Simply the best truffle mac and cheese recipe! The luxurious cheese sauce is flavored with wine reduction and white truffle oil, but comes together quickly and easily as there is no roux required! If you love classic comfort food dishes with a twist, this truffle macaroni and cheese will be a firm favorite.
Last week we celebrated my 30th birthday with a weekend in Paris and then back in London for a good old fashioned knees up. Then, having finally recovered from all the celebrations, I cooked my first meal as a 30-year old. Truffle macaroni and cheese.
Being 30, I really ought to have moved on from my lifelong belief that macaroni and cheese with mashed potatoes on the side is the perfect meal.
And yet I haven’t.
But I have managed to 1) replace the mashed potatoes with a side salad, albeit begrudgingly and 2) experiment with more sophisticated interpretations of the beloved macaroni and cheese. I’ve tried it with butternut squash, with avocado, with veggies, with brown macaroni, I’ve tried it vegan.
But macaroni and cheese with truffle oil was always going to be the winner. So when I found Heston Blumenthal’s recipe, which not only used truffle oil but also a lot of wine, I knew it was perfect for this occasion.
But to make this vegetarian friendly, I adapted the recipe by subbing veggie stock for chicken, and I used a mature cheddar cheese instead of parmesan (which always contains animal rennet).
This is actually a pretty flexible recipe- you could try it with all sort of cheese and wine combos, and even if you don’t have truffle oil its a pretty fine sauce without it.
And now lets toast to adulthood, where you get to eat the same comforting food but with wine and expensive oils mixed in. Happy days!
Heston's Truffle Macaroni & Cheese
Ingredients
- 160 g (1.3 cups) macaroni
- 125 ml (0.5 cup) dry white wine
- 300 ml (1.25 cups) vegetable stock
- 40 g (0.5 cup) grated cheddar cheese , the strongest you can get your hands on- if you are doubting the strength of your cheddar, add another handful to the mix to boost the flavour
- 1 Tbsp flour
- 70 g (0.5 cup) 1/2 cup cream cheese
- 1 tsp truffle oil, you may want more if your oil isn't super potent
- Black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Reduce your white wine in a saucepan by boiling it without a lid for 5 to 10 minutes, until there's about half as much as you started with and its thick and a bit more syrupy. It's a fairly potent small so open a window!
- While your wine is reducing, toss together the flour and the cheddar cheese so the cheese is all coated in flour. This prevents the flour from clumping up, without needing to make a roux.
- Take the wine off the heat and add the vegetable stock. Bring to a simmer.
- This is the fun part! Throw the cheese/flour mix into the wine/stock, and whisk it all together as it thickens and melts.
- Now add the cream cheese and stir in as it melts... And you have yourself a cheese sauce.
- Cook the macaroni according to package instructions, while keeping your sauce warm.
- Quickly whisk your truffle oil into the cheese sauce, and then pour over the cooked the macaroni. Grind lots of black pepper in.
- You could bake this or not- I chose not. The sauce is deliciously creamy and slurpy, so eating it immediately felt like the right thing to do.
Hi there. The current Food on Friday on Carole's Chatter is all about favourite foods from childhood. I do hope you link this lovely one in. This is the <a href="http://caroleschatter.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/Childhood-favourite-foods-recipe-links-Food-Friday.html#" rel="nofollow"> link </a>. Please do pop back to check out some of the other links – there are a lot of good ones already.
Thanks Carole! I have submitted the link- what a nice idea! Thanks for stopping by.
I just made this! We used Edam cheese and a Cantabrian soft cream cheese. I made mushrooms and leeks to go with it. Yummy!
Sounds delicious! Edam is one of my favourite cheeses!
Christine, thank you for linking this in to Food on Friday. We are now getting a super collection of dishes we loved as kids together. I hope you have stopped by some of the other links to check them out! <br /><br />Ps I have just signed up to follow your blog. A follow back to Carole's Chatter would be wonderful – or have you already followed? Cheers<br />
Mmmm, this sounds amazing! I'm a mac and cheese fiend, and your version sounds absolutely heavenly. I mean, truffle oil and wine make everything better! Pinned!
Agreed! I cant think of a single dish where that wouldn't apply! 🙂
Just made this for dinner and it was absolutely delicious! My hubby was licking the bowl so I think he liked it too. Thank you for the recipe!
So glad you liked it! Thanks for stopping by!
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YUM. love this recipe… your mac n cheese looks divine! definitely a recipe i will be recreating, thanks Christine for sharing!
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This is a great recipe! I’ve made it several times; the first time I was a bit nervous because my cooking skills are pretty much stuck at the ‘basic’ level, and this looked a bit complicated. However, it turned out to be much easier than it looked, and very delicious! Served with a couple of vegetable sides, it’s a complete meal (I like broccoli, asparagus, or leeks the best).