Baked Macaroni and Cheese Sticks | Judy Ann’s Kitchen

Extreme cheese levels ahead! Luna and I will cook together simple and delicious recipes that you can try at home:
– Baked Macaroni
– Cheese Sticks

Hope you try our recipes and share photos of your own version with us! We’d love to know your experience!

#JudyAnnsKitchen #BakedMacaroni #CheeseSticks

Hey everyone! Welcome to Judy Ann’s Kitchen! Happy Independence Day! Independence! Yes, it’s Independence day! So, we are going to make a simple yet impressive recipe because many of you liked that one episode where I failed to make a lasagna. Let’s make something different this time. Let me redeem myself. I’ve made a Mexican version of my lasagna before. So today, let’s make it cheesy baked macaroni, but we’ll make it extra special because… We’ll be using, how many types of cheese do we have? One, two, three, four types of cheese for the baked macaroni. Five? Ah, that’s for the cheese sticks. So we’ll make baked macaroni and cheese sticks with basil and garlic aioli on the side as dipping sauce. I’m chopping bacon because I’ll use its fat to sear our veggies and meat for a richer flavor. So this recipe, you can use this for special occasions. So I’m using four different kinds of cheese. You can opt to use everything or you can also reduce the amount of cheese. If you feel it’s beyond your budget, that’s fine. Because I’m chopping bacon, I’m using the red chopping board. If you’ve noticed, we are actually practicing color-coded chopping boards. I am now heating this pot. We’ll add our bacon. Let’s start with the sauce because it’s a bit— well it’s not hard to make but it’s quite tedious. <i>Is that Pinoy style, your sauce?</i> Yes, we have Pinoy style tomato sauce and Italian style tomato sauce. So we’ll be using two types of tomato sauce, because I like the sweetness from the Pinoy style and the sourness from the Italian. I’ve tried it many times and this combination suits my taste. So we have here our shell pasta. This shell pasta or elbow macaroni, this is usually used for making baked macaroni or mac and cheese. Because… if you look at its ridges. These ridges, look at them. That’s where the cheese sticks. In its holes as well, because they’re close together, the sauce can easily go inside. So when you bite into it with the sauce and the cheese, all the elements or flavors from your cooking are there because the macaroni absorbs them. So because I’m getting impatient with my bacon, let’s add more oil. To speed up the rendering of the fat, while the sauce is simmering, more of the bacon flavor will come out and I want that. I want it to slowly infuse the bacon flavor into our baked macaroni. So did you, know again that during the end of the Great Depression, that’s when this so-called mac and cheese, the boxed ones, started to become popular. I think it became popular, because it’s easy to make, tasty, salty, and for some reason, it’s an occasional type of dish that could instantly lift you up and at the same time, when they made that, it became an instant hit. So it’s instant happiness for the kids. Luna loves mac and cheese. There are times when I pack her mac and cheese, but her mac and cheese, I add mashed squash and mashed carrots to make what she eats at school more nutritious. Are you alright? Didn’t you know? I was sharing it with my friends. Well then it’s good. At least many of you are eating healthy in class. Right? I got you there. See? There are plenty of ways. Were you able to tell the difference? No, right? You finish it everytime, right? No! Yes, you do. You finish it because you share it with your classmates. Okay, so you don’t need to make it crispy. Just enough to have a little browning, that’s okay. So we’ll add onions. I like a lot of onions. Just white onions, diced. I just want a lot of onions because I love onions. If you’re not fond of onions, even one piece is okay. And then some garlic. Two to three cloves of minced garlic. For example, when I’m simmering sauces for spaghetti or any stewed dish, I like using iron cast or iron pans or what we call Le Creuset. Because it’s thick, it evenly distributes the heat and at the same time, the meat doesn’t burn. It doesn’t crack because it distributes the heat perfectly. Now, are you okay there, my love? We will now brown our… Gotcha! Our ground beef. It’s important to render the fat in our ground beef first. The batch I’m making is quite large. You don’t have to use all the sauce we’re cooking now. You can always keep some in your refrigerator. Don’t forget to label it. Put the date on so you know when you prepared it. And then, when you have reserved meat sauce, you can always put this over spaghetti or make mac and cheese or baked macaroni again. You can also use it for lasagna. So, what I do is, I brown everything first. before I add other seasonings, like soy sauce. But now, I can add salt and pepper. Okay? So, can you slice this cheese like cubes? That’s cheese? This is cream cheese. Just here. It’s cream cheese. Salt. With a bread knife. Like that, score it. Yes, like that. Like tic-tac-toe. Okay? So we’ll add some salt. Some pepper. Thank you, my love. Good job. Okay. Now, can you bring this at the back and can you tell our boys to heat this in the microwave so our pasta will heat up so you can melt the cream cheese there. Thank you, baby. <i>Does Luna eat raw pasta?</i> Oh, no, it’s cooked. Ah, okay, okay. It’s pre-boiled. So, in what other ways can you use macaroni shells or elbow macaroni? Of course, the usual— Chicken noodle soup. Or macaroni salad. Or where else do we use macaroni shells? Aside from baked macaroni. <i>In crafts, right? Like lampshades.</i> Oh, yes. They make it into a necklace. They make it into a bracelet. Okay, so now, it’s browned. This is the brown we’re looking for. It doesn’t need to be completely brown. Just enough so we know the bacon juice and our salt and pepper are sealed in. We’ll now add our sauces. So, we have our Filipino-style tomato sauce. We have our Italian-style tomato sauce. There. So, this is the time when we’ll add the carrots so they soften along with our meat. Our Italian-style seasoning. Just a bit because we don’t want it to taste woody or earthy. We’ll add some soy sauce. Soy sauce. Okay. Just a bit of soy sauce. Can you get me Worcestershire sauce? Worcestershire sauce. Yes, get me Worcestershire sauce. Thank you. There you go. Okay, now, this is the perfect time for you to add all the cream cheese. Cream cheese. Okay, and make sure that it’s properly incorporated. Okay. Okay, gentle and slow. Okay? Don’t press it. Okay, love? Fold only. Fold. Fold. Fold. Paprika. To give it a smoky flavor. You’re doing great, babe. And then, our bay leaf. Looks good now. So, we will let our sauce simmer. I’ll transfer this to the stove because we’re going to make the béchamel sauce. What I always do when I’m making a batch of macaroni sauce, I don’t mix the veggies all at once. Remember we added the carrots earlier? At home, I wait around 25 minutes, before I add the bell pepper. So they slowly embrace each ingredient we put in. At least, that’s my way of cooking. We’ll transfer this because while we’re waiting for this to come together, we will be making our béchamel. Worces…tershire… sauce. Thank you. Okay. Add some. For now, since we’re waiting for that. Why is she so clingy today, Dad? You’re cold to touch. <i>Bubba, you have a visitor.</i> You’re here! Oh, what an honor, Mr. Noel Ferrer. Let’s get some unsalted butter. Pop everything there. Luna, what? Is she feeling very hot? You can finally star in a Regal horror film, love. So, we’ll melt the butter for us to start our béchamel sauce. So, with our béchamel sauce, this is where it starts the cheesiness of our sauce for the macaroni. Let’s do it one by one. We added cream cheese to the pasta. So, even if we include this in the macaroni sauce, it already has a taste, it’s already cheesy. Parmesan and cheddar for our béchamel. And what we’ll use as our toppings are mozzarella and provolone. I can already anticipate the comments saying how pricey the recipe is. You can always stay on budget. So, it’s up to you. This is just my take. Because I really find happiness in cheese. I love cheese. That’s something we always need to have at home. We’ll now add our flour. So, think. This béchamel, you can also use this for lasagna. So, if you want your béchamel to have a deeper brown color, then you need to brown the flour first before you add the butter. You need to cook the flour until it is smooth. But if you’re okay with your béchamel being white, then go straight to butter and flour. You have to whisk it until the flour is cooked. You wanna make sure the flour is cooked. Otherwise, when we combine it, if the flour isn’t cooked, you’ll taste it gritty. So, we will now add milk here. And when you add your milk, you want to keep on whisking it. If you see, it becomes like mashed potatoes. Keep on adding milk until it no longer thickens. Because it will thicken more from our cheese. Lovey, can you put all the bell peppers there? I’ll do it, Lovey. It’s too hot. You might get burned. So, I added the bell peppers. Because… it’s already boiling. So, I transferred it to simmer. Alright. I think I’ll use up all the milk. Can you refill my milk, please, baby? Thank you. I wonder what she’s getting. Bring this inside, babe. So, you can transfer the milk here. Thank you, sweetie. Okay, there. I think I have achieved it. So, you want it to look a little bit more thick, but not thick like mashed potatoes. Because we’ll add cheese to it. You just need to keep whisking, until your arms get some muscle. <i>Can you use a mechanical whisk?</i> <i>Or do you get a different result?</i> For the mechanical whisk, I think it’s really just for browning meat. Because it’s slow. but in these cooking processes, it should be rapid whisking so the clumps disappear. There. I just keep going back to my… Actually, you know, you can let your meat sauce simmer for a long time. But if you still want to bite some meat… that’s okay like that. Thank you, sweetie. Okay, it’s thickening again. And the handle of my whisk is hot. There, I think this is enough, okay? Right? Can you now get the parmesan and the cheddar? Which one is the parmesan? There’s so much cheese. Taste it to believe it. So, which is the parmesan? You think that’s the parmesan? Good job. So, you want to put all your parmesan here. And the cheddar, please. Go! <i>Are you tasting it?</i> Yeah. <i>Can you identify it by taste now?</i> So, what is this? Cheddar. The first one, what did you put? Parmesan. So, what’s the difference in taste? Salty. Which one? Parmesan. Parmesan is salty. The cheddar is what? A bit sweeter. A bit sweeter. Sweeter. And cheddar. There. So that every bite gets cheese from the top part of the baked mac. And then you get cheese from the béchamel. There’s cheese from the shells themselves. If you still haven’t got the memo how cheesy this dish we’re making is… I don’t know. I’m that cheesy. So, there. I’m so happy, Juday. Okay. We’ll just add some sugar to balance it. And what I love adding here is white pepper and nutmeg. It makes everything a bit more… everything is special but there’s a different taste you can find. You can buy nutmeg even if it’s not whole. There are many available at the grocery and they’re not expensive. So, nutmeg is normally used in bread, in pastries or in cake. Can you get me white pap— paper?! White pepper. White paper. White pepper, please. Our béchamel is done. We’ll start assembling. I love it. I’ll transfer it here. Now, I’ll bring back our meat sauce. There, there, there. That’s our meat sauce. So, we added white pepper to our béchamel. So, that’s our cheesy béchamel sauce. No, it’s cheese. It’s cheese. And then, this is it, guys. We’ll assemble. So, we’ll add our meat sauce to our macaroni, so they slowly blend together. So, remember our meat sauce has bacon. Bacon. It has ground beef. Ground beef. It has onions, garlic, carrots. Onions, garlic, carrots. And bell peppers. There. I don’t want to overpower the cream cheese. I just want the meat sauce to be exactly meaty enough. Make sure to not include the bay leaf. So, I transferred it here to the pasta so the cream cheese doesn’t lose its grip on the macaroni. Salt. I’m not happy. I’ll add salt here. Mmm. I bit into the bacon with Italian seasoning. Let’s build our baked macaroni. Make sure your plating dish is quite deep. Just make sure it’s filled to the middle because we’ll add béchamel, we’ll also add sauce. We don’t want the cheese to overflow. That’s what I want to achieve. Hopefully, in this episode of baked macaroni, I won’t fail. Because with lasagna, in this kitchen, I often fail. Now, we’ll add some more sauce in the middle. Actually, with this meat sauce, just add beans, then chili, then chips. You’ll have salsa or uhm… chili con carne! Dibs! I thought, why not add cheese, in the middle before I add the béchamel. So I have here my provolone. You can get this in delis like Santi’s, Baco’s, or One World Deli. Before, I paired lasagna with garlic bread. So this time, what we’ll be pairing it with are cheese sticks. Because we still have to wait for it to bake. Add our béchamel. You want to make sure the béchamel is spread out nicely. Hey! If this doesn’t turn you into a cheese lover, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. For adult-style baked macaroni, what they put in their béchamel, is blue cheese or gorgonzola cheese, which is somewhat pungent. But for Sharon Cuneta, her favorite cheese— is the smelliest cheese. That’s how she is. She also loves cheese, you know. So when she holds a concert, we send her a charcuterie. Because that’s the only thing she really eats before her concert. That’s how we singers are. When I had a concert at Araneta, I ate <i>lechon paksiw</i> and rice before my opening number. We each have our own routine when we prepare for a concert, that’s how it is. Then I retired from being a singer. I realized, it’s not for me. I’ll transfer this oil in here. <i>Did you hide your fishnet stockings?</i> I threw them away. I don’t want to remember. But to be fair, if there’s one thing that Tito Alfie really fought for during those times, was that he made sure for my 20th anniversary, in show business, the celebration is that I will have a concert at Araneta. That was when I almost got down to my knees and begged him— please Tito Alfie, don’t, I beg you, don’t. But he didn’t want to give in, so I gave up and wore my tangga outfit. Okay now, we will add our mozzarella cheese. There are so many different brands of mozzarella cheese now. So whatever your favorite brand is, go for it. We’ll mix this with processed cheese because that’s the flavorful one. What I really love about mozzarella is its stringy texture when melted. I’m excited. Then our processed cheese. Make sure that your oven is preheating at 350 Fahrenheit while you’re doing this to make the wait easier. Okay now, we will bake this for at least 10 to 15 minutes. Crank it up a bit. Now, for our cheese sticks. I’ll bring this out, I had the boys prepare this beforehand. But I will still show you how to do it. We have our basil. We have our processed cheese. This floating lumpia wrapper. <i>Where did that come from?</i> From the camera guy. Because I don’t like it when you only eat the outer part. You can just cut the lumpia wrapper. So you have here your processed cheese. Here. And then I have here my thinly sliced basil. Just a little. You don’t need much because basil has a strong taste. You wanna cover it. Roll it. Seal the edges. There. So what is chiffonade? Chiffonade is a term used for thinly slicing herbs. So you want to put your basil on top of each other. Like this. Treat it like you would a piece of paper, and then you roll it. Just like this, and then you want to slice it. That is chiffonade. It’s like it’s in strips. You can use it with parsley, with basil, with kaffir leaves. Just remove the spine of the kaffir leaves and then roll it. Then you can chiffonade it. We’ll make a dipping sauce. Which is very, very easy. Easy. Someone will correct me again. Hey, it’s okay if you correct me. I like that. Because we’re not perfect. We have mayo here. You can use whatever type of mayo you like. We have our grated garlic here. This is around two cloves of garlic to a cup of mayo. Two cloves of garlic because raw garlic has too strong of a taste. Especially if the garlic is Tagalog, the small one. That really packs a punch. Like that feisty neighbor we used to have. Did we have such a neighbor? Let’s just say as feisty as my mom, then. Yeah. So we don’t want a bite that’s too strong. To spice it all up. Let’s add pickled jalapenos to this. If you don’t like it spicy, you can use pickled relish. Just this. Because our baked mac is already cheesy. And we have cheese sticks. And we’ll dip them in garlic aioli. I kinda want it to have a bit of tanginess and a bite. The kind of bite that nags at you. How do you do a bite that nags? Okay. So, our aioli is done. When you fry cheese sticks and the oil isn’t really hot, there’s a possibility that the cheese might spill out because it’s been soaking in the oil you’re frying in. So you want your oil to be really hot, so when you drop the cheese sticks, they brown immediately. There’s not much chance for the cheese to splatter all over the place. It will take a while, guys. Okay, so on that note, I’m ready to plate. I beat the time today. Here we’ll place our cheese sticks and our aioli. Look, it’s getting warm, but not enough for the lumpia wrapper to crisp up immediately. So, it means the same thing will happen to my cheese sticks if I try to fry them without the oil being hot enough. Be patient. Patience is a virtue. There, there, it’s getting better. We will now fry. Okay, don’t throw it. Practice your patience. Okay, one, two, three, slide. Good job. Okay. Again, when frying, don’t overcrowd so it cooks evenly. So, while we wait for it to brown, let’s check on our baked mac. Hey, it’s looking quite good. It’s bubbling. It’s getting closer, closer, closer. Okay. Ta-da! Look at that! It’s still very hot. Look at that, still bubbling. So, we won’t touch that yet. We’ll taste it when it cools down. When it cools down, our cheese will solidify. It will be easier to eat. Just a little more, it’s still hot. <i>Careful with the melted cheese,</i> That’s what I’m saying. I tried to cook it without the oil being too hot. So, there’s a slight leakage of cheese. I did mention that, right? Basil, when cooked, really adds flavor to the oil and the dish. Oh, dear! So, okay, moms and dads, when deep frying, make sure, even if your kids want to help you, make sure not to let them stay around you because there’s a big possibility They might get splattered with oil, giving them trauma from cooking. And you don’t want that because you want to teach your kids the basic survival skills. For example; cooking, cleaning… clothes ironing, so that whatever may happen, they know how to live independently, right? Okay, it seems ready. I’ll bring out our cheese sticks. We will now plate it. But it’s still very hot, so the first thing we’ll taste is the baked macaroni. There! Okay. Are you ready, Dad? We will slice it. <i>Luna and I have been waiting for that.</i> And eat it! I want to show how cheesy this baked mac is. Yeah! Oh no, it spilled! What happened? Oh no, it spilled! That’s what happens when you show-off. I achieved it already. I got too excited, said the macaroni. I won’t give it to you. Can I get the forks? It’s there, babe, there. Okay, Daddy? Okay. Alright. You want to taste it, Bubba? It’s hot. Very hot. We can torch this a bit more. It’s yummy, but it’s hot. How is it, bub? We’re good. How about you? Is it good? Yeah, this is good stuff! – Thank you. – Is it okay? Yeah. Isn’t it bland? Mmm. No. – Not for me. – Not? Babe is it… Is it bland for you? What’s bland? You could use a little more saltiness. No. No? Pretty good, no? Yes, I love it. It’s alright, baby. Thank you. Then we’ll taste our cheese sticks. It’s still quite hot, so the basil came out. We’ll dip it in our garlic aioli with jalapeno. It’s hot, babe. Hot? Mmm, winner. Delicious? Good stuff. Delicious? You alright? Is it hot? You alright? Mmm. Yes, I got it. Bea, Krizia? Let’s eat, my children. You promised, you’re going to appear, right? Alright, thanks, Bub. Yay! Very good. So we have Krisha and Bea here. Very hot. Yes, my love. It’s very, very hot. They are part of our production. They are my angels here. Thank you, sweetheart. Here it is. Before, during filming the first few episodes, they weren’t too excited with the recipes. Now, they have experienced Judy Ann’s Kitchen. They are eagerly awaiting the episode before their lunch break, before their snack. Enjoy, my love! Okay, start eating. There it is. How are you, sweetheart? Hey, It’s making her dance! Yehey. Thank you so much everyone for another episode of Judy Ann’s Kitchen. Join me again next week here at Judy Ann’s Kitchen. Be grateful, be kind, and always pay it forward. Goodbye! Say bye. Bye. Thank you! Yes, chef! We’re all stressed out in here. The brand wasn’t removed. My béchamel is already thick. Béchamel? Oh, it got cut. What now? What happened to me? So many things have happened.