The mac and cheese at Panera is ridiculous. I’ve only had it once, on a chilly evening in Baltimore on a dinner date with Val. The best way to describe it: A bowl of cheese sauce with some noodles in it.

Now, if you can stop drooling for a sec, I’ll tell you that I recently found the recipe online (Thanks Kho!). I followed the recipe EXACTLY. For those who know me well, you know how hard that was.

You can find the recipe here.

Now, I’ll tell you what I would do with this recipe next time.

1. You don’t need that much flour. Yes, you need to make a roux but not that much. I’d use 1/4 cup of flour only.

2. Add more milk. Ultimately, you need less flour and more milk because the sauce is just too thick. (Did I just say that?! Yes.) I actually ended up adding more milk than the recipe called for, and next time I would add even more. Probably about 3 1/2 cups. (Also, I used half 2% and half whole milk.)

3. No mustard! That mustard was all I could taste. Thommy said he didn’t taste it. So I’m leaving it out next time. (It may be because I used a “country” dijon, and we country folk like our mustards overpowering)

That’s it! Otherwise it’s a perfectly perfect recipe for mac and cheese. And the best part, it took more time for the water to boil and the pasta to cook then it did to make the sauce. Definitely getting a spot in the dinner rotations because of that.