Lobster Mac & Cheese

February 20, 2017

Lobster macaroni & cheese is one of my guilty pleasures for comfort food. It has a velvety sauce that packs so much cheese flavour and large, juicy morsels of lobster that give it a sweet and savoury touch. Even though a lot of friends keep recommending places, I find that it's really difficult to find a place that makes a decent mac & cheese. I often encounter sad excuses of mac & cheese where the sauce is bland and curdled, mixed with mushy overcooked pasta. It took me a lot of different attempts, but learning how to make a proper béchamel sauce and using high quality cheese are necessary for creating mornay sauces that are stable (fat does not separate) and smooth. Here's my recipe for lobster mac & cheese that promises to be a crowd pleaser at your next pot luck dinner.

Lobster Mac & Cheese

Yield: 8 Servings | Preparation time: 15 Minutes | Cooking time: 45 Minutes

This recipe includes breadcrumbs as an optional topping, but I much prefer sprinkling some crushed Moon Cheese on top of the portion that I'm plating. Stronger, aged cheeses are used here but these can be easily substituted with your favourite cheeses. The lobster meat can be substituted with shrimp if you don't feel like splurging. You can include the lobster roe and tomalley into the mornay sauce to give it a richer flavour, but there have been some recent concerns over ingesting lobster tomalley. If you're finding that there's a lot of extra sauce, then just increase the amount of pasta. Like things a little spicy? Try adding diced pickled jalapeño peppers to the sauce for some zing!

Ingredients

Mornay Sauce

8 Slices of Bacon, diced
2 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
1 teaspoon Onion Powder
All Purpose Flour
2 Cups Whole Milk (3% fat content)
½ teaspoon Dry Mustard Powder
¼ teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
250g Aged Cheddar Cheese, shredded
250g Aged Gouda Cheese, shredded

Lobster Mac & Cheese

Preparation

Step 1: Steam the lobster until cooked and remove the meat from the shells, reserving the juice. Dice the lobster into desired sized pieces and set aside.
Step 2: Cook pasta in salted boiling water to al dente. Drain and set aside. Toss in a little bit of olive oil to prevent pasta from drying and sticking together while you're preparing the mornay sauce.
Step 3: Sauté bacon in a saucepan over medium heat until fully cooked. Remove the bacon but keep the bacon fat in the pan. Add butter and stir until melted. Stir in the onion powder and enough flour to create a roux. Keep stirring and cooking the roux until it is golden.
Step 4: Add the milk, remaining spices and worcestershire to the roux. Whisk the mixture, while cooking, until it is smooth. It will begin to thicken as it starts to simmer. Add the bacon back to the sauce and stir in the cheeses until it is melted and combined.
Step 5: Take the mornay sauce off the heat. Add the lobster meat, pasta and about 1 Tablespoon of the lobster juice to the sauce. Stir until everything is uniformly mixed.
Step 6: Transfer the lobster mac & cheese to a 2 quart casserole dish and serve. Optionally top with black truffle oil and breadcrumbs.