The Cookbook Project: Will My 3-Year-Old Eat This? Issue No. 2

mac + cheese with soubise 🧀

Apr 19, 2025

It’s not something that you see that often, especially outside of a French restaurant.

I’ve never learned how to make a proper French mother sauce. There are 5 of them — béchamel, espagnole, velouté, hollandaise, and sauce tomate — and they all come with variations. A soubise is a variation of béchamel. Béchamel = butter, flour, milk. What changes with the soubise? Onions.

I found this recipe for mac and cheese with soubise in a

Michael Ruhlman

cookbook aptly named Ruhlman’s Twenty. I got this cookbook on a self-Christmas shopping whim, bought it used on Amazon, and somehow I ended up with a signed copy!

(Yes, my husband and I buy Christmas gifts for ourselves. No, we do not wrap them and put them under the tree and act surprised at what Santa gave us. My grandmother apparently used to do this, which is the funniest thing ever to me.)

Even though Ruhlman admits that he makes some tweaks to the soubise by adding shallots and caramelizing the onions instead of blanching them, my heart was won over by his interpretation. We’ve never been much of a mac + cheese house. The boxed stuff is from a past era of naivety, and I’ve never actually been a huge fan of it anyway. Until now, I guess.

This recipe is fantastic — it elevates a ubiquitous meal, and makes you feel fancy AF making a variation on a French mother sauce. I cannot say enough good things about this mac + cheese.

Why did I pick this cookbook recipe?

As an “Expand Our Palate” recipe, it looked like a good one to make as a year-round recipe / become a potential staple — dairy, noodles, spices, and the only required produce are an onion and a shallot, which I don’t mind buying at the grocery store. If I can get them locally, great, but I do consider these ingredients to be just as ubiquitous as mac + cheese.

An added feature of this recipe which makes this incredibly appealing for the busy parent: the make-ahead feature. As I was making this for dinner on Thursday night, I read this little nugget:

“The pasta can be baked immediately or later in the day, or it can be covered and refrigerated up to 3 days before baking.”

A dream come true for the modern working parent who needs to fucking do it and have it all. I can assemble this sophisticated mac + cheese 3 days ahead, and do nothing more than bake it a little longer than the recipe originally calls for. AND my house smells like delicious caramelized onions for half a day? Nothing, and I cannot stress this enough, would make me happier.

Most importantly though: what did the 3-year-old think of this cookbook recipe? “This is so yummy, Mom. Thank you for making this, Mama.” My heart melts when I hear these words. I die.

MAC AND CHEESE WITH SOUBISE

Ingredients

5 ½ T butter
1 medium onion, sliced
kosher salt
1 large shallot, roughly chopped
3T all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups milk
2T white wine vinegar
3T dry vermouth
1T fish sauce
2 tsp dry mustard
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
⅛ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
⅛ tsp cayenne
⅛ tsp smoked paprika
12 oz macaroni, penne, or cellentani
3T butter, melted
1 pound Comté, Gruyère, Emmenthaler, Cheddar, or a combination of these cheeses, grated
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
½ cup panko bread crumbs

Directions

Find them here on Serious Eats. There are a few typos, but I think you’ll get through it.

Serve with a simple salad made up of hearty greens and an easy vinaigrette — my collard and kale classic does the trick 😘

Notes / Suggestions / My Adaptations

I would start boiling the water for pasta a little sooner than I did — probably when I start cooking the shallots
Preheat the oven when you start boiling the water.
I used 5 ½ T butter in the soubise instead of 4T to make up for the size of my onion and shallot (a slightly larger than ‘medium’ onion and a monster shallot)
I used 2T white wine vinegar instead of 1T because I misread the ingredient list and forgot to add it in before the blending step. It worked out just fine.
I used 6 ounces Gruyère, 6 oz Emmenthaler, and 4 ounces Cheddar
I used dry vermouth instead of sherry because we didn’t have sherry.
I did end up doing a low broil, with the baking dish on a rack in the middle of the oven for somewhere between 5-10 minutes. I’m assuming the suggested 15-20 minutes after uncovering is without the broil setting.
Don’t read the nutrition facts on Serious Eats.

SARAH’S SATURDAY FARMERS MARKET HAUL

Not as much meat this week, as we have enough leftovers and frozen meat to get us through the next week or so. But there are finally starter plants for our raised bed and herb box! An unplanned purchase, but I’m so ready to get these out in the garden once the weekend of rain is over ⛈️

April 19

produce: collard greens, baby chard, radishes, chives ($16) — salad turnips ($4)

protein: sage sausage links, 2 pounds ground beef patties, 3.5 pound pork shoulder ($72.49)

plants: snap peas, mint, oregano, rosemary, sungold cherry tomatoes, supersweet 100 cherry tomatoes, san marzano tomatoes ($42)

total spent = $134.49

$92.49 on food
$42 on plants for future food

other ingredients on hand, from last week or in freezer:

frozen protein: whole chicken, side of sockeye salmon, chicken livers, beef liver
produce: carrots, celery, bell peppers, cucumber, yellow onions, white onion, shallot, garlic, ginger, cilantro, lemons, limes
freezer ingredients: pestos from last year, chicken broth, tomato sauce, butter

potential meals, off the top of my dome:

savory millet with sage sausage, chives, cottage cheese, everything bagel seasoning
salad turnips with hummus (in fridge)
beans + greens over toast: using collards + baby chard, garnish with radishes (recipe coming at you next weekend)
crockpot carnitas taco / rice bowls
spaghetti + meatballs (sauce in freezer)
pesto salmon
roast chicken with saffron rice and sautéed gingery vegetables
chicken liver tacos / rice bowls

Follow my Substack Notes (on the app) to see how this week of recipes unfolds. And tune in next Saturday for another farmers market haul! This summer will be a challenge to see how much produce I can fit on my kitchen island 🙃

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here.

❤️Sarah

Lovingly Made

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