WHY WON’T MY MAC ’N’

CHEESE REHEAT?

Mac ’n’ cheese is notoriously bad for reheating.

Rather than a smooth, creamy sauce, you end up
with a grainy, curdled, broken, unappetizing mess.
It’s all the pasta’s fault. As we know, creating a
stable cheese sauce requires the careful balance of
fat to moisture, along with some emulsifying agents
to help keep that fat and water getting along nicely
together. Even though the pasta is completely
cooked when it goes into the sauce, it has such a
loose, sponge-like structure that it can continue to
absorb water as it sits overnight in the refrigerator.
This throws off the balance of the sauce, and the
result is a sauce with too much fat that breaks out
when you reheat it.
So is there a solution? Yes: just add back the
water, duh. I’ve found that the best thing to do is add
a few tablespoons of milk, which is essentially water
with a bit of fat and a few proteins and sugars mixed
in. The water content of the milk fixes the ratio,
while the proteins help ensure that the sauce gets re-
emulsified, as long as you stir while you reheat. Your
pasta will always be mushier than it was in the first
place, but sometimes mushy pasta can be a good
thing.