Snoop Dogg's Mac and Cheese

Published recipe

This one is different from most restaurant copycats, and it is worth saying up front: this recipe is published. Snoop Dogg released From Crook to Cook in 2018 through Chronicle Books, and the mac and cheese — titled "Mack & Cheese" in the book — is in it. It is not a secret being reverse-engineered.

So what follows is how the dish is built and why the choices in it work, not a guess at a hidden formula. If you want the exact wording and the full book, buy it — it is still in print.

What makes it different

Most baked mac and cheese recipes take one of two routes. Either a béchamel — a butter and flour roux with milk whisked in — or a custard, where eggs set the sauce in the oven.

This one goes a third way, and it is the reason people keep making it: it uses evaporated milk and a lot of cheese, with no roux at all. Evaporated milk has had roughly 60% of its water removed, so it is already concentrated and it resists splitting when it heats. That is what stops the sauce going grainy without any flour to stabilise it.

The other notable choice is the cheese blend. It is not all cheddar. There is mozzarella in it, which is what produces the pull when you lift a spoonful — and that is a texture decision, not a flavour one, because mozzarella brings very little taste.

What goes in it

The dish is built from:

• elbow macaroni, cooked just short of done
• evaporated milk — the structural choice described above
• eggs, beaten in
• butter
• sharp cheddar, the flavour backbone
• mozzarella, for the stretch
• seasoning — salt, pepper, and a little garlic and onion powder

The proportions are in the book. What is worth understanding is the ratio principle: this is a cheese-heavy, liquid-light mac. If it looks like too much cheese relative to the pasta, that is the recipe working as intended.

How it goes together

1. 1. Undercook the pasta. Two minutes short of the packet time. It finishes in the oven, and pasta cooked to done first comes out mushy after baking.
2. 2. Whisk the evaporated milk and eggs together before anything hot touches them. Beating the eggs into a warm mixture scrambles them.
3. 3. Melt the butter through the hot drained pasta, so every piece is coated before the sauce goes in.
4. 4. Fold in most of the cheese, keeping some back for the top.
5. 5. Pour the milk and egg mixture over, and stir until it is evenly distributed rather than sitting at the bottom.
6. 6. Top with the reserved cheese and bake until the top is browned and the centre is set — roughly 30–40 minutes at 175°C / 350°F.
7. 7. Rest it ten minutes before serving. Straight from the oven it runs.

Why people's versions fail

Grainy sauce. Almost always regular milk substituted for evaporated. Regular milk has far more water and splits at oven temperature without a roux to hold it.

Dry. Overbaked, or the pasta was fully cooked before it went in and absorbed the sauce. The dish should still look slightly loose when you pull it out.

Scrambled bits through it. The eggs met something hot before they were mixed in. Whisk them into the cold evaporated milk first, always.

No stretch. Pre-grated cheese. Bagged shredded cheese is coated in starch or cellulose to stop it clumping, and that coating prevents the melt. Grate it yourself — it makes more difference here than in almost any other dish.

Storing it

Four days covered in the fridge. Reheat with a splash of milk stirred through, covered, at a low temperature — the sauce tightens as it cools and needs the liquid back.

It freezes for three months but the texture suffers. Baked cheese sauces go slightly grainy through a freeze and thaw, and there is no fixing it afterwards.