Fried mac 'n cheese

December 6, 2020 2:03 PM

There was one point last year where I took this book called Cook90 out from the library. It's about a challenge where you cook all the food you eat 90 days in a row. That's a lot of time. I didn't do that. I just got it because the recipes looked good.

One of the concepts in this book is something called "nextovers". Basically, you cook things, and then you use what you cook, to cook something else. I do this all the time, but I never came up with a fancy term for it.

Anyway, because I had a ridiculous amount of mac n cheese left, I figured I'd give it the "nextover" treatment. I really love ordering fried mac n cheese balls from restaurants, so why not try to make it myself? So, shortly after I made this mac n cheese, I went and cut it up into little cube things. Honestly, I should have cut them smaller, but this was already way more work than I wanted it to be.

I looked up fried mac n cheese ball recipes, and I found one on Damn Delicious. You literally take mac n cheese, roll it up in a ball, dip it in egg, coat it in breadcrumbs, and deep-fry it. Okay, that's barely a recipe, but whatever, let's try it. And I already have breadcrumbs because my aunt mailed me some!

I also figured I'd be kind of fancy and make my own marinara sauce. I have a lot of marinara sauce now.

I think this turned out...okay. I guess fried mac n cheese only tastes as good as the pre-fried version. If I try this again, I think I need to use flour as well. Dip it in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs.

Also, I don't think I quite know how to deep-fry things. I was just telling one of my friends how I don't bother putting a thermometer in the oil. I just kind of wait for the thing to be able to sizzle, and hope for the best.

I ended up overcooking the second batch. Oops. I made about 12 of these and that used up all the breadcrumbs I poured into my bowl. I still have a lot of mac n cheese, but I was staring at the weird looking cubes thinking "Okay, I need to stop."

Moral of the story: when you want mac n cheese, make a very small batch.