Hi I’m Chef Keith Snow and welcome to my kitchen. I want to show all you parents out there how to make a healthy macaroni and cheese. As parents, we all know that it’s difficult to get our kids eat what we want them to eat. But it seems that most kids love macaroni and cheese. So, why not make a healthy macaroni and cheese it is very simple to do. I want to show you today exactly how to do that.

The first thing I want to point it out is that you have to use quality ingredients and that is one of the major differences between an unhealthy macaroni and cheese, typically the kind that comes from a box that has a lot of processed chemicals and a really good homemade kind is the quality of the cheese.

Now I am going to show you something that is really the key to it all is quality cheese. Now, let me show you the brands for the types that I am going to use here. This is a Gruyere cheese, it’s a swish cheese, cow’s milk cheese, very pungent. You would normally never see this in a macaroni and cheese but it is going to really deliver some great results. The other one is real farm house English Cheddar and this one thing that English cheese makers are known for is really good cheddar. As you could see, this is a white color. The reason cheddar cheese typically is orange because it is dyed with something called annatto seeds. It’s a natural dye, but cheddar cheese that’s not died will look similar to this and the English are very priced and well known for making super quality cheddar cheese.

Now this cheeses, I’ll admit, are a little expensive in the neighborhood of $15 a pound. But a little goes a long way, anything that you can do to improve the quality of the cheese is going to make it healthier. Also we have whole wheat elbows here. And when you add all of this delicious cheese sauce to it but I will show how to make, you cannot really tell that is whole wheat but it is got a lot more fiber and a lot more protein and definitely a good thing to use.

Last thing we are going to do on top when we were done I will show is to add some whole wheat bread crumbs and these I make myself just by putting whole wheat bread in the food processor, letting it whiz around, they’re not toasted. And these are great because they have quite a bit of fiber in them and an additional protein and it give a crunchy little texture on top which is important.

So let’s get started with our cheese here. We are going to take—what’s going to come out to a perfect half of cup when I grate it and you can see that it is slightly crumbly and that is because of aged cheese. The longer is the age, the dryer will become and also the sharper so it has more flavor. And then our Gruyere here, we are going to remove this outer rind which is not really edible, take our knife and then we will cut a good chunk of this. And these cheeses, I just took out of the refrigerator and I want them cold because they are easier to grate. If you going to eat cheese and maybe set out of cheese course I know that is totally different from this recipe but you wanted it to be at room temperature.

I actually visited the place where this cheese is made in Switzerland and they got beautiful Pasteurs and really nice quality milk, so this is an excellent cheese. So, let’s start grating. I will set this aside. Pretty simple, everyone has used the box grater before and this cheese, like I said, is kind of dry because it is has been ages, so it chunks up and falls off, that is perfect because this is going to be melted into a sauce.

I’m going to add cheddar right to the bowl there and now we’ll start with our Gruyere. And one thing that’s interesting is down here in Western North Carolina in the south, people know how to make good macaroni and cheese. So, I have got some camera men here who are promising me that their grandmother, or their aunt or whoever it might be, mix better macaroni and cheese in mind. But then they have never tasted it yet, so we will see in the end.

Okay, now we have our cheese all ready to go. We need to go over to the oven and I am going to show you how to make the sauce