments if I delivered up a white Swiss mac and cheese. Not typically what you picture as mac n cheese. Here at Hacking Salt we have learned that the lowest sodium Cheeses that are typically available to us are Swiss, Emmentaler, Marscapone, and some Ricotta’s. Finally, cheddar as an aged cheese, is not typically a good melter on it’s own.
Second, most scratch recipes start with a bechamel sauce which is a golden white sauce. First, I don’t think anyone really knows what is in that salt laden packet of “cheese” powder. The myth of macaroni and cheese is that it is cheddar cheese in it. So after much testing and tweaking, here is the Ultimate Baked Low Sodium Macaroni and Cheese. My children would have revolted if I didn’t. So in order to get it back on the table I had to come up with a low sodium version. The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Blue Box is 720 mg per 1 cup serving. Macaroni and cheese is no longer on the naughty list! Commence the happy-dancing and rejoicing! It’s OK, you know you want to. Ultimate Baked Low Sodium Macaroni And Cheese
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