Gluten Free Homemade Mac & Cheese

I was going to just throw together a post on this quickly last week. I had a photo of this dish that I made a month or so ago and thought it was time to share it. Easy, peasy...write it up and publish it.

Then, I got a hankering for mac & cheese since I'd been thinking about putting it on the blog. I made it last Friday night with the ingredients I had on hand, which were different than the ingredients that I used in the picture I had, and it turned out so wonderfully better! While it looked the same, it tasted SO much better. I'm so glad I waited to write this.

When I first started playing around to make my tried and true mac & cheese recipe gluten free, I was using corn pasta and Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour. I really like corn pasta, a lot. It's most definitely different than wheat flour pasta but I appreciate it for what it is. Much in the way a chicken burger is different than a beef burger but I really like it for what it is...a chicken burger. 

This combo of corn pasta and Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour was good. My son does not appreciate homemade mac & cheese, he'd rather have the stuff in the box, but my husband thought the gluten free version was good. He had no problem eating it at all. I even made it when we had friends over for a cookout. They all ate it, even the kids, and I didn't notice anyone leaving it on their plate uneaten. I had been satisfied with that new variation of my favorite recipe until last Friday night. 

I started poking around in the cupboard to see what kind of pasta I had on hand. I had a lot. Trader Joe's, Sam Mills and Wegmans' corn pasta in various shapes. Gluten Fee Bionaturae pasta which is made with rice, potato and soy in a couple different shapes. Tinkyada brown rice pasta in one shape. The Tinkyada was calling to me. No reason, it just was. The only other time I'd used their product was for lasagna. It was hardly noticeable that it was gluten free. At one point my husband said, "I assume this is gluten free because you are eating it?" Yep. Love it when that happens. It's not like I'm kidding anyone because they know I'm not going to cheat so if I'm eating it, it's clearly gluten free but when it's not obvious, it makes me very happy. 

Onto making the recipe. I used the last of the Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour a while ago so I was now into my box of King Arthur gluten free all purpose flour. The box is open with a little bit used. I can't recall what I used it for. There's not much gone at all so it was nothing significant so I'm considering this my first time using it. 

Usually I wouldn't tell you what brands to use in a recipe. I will tell you what I use and why but that's only my suggestion. I suppose the brands in this recipe are my suggestions also but I will have you know that using the Tinkyada pasta and the King Arthur gluten free all purpose flour has made the best version of gluten free homemade mac & cheese that I've made yet. 

The Tinkyada pasta had a really good texture for his dish. It was soft without being mushy. Corn pasta tends to be a bit more chewy, I guess you could say. It's good, don't let that description turn you off to it. The softer texture of the rice pasta just seemed to work better with this recipe. 

The King Arthur gluten free all purpose flour made a much smoother sauce than the Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour. King Arthur's website does mention that you can bake without "grittiness" so I'm not sure if they do something special to it to lessen that tendency or if it's the combination of flours and starches that they use. At any rate, whatever it is, there was a noticeable difference in the smoothness of the sauce. 

You can most certainly make this without using gluten free ingredients. This was the first mac & cheese recipe I made and it's still the only one I make. I found it in an old Betty Crocker cookbook from the late 80's. My mom bought it and decided she didn't want it shortly after she purchased it so she gave it to me. It's what I started cooking out of in my late teens. There are a few recipes out of the book that I still go to, this being one of them. The book is a disaster, it's been loved a lot over the years and has all the stains, splatters and splashes on the pages to show for it!

Gluten Free (or not) Mac & Cheese

Adapted from an old Betty Crocker Recipe 

6.5 ounces of uncooked, gluten free (or not) pasta (1 to 1-1/2 cups)

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup gluten free (or not) all purpose flour

1 3/4 cup milk

8 ounces shredded sharp cheddar cheese

salt and pepper, to taste

gluten free (or not) bread crumbs (optional)

additional shredded cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Boil the pasta according to package directions to the al dente stage. The pasta will be baked again later so you don't want it to get too mushy with all that cooking. Drain pasta and set aside. 

Melt butter over medium heat. Once it's melted, add the flour and stir until combined. 

Slowly start to add the milk while whisking it in. If you add it all at once it will be hard to get it all incorporated. Once you have the milk all poured in and combined, stir frequently and bring the mixture to a boil, still over medium heat. Once the mixture is boiling, continue to boil and keep stirring constantly for 1 minute. 

Remove from heat and add the shredded cheese. Stir until cheese is completely melted. Add salt and pepper to your liking. I usually just add a little salt to help bring out the flavor of the cheese. 

Add drained pasta to the cheese sauce and stir to thoroughly combine. Once combined, pour into a baking dish. An 8x8 baking dish works well, as does a medium round casserole dish or a medium oval baking dish. You can now top it with gluten free (or not) bread crumbs and/or additional shredded cheese if you'd like to. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until bubbly and the top is golden brown. Or, however well done you like the top of your mac & cheese.

Homemade Gluten Free Hamburger Helper

Do you like Hamburger Helper? It's okay to say, "yes". There's no judgement going on here from my end. I'm doing a whole blog post on it so I have no room to judge. I won't tell anyone if you do say, "yes". Your secret is safe with me.

If you did say, "yes", definitely keep reading on. You don't even have to be gluten free. I started making this as a non gluten free recipe and just decided one night that I wanted it so I adapted it to be gluten free, which wasn't hard at all.

I'm not quite sure how my mother ever convinced me to try Hamburger Helper with as picky as I was. She did though and it's now one of those guilty pleasures of mine. When I decided I wanted to eat a little more consciously, this is one of the things I took a look at. We didn't eat it often but when we did, I knew there were absolutely no redeeming qualities about it whatsoever and looked to see if I could change it. 

My first move was to replace the Betty Crocker brand with the Annie's brand. Annie's was made with more natural ingredients and I felt better serving it when we did have it. I was buying it at Target and then it disappeared. I would check every time I went in and it never showed back up. I was quite disappointed because it was actually so much better than the Betty Crocker brand. It had a really decent taste to it, no matter how bad it looked in your bowl. I did see it still on the shelves of one of the supermarkets here. However, they wanted over $5 a box for it. There was NO way I was paying that much for a box that had a little itty bit of pasta and a pouch of seasonings in it. No way, no how. I decided to see if I could make it at home. Of course I could.

I made it a few times and again, so much better than the Betty Crocker brand. Who knew in all those years that I'd been eating that brand that there were alternatives out there that were not only better for you, but tasted better too. When you are making it right from the start in your own kitchen, you have control over every ingredient in it and that is a huge plus when you are trying to eat more consciously. I was happy to have found my way to making homemade Hamburger Helper.

Fast forward to my current eating limitations. I hadn't thought about Hamburger Helper of any sort in a while until I had wandered into an odd lot store a couple months ago. They had a gluten free version of it put out by Sam Mills. I love, love, love Sam Mills gluten free corn pasta so I grabbed a couple boxes. They were due to expire within the next 6 weeks so 2 were more than enough. We tried it and it was pretty darn good. More like the Annie's brand than Betty Crocker in flavor. I searched around to see if I could find this anywhere else with better sell by dates but it just wasn't happening so I forgot about it.

That was until this week. I got a craving. I know, a craving for Hamburger Helper? Yeah, it happened. What can I say? I know most people crave things that are much more distinguished than slop like this. Tomorrow I may very well be craving something much more hoity-toity but for now I'm running with the Helper.

I pulled up a search for "homemade cheeseburger Hamburger Helper" and they all came up. They're all very similar but I used this one from Food.com:

Homemade Cheeseburger Macaroni Hamburger Helper  

This is what I did differently:

-The most obvious, in my case, would be to swap out the regular pasta for gluten free. I used DeBoles Corn Pasta and it turned out quite well. I only cooked it for about 8 minutes instead of the suggested 12. It was tender at that point and I didn't want to risk over cooking it to the point where it completely disintegrated. I won't be buying this brand again though as there is no mention of it being GMO free on the box or their website.

-I used grass fed ground beef. Luckily, we have a store right in our city that sells this for a pretty reasonable price. I always have a few pounds in my freezer for main meal dishes similar to this or to make a few burger patties with. 

-I used organic cornstarch so that I could be sure that the corn was not from GMO sources. It is so hard to avoid food with GMO's in them so when I can, I grab every opportunity to buy ingredients that I know do not have them. 

That's pretty much it.  I didn't bother taking a picture of it. We all know what it looks like and we all know it's not pretty. I would like to encourage you to actually try this and I'm pretty sure any picture I could take would only do the opposite. 

So, if you are a proud Hamburger Helper lover, a closet Hamburger Helper lover or just a brave soul who is willing to give something new a try, give this a whirl. If someone presented this recipe to you as a one skillet dinner recipe with no knowledge of Hamburger Helper ever existing, it might not sound too bad, right? Maybe? Enjoy!