This Cheeseburger Macaroni dish is quick, easy, and loaded with nostalgia! Using real cheese and milk will elevate it to a household favorite!
Back to my childhood
When I was a kid, my parents were always on the go. My brother and I were both very active in sports. I was also active in drama, academic team, and show choir. So, needless to say, life was incredibly busy. This prompted many nights of meals out of a box. "Helper" meals were a very common occurrence.
So, as an adult, I still pine for this meal. It definitely reminds me of "days gone by," and it's something that I want to share with my kids. But, now that I create these recipes and write this food blog, I feel like maybe I should really make a "Helper" meal from fresh ingredients that tastes and feels better than anything you can get out of a box. That's where the inspiration for this recipe came from.
How it's made
I started coming up with this recipe when I was making biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Essentially, a cheese sauce is the next step up from gravy. You're making a roux every time you make sausage gravy, and that's the base of a good cheese (or basic mornay) sauce. So, we're going to do the same here!
We're going to start, though, by sauteing some onions in olive oil and then add some garlic. This is going to add some much needed flavor to our ground beef. Once that is done, we'll brown the ground beef and drain some of the fat off, but not all of it! We need that fat to complete the roux!
Build the Roux, Make the Sauce
So, here's where it gets fun. We're going to build the roux by throwing AP flour right on top of the ground beef mixture and cooking it for three or four minutes to cook the flour smell/taste out of the combined roux. Once it has turned slightly brown and coated the ground beef thoroughly, we add in the room temperature milk and cook until it thickens. Congrats, you've made a modified bechamel sauce!
Cheese! We need cheese over here!
Traditionally, mac and cheese is made with cheddar cheese. Fancy mac and be made with cheeses like Gruyere and Parmesan or Raclette. And that's all well and good, (and DELICIOUS I might add!) but this is a quick "Helper" style dinner, so we're going to stick to tradition and use cheddar.
But not just any kind of cheddar. I always recommend grating your own cheese. That's what I'm recommending here as well. You can use bagged shredded cheddar for this dish. It will probably still come out, but it will be thicker and not as creamy. The reason for this is the use of ingredients like cellulose powder used in bagged shredded cheese that keeps the cheese from sticking together. That stuff is made from cotton and wood pulp! So, I always grate my own cheddar for these dishes. I use a combination of mild and sharp cheddar because an overly sharp cheddar cheese sauce leaves a bitter after taste in my mouth, and the last thing we want is something unappetizing for dinner!
Wrapping it up
After we add the cheese and melt it in the sauce, we're almost done! We're going to mix in our pasta of choice. In the pictures I use rotini pasta, but you could use traditional elbow macaroni or even penne or other short pastas. I'd avoid long pastas here because you're making mac and cheese and not alfredo. You can server this alone, or with a small side salad. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! If you ate "Helper" meals as a kid, let me know how this compares to your memories!
Better than Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni
Ingredients
- 16 oz dry short pasta
- 2 lbs. ground beef
- 1 medium onion – diced
- 3 cloves of garlic – minced or crushed
- 1 cup All Purpose Flour
- 5 cups milk – room temperature
- 1 ½ cups grated mild cheddar cheese
- 1 ½ cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon ground mustard
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Water for cooking pasta
Instructions
- In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta until al dente
- In a large high sided skillet or saucepan, heat olive oil over medium high heat
- Add in onion and cook until translucent and soft about 5-6 minutes
- Add in garlic and cook until fragrant no longer than a minute
- Add ground beef and brown. Add in salt and pepper to taste to give the meat flavor
- Once the meat is cooked through and browned, drain some of the fat leaving behind about 2 tbsp
- Slowly add flour until fat is absorbed and meat is coated. Cook for about 5 minutes until flour is cooked through
- Very slowly add room temperature milk mixing into meat mixture. Once all milk is added, simmer until mixture is thickened
- While simmering, add in ground mustard and nutmeg
- Once mixture is thickened and creamy, stir in cheese until melted
- Stir in cooked pasta. Salt and Pepper to taste. Serve immediately.
Cristina says
This recipe came out so good that I called our neighbors over to enjoy the leftovers! I added an extra clove of garlic as well as garlic powder and extra salt & pepper to taste at the end but otherwise followed the recipe exactly as stated. It was super easy to make and everyone who tried it loved it! Thanks, Trav! We can’t wait to try the next recipe!
Phil says
This stuff is good and I'm already familiar with making a roux, so the rest is easy. I often use ground turkey with this and it still turns out great.
Scott says
I need to hear from someone that remembers how Hamburger helper cheeseburger used to tase in the 70's/80's before they ruined the recipe if this taste exactly like that?!
Travis says
Scott, I'm a child of the 80's and I remember the old school helper cheeseburger Mac. I'm telling you now, it's like that but even better! You won't be disappointed!