Food Network Ruins Thanksgiving With ‘Ultimate Mac and Cheese’

On Monday, it looked like the NYT’s Brussels sprout sliders were vying for the title of Most Eye-roll Inducing Thanksgiving Recipe of 2017. But now, there is a new contender for the throne — and boy oh boy is it a doozy. Last week, the Food Network posted this clip of a recipe from The Kitchen where the co-hosts conspire to make an “ultimate mac and cheese.”

The recipe starts off pretty normal, by Food Network standards: Katie Lee makes a roux, adds some milk, tosses a little dijon mustard in there, seasons with salt, dumps in two kinds of cheese, and adds the cavatappi pasta. But at the 1:10 mark, things go off the rails when Nancy Fuller dumps in a sheet pan’s worth of roasted sprouts and winter squash. Geoffrey Zakarian is not here for this:

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And yet, improbably, the hosts think it’s wise to keep adding stuff to their mac and cheese monster. “Every great mac and cheese needs a crunchy top,” says Jeff Mauro. And in this recipe, that brown crown comes in the form of dried cornbread stuffing, applied by Valerie Bertinelli. The finished product looks like a cafeteria potato salad that’s going through a rough divorce.

This post spawned a hilarious and very active comment thread. Here are a few choice selections:

At press time, this video has been viewed over 4.4 million times and it has racked up over 3,000 “angry” emojis.

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