Ina Garten’s Overnight Mac and Cheese Is a Total Game Changer

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you find yourself at a gathering with some of your best friends and the conversation turns to mac and cheese recipes, carpool lines, and youth sports. It happens when you are about 40, speaking from experience. Your wild days are over, and the craziest thing you’re trying is a bechamel-less mac and cheese.

You see, in my 20s and early 30s I wasn’t ready for a genius recipe like this. I was too young, carefree, and full of energy to take any kind of short cut in the kitchen. I needed to do everything the traditional way, the more intricate the recipe the better. Now I’m older, wiser, have three kids, and haven’t slept in eight years. It’s prime time for kitchen timesavers. Of course it helps when that short cut comes from my own personal culinary icon, Ina Garten. 

So if you are ready, allow me to introduce you to your new favorite recipe, Ina’s Overnight Mac and Cheese. 

The Brilliance of Ina Garten’s Overnight Mac and Cheese

As the name suggests, the genius of this recipe comes from an overnight rest in the fridge. The parcooked pasta sits in a mixture of heavy cream, grated cheddar cheese, and grated Gruyère cheese. As it sits, the pasta soaks up the cream creating a decadent sauce, no roux or bechamel required.

Before baking, you allow the mixture to sit at room temperature for about one hour, then transfer it to a buttered baking dish. It’s topped with a little more grated cheese and buttered breadcrumbs, then baked for just 25 to 30 minutes. The resulting casserole is incredibly rich and luscious. I would describe the texture as the perfect balance between a classic stovetop mac and cheese and a traditional baked version: truly the best of both worlds.

Now, you might be saying why not just assemble a classic bechamel-based mac and cheese in advance and bake it right before guests arrive? In my opinion, this never works out well because you end up having to bake the casserole for a very long time in order for it to heat all the way through. This can cause the cheese sauce to break, which is the worst case scenario when it comes to mac and cheese. 

How To Make This Overnight Mac and Cheese Your Own

To make the recipe even easier, I grated my cheese in a food processor and without cleaning the bowl, also processed some leftover bread into breadcrumbs for the topping. To up the flavor, I like to add some fresh herbs (think thyme, rosemary, or sage) into the breadcrumbs while toasting them in butter to add a little savoriness. As for the sauce, I spiked mine with a touch of Dijon and hot sauce to give the mac and cheese a bit more dimension. 

I love the combination of the Gruyère and sharp cheddar, but this is the perfect recipe to experiment with whatever odds and ends are laying around in your cheese drawer. You just want to make sure whatever cheese you use has a touch of sharpness in order to stand up to the hearty amount of heavy cream used in the recipe. 

Will I ever go back to making classic mac and cheese again? Talk to me when my last kid is in college.