Martha Stewart's One-Pot, 20-Minute Mac & Cheese Is Every Busy Parent's Dream Recipe

Diet & Food

Can you name something more comforting than a warm, creamy, ooey-gooey bowl on homemade mac and cheese on a cold winter night? It’s the ultimate comfort food and while there are countless different boxed mac and cheese products you could make, nothing will ever compare to homemade. The only downside to homemade is that sometimes it can be time-consuming and messy. First, there’s the pan you use to make your roux and cheese sauce, then the pot to boil the pasta in and finally, a glass baking dish to finish cooking the mac and cheese in the oven. That’s a lot of time and dishes for a weeknight family meal but thanks to the culinary queen herself, Martha Stewart, we now have a one-pot, 20-minute mac and cheese recipe that also adds a little bit of nutrition with the addition of broccoli.

“Some days call for a meal that soothes as much as it satisfies, and that’s when this 20-minute mac-and-cheese swoops in,” Stewart writes on Instagram. “Pasta and broccoli are cooked in the same pot, then drained and stirred together with reserved pasta water, cream cheese, butter, and Parmesan for the easiest sauce ever.”

So not only is the dish a total breeze in the cleanup department but it also only requires five ingredients?! A literal dream for busy parents.

We love that Stewart combines pasta water with cream cheese, butter and parmesan to skip over the whole roux-making part.

This recipe could also easily be customized to use whichever ingredients you have on hand. Leftover spinach? Toss it in. Kids hate broccoli? Swap it for carrots. No parm but have lots of cheddar? It would totally work! You could even make it extra hearty by adding prosciutto, chicken, ham or bacon.

Thanks, Martha, for giving us yet another delicious recipe to add to our dinner rotation.