Mac and cheese is a dish that sounds easy to make, but it's kind of not. I remember watching an Alton Brown episode where he said that literal macaroni and cheese doesn't work because you also need to make a "glue" to ensure that the cheese smoothly coats the noodles. And the idea of making a roux and adding a sufficient amount of milk (to avoid soupiness) before stirring in another well portioned amount of cheese just doesn't sound appealing to me at all.
Then one of my friends (who made mac and cheese quite often for potlucks in college) told me her secret: noodles, cream of mushroom, cheese.
What??
Thank you, cream of mushroom soup, for handling all that roux-milk business for me. My ratio of 1 box (8 oz) pasta + 2 cans of cream of mushroom + 4 cups (16 oz) shredded cheese worked perfectly. It was also nice that the bag of shredded cheese cost the same as the block, so even less work was required!
