This prevents them from sticking together, but it doesn’t stop them from absorbing liquid. When you first cook the flour in fat, it coats the starch particles. And hey presto, you’ve got a grainy or lumpy sauce! Yuck. When starch absorbs water, it doesn’t just swell. So why not just throw flour into a sauce to thicken it? This is the fundamental process behind how flour thickens a sauce. When flour, or more specifically the starch in flour, is exposed to water, it absorbs the water and swells. The role of flour is to thicken the white sauce. To overcome this, most mac and cheese recipes use a white sauce to carry the cheese. As it cools a little, it can hold together alright, but then as it cools more it tends to get firm and clumpy. When it’s hot it tends to be sticky and stringy. But on it’s own, cheese doesn’t make for a great sauce. So why do it? The role of a roux in mac and cheeseĪt it’s heart, mac and cheese is just that – pasta and cheese. Making a roux is fiddly and time consuming.
You can make it on the stovetop, or you can make it in the oven. There are two fundamentally different approaches to homemade mac and cheese.
HOW DO YOU MAKE A ROUX FOR MAC AND CHEESE HOW TO
Read on to discover how to make mac and cheese without flour, but also how to make a better roux. Everyone loves mac & cheese, but making a roux (with flour) takes time and can be a pain to get right.