Everyone gets a craving once in a while, whether it's for KFC's famous fried chicken, Dairy Queen's soft serve ice cream, or Starbucks' strawberry-acai refresher. Our first thought would be to go to the restaurant and order it - but did you ever consider trying to make it yourself? There are thousands of other people out there with the same cravings as you, and they're desperately trying to clone these recipes on a daily basis. "These people range from everyday hobbyists to professional chefs," and by working together they've come very close to replicating these famous restaurant dishes (Douglas, xii). In America's Most Wanted Recipes, chef Ron Douglas tested and tweaked hundreds recipes to taste just like the originals, with the help of cooking fanatics across the US.
Today I tried the copycat recipe of Boston Market's macaroni and cheese. I chose this recipe because I recently ate there with my family, and I ordered this dish. I figured that since I ate the original recipe recently, I'd be able to compare it with this recipe easily.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon minced onion
- 4 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 cups milk
| Ingredients (feat. my brother) |
- 1/4 cup cubed Cheddar cheese
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Pinch of pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
- 4 ounces elbow pasta, cooked al dente
(Douglas, 36)
Instructions
| Cubed Cheeses & Sauce |
1. Sauté the onion in the butter until translucent.
2. Stir in the flour and cook for two minutes.
3. Slowly stir in the milk.
4. Stir in the cheesed, salt, pepper, and mustard.
5. Continue to stir over medium heat until thickened.
6. Stir in prepared macaroni
(Optional)
7. Preheat oven to 400°F
8. Lightly butter casserole dish and pour the pasta mixture into the dish.
9. Bake for 20 minutes
(Douglas, 36)
I didn't do the optional steps, because my family doesn't like casserole-style mac and cheese.
| Finished Mac & Cheese |
In the end, the macaroni and cheese turned out very well, and tasted just like the one I got at Boston Market! The only difference was that the sauce I made was more rich than the one at the restaurant, but I can fix that next time by adding less flour. I was honestly very surprised, because I didn't expect the copycat recipe to be so similar to the original dish. If you were to choose a dish from your favorite restaurant to copy, what would it be?
Douglas, Ron. America's Most Wanted Recipes: Delicious Recipes from Your Family's Favorite Restaurants. 1st ed. New York N.Y.: Atria Paperback, 2009. Print.
Hi Sage. I really enjoyed reading about how you managed to almost exactly copy a restaurant recipe! If I were to try copying a restaurant item, it would probably be the Old Spaghetti Factory's "Creamy Pesto" dressing (even though that's not a full dish). That is because I would never have thought of using pesto as a salad dressing before, and it's delicious. When you recreated this macaroni and cheese dish, did you find that it was original in any way? Also, in my experience, baking macaroni in a casserole dish makes it taste less rich because some of the excess moisture from the "crust" gets vaporized. Do you think that not baking your macaroni could've been a factor in making it taste richer than the restaurant's?
ReplyDeleteHey Emily! Thank you so much for your input on baking the macaroni in a casserole dish! I definitely think doing that would make a difference in how rich the sauce is. I found this dish to be partially original because of the dry mustard the recipe included. The mustard gave the macaroni flavor a bit of a twang, which was actually what reminded me of the restaurant macaroni's flavor when I first tasted my recreation. Thank you for visiting my bog!
DeleteHi Sage. I really liked your take on how your bettering your cooking skills. By first finding a meal you like and just had then finding the copy cat meal of it. But if I were to recreate a restaurant meal it would have to be a burger from a small restaurant by my grandparent's house. This is because every time we go there I'm always craving the burger they make and I'd love to be able to recreate that experience a my own home. Also I have a small suggestion is maybe if when you try and do a copy cat meal think of a way you could personally improve it as like a small challenge and experiment. That way you could see if you cold personally make the meal better.
ReplyDeleteHi Sage,
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed with how you copied the recipe of an item in a restaurant! That's really creative! If I were to copy a dish from a restaurant, it would be the macaroni and cheese from Panera Bread. I think they have the best mac and cheese, it would be awesome to copy.