Creamy Mac and Cheese with Pesto Mushrooms: A Delicious Twist

Mac and cheese is a comfort food classic, who doesn't love a good mac and cheese?

Naturally our Mac and Cheese with a twist, will include mushrooms as a flavourful and healthy topping.
Creamy mac and cheese with pesto mushrooms! 

This recipe combines the traditional dish we all love with the fresh, umami hit from our home grown mushrooms. We used Chestnut mushrooms from our Grow your own chestnut mushroom kit

Ingredients You’ll Need

To whip up this delightful dish, gather the following ingredients, these will be rough as we don't need to be too perfect here:

Pasta: We used a blend of Macaroni (maccheroni) and Casarecce, we like the latter as it has more of a bite to it     when you cook al dente    

Mushrooms: 250g of fresh Chestnut mushrooms
Pesto: Basil pesto (store-bought or homemade)  

Olive Oil
Cheese: 200g of grated cheddar cheese (but you can get creative / flexible with this)
Butter: 30-50g for sautéing and extra richness
Milk: 250ml 
Flour: 2-5 tablespoons for thickening the cheese sauce  
Garlic: 2 cloves, minced, for that added punch
Salt and Pepper: To taste
Parmesan cheese: A sprinkle for that finishing touch
Panko Bread Crumb
Seasonings such as garlic powder, onion salt, msg, can be added to the mushrooms if you wish, Parsley to garnish.

Preparing the Perfect Pasta

Start by boiling a pot of salted water and cook your chosen pasta (in our case two...) according to the package instructions. You want it to be al dente, which means it should still have a bit of bite, 8-9 minutes should do it. While the pasta is cooking, we will begin on the the sauce.

Crafting a roux

Creating a roux, how to make a roux? this is an equal mix of butter and flour incorporated over heat in a pan, melt your butter slowly adding spoons of flour in and whisking until smooth, by the end of this you will have a golden and thick roux, ready for your next step.

Crafting the Cheesy Sauce

You will want to add around half of the milk then whisk to incorporate this into the mixture, once warm and able to melt the cheese, you will want to slowly add the cheese into the mixture, then eventually adding the rest of the milk, you can then move this off the heat and set aside, at this stage it is a good idea to pre heat your oven.

Bringing It All Together

Next comes the star of the show, the mushrooms, you'll want to Sautee these in a pan, alongside garlic and butter and salt, until somewhat crisp, add any other seasonings such as herbs or garlic puree at this stage also.

To make the pesto, we find shop bought is a bit thick straight out of the jar so it is best to dilute this with olive oil and a small amount of pasta water, just to make it slightly runnier, if you make it too runny you can add more pesto to it.

Once your pasta is cooked, you will want to strain, then combine your sauce into a saucepan with the sauce, you can usually reuse one of the currently used saucepans for this purpose. Once combined you can pour this delicious mixture into a baking dish.

Sprinkle a good amount of Panko breadcrumb over the top, along with any left over cheddar and parmesan cheese

You will want to pop this under the grill until golden brown, then remove to serve. You should portion out the Macaroni cheese, keeping the crisp topping in tact and crispy side up in the bowl. Take your garlic mushrooms and place onto the pasta, then drizzle your pesto sauce, garnish with Parsley and enjoy.

We hope you will enjoy making this mushroom mac and cheese recipe, the mushrooms make for a healthier alternatives to other toppings such as bacon. You can find more of our recipes for chestnut mushrooms here