Cheesy but easy: Learn how to make Ina Garten’s Overnight Mac and Cheese

November 02, 2022
Entertainment

Ina Garten.

The Food Network host and cookbook author has posed them plenty of times on her cooking segments while demonstrating a recipe or cooking technique. Garten not only makes things look effortless but also shows you how and why they’re easy.

But all that aside, even the much-loved and trusted Garten “sometimes finds cooking stressful,” she reveals in her latest cookbook, “Go-to Dinners” (Clarkson Potter, out now). It features uncomplicated dishes that make dinner a breeze.

The collection was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led Garten to rethink how she approached dinner. That rethinking led to some easy-to-prepare dishes, many of which you can make ahead and freeze. There’s even a recipe for Hot Dogs in Puff Pastry and Hasselback Kielbasa. “The pandemic has had a huge impact on what I think of as dinner,” Garten writes, “and what I look for in ‘go-to’ recipes.”

Culinary fairy godmother Ina Garten wrote a cookbook for real life

Forget dinner rolls for Thanksgiving.:Serve Ina Garten’s brown butter skillet cornbread instead.

Overnight Mac and Cheese

Serves: 6 / Prep time: 20 minutes (plus overnight refrigerator time) / Total time: 1 hour

This mac-and-cheese recipe is a perfect prep-ahead dish. The pasta is undercooked and mixed with all the cream and cheese ingredients and then refrigerated overnight. This step skips the need to make a roux as the pasta absorbs the cream mixture and expands.