Beer mac and cheese
- Preparation 25 min
- Cooking 45 min
- Servings 4 to 6
- Freezing Absolutely
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🧀 The mac and cheese I make on a Friday night
This is one of the strongest mac and cheese recipes on my site. It is expensive to make, and I am not going to pretend otherwise: six cups of grated cheese, mascarpone, pancetta. Worth every cent. Everyone who tastes it loses their mind over it.
I have seven macaroni recipes and this is the only one that is not family food. The others are tomato soup, ham, chili, zucchini. This one is what you cook on a Friday when friends are coming over. Saturday night food.
🧀 Four cheeses, and mascarpone doing the heavy lifting
Sharp cheddar, Swiss, fresh parmesan, mascarpone. Four, not three. The cheddar carries the flavor, the Swiss melts properly, the parmesan brings salt, and the mascarpone gives the sauce a richness milk alone will never deliver.
No roux, no béchamel anywhere in here. The sauce is thickened with cornstarch dissolved in cold water. I made it that way the first time and it worked, so it stayed.
🥓 The beer and the pancetta
A strong blonde beer on the lees, Belgian tripel style. There is no romantic story behind that choice. It is the beer I had in the fridge that day, and it stayed because it worked. It brings light bitterness and a malt backbone that stand up to six cups of cheese. A plain lager cannot.
The pancetta bakes on parchment paper until it snaps, then gets chopped and folded in. Salt and crunch, so the whole thing never turns soft on you.
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🧀 Six cups of cheese, grated by hand
Grating is the real work in this recipe. That is why the prep time says 25 minutes and not 10.
Buy blocks and grate them yourself. Bagged shredded cheese is coated with starch so it does not clump in the bag, and that same coating is what turns a sauce grainy.
🍻 The beer simmers ten minutes before any cheese goes in
This is the part nobody else does. The beer is not a deglaze here. It simmers on its own for a full ten minutes with the garlic, the shallots and the salted herbs before a single gram of cheese hits the pot. The alcohol cooks off, the volume drops, the flavor concentrates. Skip it and your sauce tastes like raw beer.
About those salted herbs: “herbes salées du Bas-du-Fleuve” are a Quebec pantry jar, herbs and vegetables packed in salt, and they are hard to find outside the province. A tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley and chives with a good pinch of salt would get you close. Go easy on salt elsewhere if you go that route.
🍝 Two thirds of the box time, then rinse
The pasta comes out at two thirds of the time on the package, not one minute less. It keeps cooking in the sauce and then spends twelve minutes in the oven.
I rinse it under cold water afterwards. Simple reason: I want it to stop cooking.
🥄 No roux, no béchamel
Cornstarch dissolved in cold water. That is the whole thickening step, and it saves you the twenty-five minute béchamel most recipes ask for.
📅 What you can do the day before
Grate the six cups of cheese the night before and keep them in a sealed container in the fridge. That is the painful part, and doing it ahead changes the whole evening.
The pancetta can bake the day before too. Out of the oven, chopped, set aside. The beer base also holds: reheat it gently the next day before the pasta goes in.
🧊 Three to four days in the fridge
Sealed container, three to four days. Up to three months in the freezer. Either way, reheat over low heat with a splash of milk to bring the sauce back.
✅ What to serve with my beer mac and cheese?
A sharp green salad with a good acidic dressing. Nothing else. The dish is rich enough that anything heavy beside it is one thing too many. Garlic bread if you want something to mop with, though the broiled crust already handles that.
If it is a Tuesday and you are feeding kids, this is the wrong recipe. Go to my baked mac and cheese with tomato soup, my macaroni and cheese with ham and carrot purée or my zucchini mac and cheese instead. And when you want something bigger, my chili mac and cheese carries it.
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Ingredients
- 10 thin slices of pancetta
- About 1 lb (450 to 500 g) of small shell pasta (or macaroni)
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) butter
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 2 big shallots, finely chopped
- 1 1/2 cup (375 ml) strong blonde beer on the lees, Belgian tripel style
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) “herbes salées du Bas-du-Fleuve”
- 2 cups (500 ml) strong cheddar, grated
- 2 cups (500 ml) Swiss cheese, grated
- 2 cups (500 ml) fresh parmesan, grated
- 1 1/2 cup (375 ml) hot milk
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) cornstarch, dissolved in 1/3 cup (100 ml) cold water
- The leaves of 5 sprigs of fresh thyme
- 10 oz (275 g) mascarpone cheese
- Ground pepper
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Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 400°F (205°C). Lay the pancetta slices on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes, until crispy. Chop and set aside.
- In salted boiling water, cook the pasta for about 2/3 of the time listed on the box. Rinse with cold water to stop the cooking, drain and set aside.
- In a large 6 L non-stick pot over medium heat, melt the butter, then add the garlic and shallots. Cook for 3 minutes, then add the beer along with the “herbes salées du Bas-du-Fleuve”. Simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add all the cheddar along with half of the Swiss and half of the parmesan. Keep the rest aside for the crust! Melt the cheese over medium heat, about 5-6 minutes.
- Throw in the pasta, the milk and the cornstarch mix, then stir well. If the cheese is not melted enough, raise the heat a little and keep cooking for 3 to 4 minutes. It will slowly mix together perfectly in the next steps.
- Add the thyme leaves along with the mascarpone and the pancetta. Season with pepper, then stir until smooth.
- Put everything in a big Pyrex baking dish and spread evenly. Cover with the rest of the cheese and bake for 12 minutes. Crank the heat to broil and cook until golden. Remove from the oven and let it rest 5 minutes before serving!
A strong blonde on the lees, Belgian tripel style, is what I use. It has enough malt and enough alcohol to survive six cups of cheese, and it leaves a light bitterness behind instead of disappearing.
The rule that matters: the darker the beer, the heavier the dish. A stout or a porter will take the plate somewhere roasty and bitter, and cheese does not always follow it there. Not an IPA. The hop bitterness climbs as the beer reduces and it ends up fighting the cheddar. An amber or a red ale sits comfortably in the middle.
Yes, but only if you cook it down first. Beer poured in and covered with cheese thirty seconds later tastes raw and slightly sour. Here it simmers ten minutes on its own, and what is left is malt, a little bitterness and a depth that milk cannot fake.
That is the honest answer. Beer is not a gimmick in this dish, it is the liquid the sauce is built on.
You can. Alcohol-free beer is the closest swap, since you keep the malty, faintly caramelized note and the ten minute simmer still works. Chicken or vegetable broth also works, but you lose the malt layer and you end up with a good classic mac and cheese rather than this one.
Evaporated milk gives you a softer, rounder sauce. That is a different dish, not this one.
Heat, almost every time. The cheese goes into the pot over medium heat, never into a liquid at a rolling boil. And the milk goes in hot, not straight from the fridge, because that temperature shock seizes the cheese instead of binding it.
The other culprit is bagged shredded cheese. The starch that keeps it loose in the bag does not melt, and it stays behind as grit in your sauce.
A green salad with a bright, acidic dressing. It cuts the fat without trying to compete. Garlic bread if you want to mop. That is it.
For a weeknight with kids at the table, look at my baked mac and cheese with tomato soup or my macaroni and cheese with ham and carrot purée instead. And if you want something heartier, my chili mac and cheese.
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