Give Mac And Cheese An Italian Twist With This Easy-To-Use Food Item

Mac and cheese on its own is delicious — but, like most comfort foods, everyone has a few tweaks they like to add to match their preferences. If you like a bit of acidity but don't want to compromise on creaminess, vodka sauce adds an Italian twist with no more effort than scooping some from a container.

If you aren't inclined to cook some up from scratch, a store-bought jar is perfectly fine. However, you can split the difference and evolve a jar of regular marinara quite easily. A shortcut vodka sauce allows you to adjust the exact levels of alcohol and aromatics to your tastes while removing the need to watch a long-simmering pot of tomatoes. Even Giada de Laurentiis, a queen of Italian cooking, starts her vodka sauce with a store-bought base, adding a bit of cream, booze, and parmesan to create complex flavors in less than half an hour. Vodka sauce should impart plenty of brightness to cut through the starch and fat in mac and cheese, but it's also a great opportunity to add herbs and garlic from traditional tomato sauces.

While vodka sauce is already fairly creamy, you shouldn't ditch the rest of your mac and cheese's sauce — you want that luxurious thickness from a roux, after all. Luckily, pasta water is an amazing emulsifier and thickening agent, blending everything together into a delicious whole. Just add your desired amount of sauce and, if your mixture seems too thin, add a quarter cup of starchy pasta water and simmer until it's perfectly thick.

Vodka sauce mac and cheese should already be bright, creamy, and hearty, so you can either double down on these flavors or branch out and try new ones. The same ingredients that upgrade boxed mac and cheese work fantastically here, complementing your new flavors in novel ways to create a more exciting dish.

Blanched or boiled vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and green beans add a satisfying crunch to the mix, delivering a dichotomy of textures. On the other hand, softened greens like spinach and kale blend with the pasta to give you earthy, fresh flavors without much impact on texture. Pickled vegetables can give you the best of both worlds, upping your dish's saltiness and making it even brighter while still giving you the same crisp texture as fresh ones. You can even mix some of the brine into the vodka sauce directly.

If you want to lean into the heartiness of the dish, some crumbled Italian sausage or pancetta works great with cheese, vodka sauce, and pasta. For even better flavor, try browning them before you saute the aromatics or toast a roux for your sauce, giving you some Maillard action and infusing your mac and cheese with meatiness. It's also hard to go wrong with extra cheese, and the heavy, earthy notes of Gruyere and Bierkäse are great at balancing out the acidity of tomatoes.