Pumpkin, Sage and Brown Butter Macaroni Cheese

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Jasmine

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I love mac ‘n’ cheese and I love putting new spins on classic recipes, and today I’m sharing possibly my all-time favourite iteration of this dish…

INGREDIENTS

Dried pasta:

Casarecce (or any other similar pasta shape)

Sauce base:

Butter

Shallot

Garlic

Flour

Whole milk

Cheddar cheese (for flavour)

Italian hard cheese (parmesan works if you don’t mind animal rennet – otherwise any fully- vegetarian version)

Comté or Gruyère (or an animal rennet free semi-hard alternative, to add that melt)

The added extras:

Pumpkin purée (I made mine fresh with the method included below, but you can use a canned version)

Nutmeg

Topping:

Buffalo mozzarella (non-DOP if avoiding animal rennet, or another type of mozzarella)

Fresh sage

Flaky salt

Panko breadcrumbs (they crisp without burning more effectively than other breadcrumbs)

Cayenne pepper

Some of the butter

TIPS

This is a pretty simple recipe but there are two elements that require some technique.

First is browning the butter; this is pretty straightforward but you need to just make sure the heat isn’t too high, that you’re supervising it (rather than prepping the next step!) and that you don’t allow it to burn. Simply melt the butter over a medium heat in a pan and wait until you see bubbling foam to appear. Swirl around the pan carefully every 30 seconds until you start to see little browned dots. The butter will begin to fully foam and this is a sign that it’s ready. The whole process should take no longer than around 7 minutes.

The other element I wanted to mention is making your own pumpkin purée; you can see a more detailed account of this in my pumpkin soup recipe, but in short: simply cut the pumpkin in half and use a spoon to remove the seeds (save these to bake / dry out and use for granola or other recipes, if you like) and pierce the inside flesh and outer skin with a fork (try to distribute these as evenly as possible and pierce at least 5 times on each side of each half). I simply season the pumpkin with salt and pepper and drizzle over some olive oil. You then need to bake the pumpkin in the oven at around 180 for 25-30 minutes. Once it has cooled a little and it’s cooked through, you should be able to easily spoon out the flesh. Add this to a food processor and blend until smooth. From a medium pumpkin, you’ll still have plenty of purée to make a soup or two!

I always give this advice for baked cheesy things, but I’ll give it again here: don’t ignore my advice with the foil trick! I always recommend covering your dish with foil for your initial oven bake so you don’t lose too much moisture and everything is nicely cooked through. Then, remove the foil and switch to your oven’s grill setting for 7-10 minutes at the end for that extra crisp. Works every time!

Pumpkin, Sage and Brown Butter Macaroni Cheese

  • Servings: 4
  • Difficulty: Easy
  • Print

An autumnal take on Mac 'n' Cheese

No special equipment or advance prep needed.

Ingredients

  • 250g of Casarecce (or similar)
  • 60g of butter
  • 1 shallot (finely chopped)
  • 3 cloves of garlic (crushed)
  • 1/2 tsp of nutmeg
  • 35g of flour
  • 1/2 a cup of pumpkin purée (homemade method above)
  • 1/2 a pint of whole milk
  • 50g of cheddar cheese (grated)
  • 50g of Italian hard cheese (finely grated)
  • 50g of Comté or another semi-hard cheese (grated)
  • 1/2 a tsp of cayenne pepper
  • 2 tbsp of panko breadcrumbs
  • 100g of mozzarella (slice if not already in pearl form)
  • 6 leaves of fresh sage (chopped)
  • 1 tsp of flaky sea salt
  • Salt and pepper for seasoning

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C and boil the kettle
  2. In a large, wide-based pan, melt the butter over a medium heat
  3. Bring the water to a rolling boil in a second saucepan, salt the water and then add the pasta – cook until just shy of al dente, drain and set aside (ensure you reserve some of the pasta water)
  4. Once the butter is melted and foaming / bubbling, carefully swirl it around in the pan; repeat this every 30 seconds until brown dots begin to appear and the butter foams (this process should take no longer than 7 minutes)
  5. Take 1 tablespoon of the brown butter and add to a heatproof bowl, add in the panko breadcrumbs, flaky salt, cayenne pepper and mix to get your crumb topping
  6. Add the shallot and garlic to the brown butter in the saucepan and cook for a couple of minutes until fragrant
  7. Add the nutmeg
  8. Add in the flour and whisk together
  9. Reduce the heat slightly to low-medium and begin gradually adding in the milk in small batches, whisking in-between each batch so its integrated with the roux
  10. Reduce the heat slightly to low-medium and begin gradually adding in the milk in small batches, whisking in-between each batch so its integrated with the roux
  11. Add in the pumpkin purée and continue whisking
  12. Season to taste – take care not to overdo it given the pasta water is salted, the pumpkin may be seasoned too and note there’s a salted breadcrumb
  13. Turn off the heat and add in the pasta and 2/3s of the cheese mix, stir and cook until the cheese is melted
  14. If your sauce is looking a bit separated, you can bring all the elements together by adding a ladle of pasta water and stirring until you’ve emulsified everything
  15. Add the mixture to an oven dish and sprinkle over the remaining cheese mix
  16. Add your pieces of mozzarella (ensuring that when it melts it will cover most of the top of the pasta)
  17. Sprinkle over the cayenne and brown butter crumb
  18. Add your sage leaves over the top
  19. Cover the oven dish with foil and bake for around 20-25 minutes
  20. Remove the foil
  21. Switch to the grill setting on your oven (at a medium temperature) and cook the macaroni cheese under it for a further 10 minutes until the topping is golden and once it cools a little, it’s ready to serve

Let me know if you try this seasonal macaroni cheese recipe!

You can also check out my step by step video of this recipe here:

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