Macaroni and cheese with ham and carrot purée
- Preparation 40 min
- Cooking 1 h
- Servings 6
- Freezing Absolutely
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🥓 The best thing to do with leftover ham
There is always a chunk of ham left over after a holiday dinner, and nobody knows what to do with it on a Tuesday night. This is the answer. A baked mac and cheese casserole that feeds six, a three cheese sauce that coats every single elbow, smoked ham chopped fine through the whole thing, and a buttered panko crust that cracks under the spoon. The cheese stretches when you lift the first serving. You buy nothing special, you empty out the leftovers, and people ask for it again.
🥕 The carrot puree hiding in the sauce
I saw the idea on Pinterest: blend a carrot puree straight into the béchamel. It is an incredible idea, it adds a lot of flavour to the macaroni. The carrots boil until they are really tender, they go through an immersion blender with a bit of chicken broth, and the puree vanishes into the sauce. Nobody sees it. What you taste is a rounder sauce, faintly sweet at the finish, that stands up better to sharp cheddar. It is a hidden vegetable mac and cheese that nobody reads as one.
🧀 Three cheeses, a leek and a crust that cracks
Gruyere, sharp cheddar and mozzarella, because each one does a different job. And a leek instead of the usual yellow onion, sweated with the garlic before the roux goes in, which softens the base of the whole sauce. It makes six large servings in a 9 x 13 in. dish, lunches for the week, and it reheats without drying out. If this is your kind of thing, look at my beer mac and cheese and my zucchini mac and cheese.
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🥣 I rinse my pasta, and I mean to
Rinsing pasta under cold water is a crime in a lot of kitchens. I do it here anyway, as an exception, and there is a reason. The elbows come out of the water a full minute before al dente, the cold water stops the cooking dead, and they still have 30 more minutes in a hot sauce ahead of them. Skip the rinse and they keep cooking in their own heat while you build the sauce, then come out of the oven soft. If you want mushy pasta, don’t rinse.
The olive oil right after does the same job. Rinsed pasta glues itself together as it cools, and two tablespoons keep the elbows loose until you assemble.
🥕 Why the carrot puree works here
The carrots have to be genuinely tender, not just cooked through. If they still push back against a fork, the puree stays grainy and you feel it in the sauce. The half cup of chicken broth is only there to get the blender moving.
In my zucchini mac and cheese I do the exact opposite: the zucchini is grated and squeezed hard to pull the water out, and the sauce is thickened with cornstarch. Two vegetables, two opposite problems. Zucchini gives too much liquid, carrot gives almost none. That is why a butter and flour roux is the right call here, it absorbs enough to take the puree without breaking.
🥄 The sauce will look too thin
Off the heat it sits at about the consistency of heavy cream, which looks wrong for a casserole. It will definitely look a bit loose. The cheese fixes that: the three cheeses melt off the heat over two minutes of stirring and the sauce tightens while you work. Reduce it further before the cheese goes in and your casserole comes out dry after 30 minutes in the oven.
🧀 Block cheese, grated by hand
Pre-shredded cheese is coated in starch so it won’t clump, and that starch turns a béchamel grainy. I never buy pre-shredded, as a rule. Two minutes with a box grater and you’re done.
🔥 Broil if the crust stays pale
Thirty minutes at 350°F browns the panko without burning it. If the top is still pale, finish under the broiler for a few minutes and don’t walk away.
🥓 Making it filthier
It is already a rich macaroni, let’s be honest about that. But if you want to push it: crumbled cooked bacon in the sauce, smoked gouda in place of the mozzarella, and a splash of maple syrup poured into the béchamel along with the ham. It is always easy to add something to make this macaroni even richer.
As for broccoli, which half the ham mac and cheese recipes out there include by default: nothing stops you from blanching two cups and folding them in. I don’t put any. The carrot is the vegetable in this recipe.
⏱️ Make it ahead
In pieces, yes. The carrot puree can be made the day before and kept in the fridge. The panko mixture holds in a sealed container. The ham gets chopped and the cheese grated while the pasta water comes up to a boil. The fully assembled dish, though, is better going straight into the oven: the pasta drinks the sauce while it waits and you lose the creaminess.
✅ What to serve with my mac and cheese with ham?
A baked pasta in béchamel needs something acidic beside it, otherwise the whole plate tastes like fat. My white balsamic arugula salad does exactly that, the bitterness of the arugula against the melted cheese. A traditional Greek salad works just as well if you want crunch and feta. For hot vegetables, my grilled green beans with Dijon mustard cook while the casserole is in the oven, and my roasted garlic and maple carrots bring the carrot back to the plate, this time where you can see it.
Ingredients
- 2 cups (500 ml) carrots (3 medium), sliced
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) chicken broth
- 1 lb (454 g) macaroni
- 2 tbsp (30 ml). (30 ml) olive oil, plus a drizzle for the pan
- 1 cup (250 ml) panko breadcrumbs
- 2 tbsp (30 ml). (30 ml) butter, cut into small cubes
- 1 tsp (5 ml). (5 ml) paprika
- 1 tsp (5 ml). (5 ml) Italian spices
Ingredients for the cheesy sauce
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 leek (1 1/2 cups / 375 ml), finely chopped
- 1/4 cup (60 ml) butter
- 1/3 cup (80 ml) flour
- 3 1/2 cups (875 ml) milk
- 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml). (2.5 ml) mustard powder
- 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml). (2.5 ml) dried parsley
- 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml). (2.5 ml) Italian spices
- 1 1/2 cups (375 ml / 150 g) grated Gruyere cheese
- 1 1/2 cups (375 ml / 150 g) grated sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup (250 ml / 100 g) grated mozzarella cheese
- 2 cups (500 ml) cooked smoked ham, finely chopped
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Preparation
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
- In a pot of boiling salted water, cook carrots for about 15 minutes or until very tender. Drain and pour into a large bowl. Add chicken broth and purée with an immersion blender. Set aside.
- In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta 1 minute less than al dente according to package directions. Pour into a colander, rinse with cold water to stop cooking and drain well. Drizzle with 2 tbsp (30 ml). (30 ml) olive oil and toss to coat. Set aside.
- In a bowl, add panko, butter, paprika, Italian spices and salt and pepper. Mix well and break up the butter with your fingers. Set aside.
- In a large saucepan heated over medium heat, add a drizzle of olive oil and add the garlic and leek. Cook and stir for 3 to 4 minutes to soften.
- Add butter and melt. Add flour, mix to form a dough and continue cooking for 1 minute, stirring.
- Pour in 1 cup (250 ml) of milk and whisk away lumps. Pour in remaining milk followed by mustard powder, dried parsley and Italian spices. Season with salt and pepper and mix.
- Cook for 4 to 5 minutes to thicken slightly, to about the consistency of 35% cream. Remove from heat and add cheese, ham and carrot puree. Stir for 2 minutes to melt the cheese. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning if necessary. Add macaroni and mix.
- Pour into a large 9 x 13 in. (23 x 33 cm) baking dish and spread. Spread panko mixture on top, place in oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest for 5 minutes before serving!
It is one of the best things you can put in it. Ham is already cooked, already salted and already smoky, so it seasons the sauce from the inside instead of just sitting in it. The salt and the smoke cut through three cheeses and a béchamel, which is exactly what a rich casserole needs.
The one thing to watch is the cut. Trim the big pieces of fat before you chop, because they don’t render in 30 minutes in the oven and you find them later. And chop it fine, 2 cups (500 ml), so you get ham in every forkful rather than three big chunks in one corner of the dish.
Cured pork wins, and it is not close. Ham, bacon, smoked sausage and pulled pork all bring salt and smoke, which is what a heavy cheese sauce is missing on its own. Ham has the added advantage of being already cooked, so it costs you nothing in time.
Chicken works but disappears; it has no salt of its own and the sauce swallows it. Ground beef turns the dish into something else entirely, closer to a baked pasta casserole than a mac and cheese. If you want a middle ground, crumbled cooked bacon on top of the ham is the move.
That is the whole point of this recipe. Any cooked ham works: a holiday ham, a spiral ham, a smoked shoulder, whatever is sitting in the fridge on the third day. I use smoked ham myself, it gives the sauce the most character.
You need 2 cups (500 ml) finely chopped, roughly 350 to 400 g. If your ham was glazed with syrup or pineapple, taste the sauce before you salt it, it will need less. Looking for other ways to empty the leftovers? My ham and macaroni salad and my gnocchi gratin with smoked ham, broccoli and chorizo start from the same place.
Absolutely, and you freeze it after baking, not before. Let the dish cool completely, cut it into individual portions, wrap each one tightly and freeze. Portioned like that it thaws fast and you only reheat what you are eating.
Reheat in the oven. Cover a portion with foil at 350°F (180°C) until the centre is hot, then uncover for the last few minutes to bring the panko back. The microwave works if you are in a hurry, but the crust goes soft and the sauce is more likely to split.
You can. Blanch two cups (500 ml) of small florets for 2 minutes, drain them well and fold them in with the macaroni. Plenty of ham mac and cheese recipes do exactly that.
But it is not the same dish, and it is not what I do. Broccoli stays a separate object next to the pasta; the carrot disappears into the sauce and changes the flavour of everything. The carrot is the vegetable here. If you want both, keep the puree and add the broccoli on top.
It is a full meal on its own, so whatever you serve beside it is there to lighten things up. A sharp white balsamic arugula salad is what I reach for most, the acidity lets you breathe between bites of casserole. A traditional Greek salad plays the same role with more bite.
If you would rather have something hot, my grilled green beans with Dijon mustard or my roasted garlic and maple carrots hold their own without competing. Bread, honestly, is unnecessary: there is already pasta and a crust on the plate.
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