It Wasn’t Cheesy Enough for Me

Follow me as I take you through the steps of finding family tradition and baking mac and cheese

Click here for the ingredients and steps!

Baked mac and cheese has been an annual staple joke in the Black community when it comes to any social event. Whether it be a birthday party, graduation celebration, cookout, funeral, or Thanksgiving, no social event is complete if you don't have this on your menu.

The question is, why? 

It's essential to know the history of the food and its association specifically to one community. Still, it's important to me understanding why my family continues to live on with this association. I am not the voice of any community or the Black community; however, baked mac and cheese is important to me because it brings me back to the humble feelings I have regarding respecting family values and traditions.

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When I wanted to make baked mac and cheese for the first time, I called my mom. The day I called her was when I realized she didn't know how to make it. My mother didn't learn to bake this dish because she relied (and relies) on her mother (my grandmother) to make it. I knew that if my mom didn't know, this was something I could learn and take away from my grandmother.

As my grandmother, or as I call her, Mama, gets older in her age, things became and still do become harder for her to remember. Often, she can forget my birthday and even my name, but that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that once she's passed, will her knowledge come from being in the kitchen pass on?

Step 1: Take your blocked cheese and cut it into smaller, cube-shaped pieces. The reasoning for cutting the blocked cheese up is to help it melt faster and smoother in the milk. From there, feel free to grab any shredded cheese of your pleasing to make your macaroni smile as it gets cheesier.

I wanted something that I could remember forever and hold onto that she's known for, what my mom and her immediate family values her for. So, I reached out to my aunt—my mom's sister—who loves and cares for my grandmother.

She called to tell me the ingredients and steps needed to bake the mac and cheese, even though I asked her to text me. Frequently it's easy to text someone because then you have that message in a written form. You can copy and paste it, print it out, look back on it; however, some moments require being able to use other senses like sight, taste, touch, and hearing. My family taught me that food and voice work side by side. I taught myself that muscle memory and movement show a progression in myself and reflect how my grandmother was taught by her mother to bake this dish.

Step 2: Put a pot big enough to hold both the cheese mixture and elbow macaroni noodles and fill that in with the milk. For better and faster results in melting your cheese, fill a deep skillet with water (not too much water that it overflows) to put under the pot filled with milk and directly on the stovetop. Make sure the stove eye is on low so that the water can slowly heat up the mixture soon to be in it.

When the moment finally arrived for me to make the baked mac and cheese, I was ner-cited (nervous and excited). As I prepared myself to make this dish, I knew that I didn't want to write any instructions. I wanted this skill to become muscle memory, not a written one that could possibly be lost. With factors like translations, the meaning of a story or word can be changed, and things may become hard to follow. Listening to what you're told and taking action after (if required) is the best way to remember things, especially in my family. It's how my mom was taught to do something and how she taught me to do that as well. Plus, it's another reason I can use to call my aunt or grandma.

My aunt called me through FaceTime per my request now because this was the closest thing to face-to-face interaction we've had in a while due to being in a pandemic. Before I started cooking, we caught up with one another. In the middle of our Hey, girl, what's up's, my mother called, so I answered on my iPad, and we all had a three-way conversation. As I pulled out the ingredients needed for the mac and cheese, it was good to hear the background noise of my mother and her sister talking to one another.

Step 3: Whip up some eggs (maybe about 3, my family guesstimates how much to use often) and then add ¼ of a stick of butter. You'll then take your chopped-up cheese cubes and put them in your mixture of eggs and butter. The last ingredient to add to the mixture is cheese sauce. Make sure that it is not a powdered one but a cream-like one. (My Aunt suggested Kraft or Velveeta's cheese sauce.) Mix all of that together.

I've noticed for a while that they're closer to each other than the other three siblings they share. This may be due to them always being the go-to caretakers of my grandmother or possibly their frequent phone calls to one another. Seeing my mother interact with her sister helped me get a sense of my humor, and craziness developed as I became comfortable in my own skin. Whether in person or online, face-to-face interactions are crucial to upholding the traditions of my family, especially when it comes to visiting one another. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's a must to go visit outside of my immediate family. Any holiday, celebration. Or a random occasion, we know that it's dedicated to visiting family, specifically my grandmothers.

I only had limited interaction with one of my grandfathers before he heartbreakingly passed away. My mom used to tell me stories about how my grandfather would come home from work some days, and for all his stepchildren, he would buy them Krystal's (a version of White Castle to those who may not know what it is). Even though it's not a tradition to me or a close connectional value, it still showed the value and honor to my grandfather and how food holds memory and power in my family.

Step 4: Once you've finished mixing the eggs, butter, and all the cheeses, you'll then pour that all into the double boiler filled with milk. Make sure that there is more milk than the cheese mixture because that'll help it melt a bit better. From there, you can increase the heat of the stovetop eye. You want to make sure you use a rubber-type utensil to stir the mixture. Using metal could scratch up your pots. Wooden utensils will work too, but the cheese may stick to it. Make sure to stir it ever so often but don't stir it the whole time while it's melting.

Even if some people don't like or know about Krystal's, at least they know about and can never go wrong with baked mac and cheese. So, as I was on the phone with my aunt and my mother, my grandmother just happened to pass by in the background. 

With COVID-19 taking its reign over the world during 2020, I couldn't see my grandmother and eat her famous baked mac and cheese for the holidays and birthdays. When I had called my aunt the first time to tell her I wanted to learn the family recipe, she forgot to include an ingredient and a step. I had asked her if it was needed since all the Google recipes had it, but she wasn't sure. This reminded me of something I've learned in life and journalism: always find the original source. So when Mama passed by, my aunt held out her phone to her.

Step 5: Boil some water on another eye on the stovetop for the elbow noodles. (You can set the eye to high, medium, whatever your preference is in boiling water.) Add some salt to the water if you want to boil your water faster. Once the water is at a good boiling point, add in the amount of noodles you need for the cheese mixture. To make sure the noodles don't stick, add some butter before or after adding the noodles in and stir it up.

It's important to me that I have a strong relationship with my grandmother, but it's also important that what I learn from her can pass on to those I love and those I may build a family with. I'm happy that I can call her at any reasonable time and I can hear her voice. It just reminds me of the value voice has. After my grandfather's passing, I always saw my grandma—Mama Pearline—as the foundation of her family and my life. My grandmother was raised among five siblings, and during her first marriage, she had five children. My grandmother learned from her mother how to make baked mac and cheese (the one thing my mother didn't learn from hers, which I found odd), and the only way I found that out was through our constant communication.

Step 6: Don't cook your noodles all the way through. You are basically loosening the noodles up because they will cook to their full potential in the oven. Once your noodles have softened up a little from their harder shell, you'll take it off the eye (and turn the eye off, too) and strain all the water from the noodles. From there, you will pour the noodles into your now cheese in the double boiler.

It's an emotional tradition to be with the ones I love to reminisce on their legacy and tradition and how much I truly value them. The best way I can express that is through my love for baking and honoring their lessons passed unto me. Baked mac and cheese is a fan favorite, whether it be in my family or the Black community as a whole. It's soul food that ties our souls to those who cherish tradition and value. It becomes a tradition for family members to have baked mac and cheese at any celebration that involves food because it's one of the many things that unites us all. I wanted to learn to make this dish because I want to unite my family if the day comes that we may all move away from one another.

Step 7: Grab the pan size that fits the amount of mac and cheese you have and spray it all over with a nonstick spray. (If you have a nonstick pan, that's okay.) The last ingredient to add to the mixture is cheese sauce. Make sure that it is not a powdered one but a cream-like one. (My Aunt suggested Kraft or Velveeta's cheese sauce.) Mix all of that together. Pour your now mixture into the sprayed pan. For your tasting pleasures, feel free to pour a little mixture and add some shredded cheese on top before you pour more mixture into it. Before you put it in the oven, grab a more significant in width baking pan to sit the smaller one in. The reasoning for this is if the mac and cheese were to overflow, it falls into the pan instead of the oven.

As my first attempt at baking mac and cheese was in the oven, I didn't leave my aunt on the phone, but I stayed in conversation with my mother. I asked her if she heard anything my aunt said about the steps, and she said she didn't; she was serious in not wanting to learn. That made me serious in making sure that I get this right for my first time.

When the timer beeped on the stove, the baked mac and cheese were brown at the top (not burnt, but just right), and I immediately called my aunt back. She said it looked amazing and asked me how it tasted.

Step 8: Set your oven to 350 degrees and once it has preheated, add your pan of mac and cheese in the range. There is no specific amount of time to leave it in the oven. The most efficient way to see if the baked mac and cheese is done is to see it brown at the top. Once you do, your dish is ready. Feel free to take a knife or long utensil to stick through the mixture to see if the noodles have cooked all the way and that the cheese is cheesy.

The texture was nice, but I told her, "It wasn't cheesy enough for me."

I knew that my first time making it wouldn't be how my grandmother makes it, and I was okay with that. Over time, I will learn to make it like her or add my own unique way of doing it. This is something that, once I finally get it right all on my own, I can pass it down and continue a new tradition I want to build—to make sure that someone at least knows how to make mac and cheese like my grandmother.

For now, all I know is that this felt like my first genuine involvement with the secrets and values of my family. I learned something from someone who I view as the foundation of my family. Plus, why not learn to make baked mac and cheese?

It tastes really good.

Click here for the ingredients and steps!