‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond’s Truffle Mac and Cheese Recipe Will ‘Blow Your Mind’

Ree Drummond elevates a standard mac and cheese recipe with the addition of truffles. The Pioneer Woman star said her “easy spin” on a classic comfort food will “blow your mind.”

Ree Drummond’s mac and cheese recipe is mind-blowing, according to the Food Network host

Drummond made the truffle mac and cheese recipe during an episode of The Pioneer Woman dedicated to “putting a super easy spin on pasta classics.”

She shared, “I’m gonna make four absolutely incredible pasta recipes today to celebrate all things noodle. Noodles are my favorite.”

Drummond added, “And I’m starting with an absolutely luxurious truffle mac and cheese that is decadent and wonderful and rich. And it’s gonna basically blow your mind.”

How to make her decadent macaroni and cheese

The steps for making Drummond’s macaroni and cheese are simple enough. First, she cooked and drained gemelli pasta and reserved some pasta water for the sauce.

Drummond added sliced onions, roasted garlic, and thyme leaves to a pot with melted butter and stirred it for a minute until the onions were soft. She sprinkled flour over the onions and stirred them for another minute, then added cream and pasta water.

“You could just add a broth but I didn’t want anything to compete with the delicious taste of the truffles, which is the special ingredient I told you about,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t been this excited about a pasta dish since yesterday.”

Drummond added mascarpone cheese, stirring the ingredients until the cheese melted and the sauce was bubbling.

Drummond added truffles, finished the cheese sauce, and baked the dish

Drummond shared some details about the “specialty ingredient” for her delicious dish. “They’re black truffles. This is like, a mail order or specialty culinary store situation,” she explained. “It’s not something that you can find in the supermarket aisle next to the pickles.”

“Truffles are like turbo-charged mushrooms, in terms of flavor,” Drummond noted. “Absolutely unique, wonderfully special. They can’t really be commercially produced so that’s why they’re on the expensive side.”

The Pioneer Woman star added grated truffles, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, white cheddar, and Havarti cheese to the pot and stirred everything together.

Drummond added the cooked pasta and explained why she undercooked it. “This is going to cook in the oven so I actually cooked the pasta until it was before the al dente stage,” she said. “It’s still pretty firm and that way in the oven, it won’t get too mushy.”

She poured half of the mac and cheese into a baking dish, added a layer of cheese, then added the remaining pasta and the remaining cheese.

“You could just make this and serve it straight out of the pan and not bake it, but I think the baked version is so pretty,” she said. Drummond baked it in a 375 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 minutes. She placed it under the broiler for a few minutes to brown the edges.

The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.