Does anyone have any CHICKPEA mac n cheese make-ahead hacks?
October 27, 2024 4:26 AM   Subscribe

How do I avoid ending up with gummy sauceless pasta after a few days in the fridge/freezer?

I'm throwing a party next weekend - a Diwali/Halloween bash. For the Halloween side of the table one of the things I'm making is a "green goop" i.e. mac n cheese with ground up spinach to make it look green. To accommodate a couple of gluten-free guests, I've decided to make this with chickpea pasta, specifically Banza chickpea shells.

Given how much I need to prep for the party, I want to make this dish either tonight or tomorrow, and either refrigerate or freeze until Saturday.

When I defrost/reheat the dish for the party, I would like to ensure that the dish doesn't turn out gummy and congealed! I'd love it if it were in fact the consistency of green goo. This means I dont want all the sauce to get absorbed and I don't want the pasta to disintegrate.

How can I make this happen?? Every time I've frozen homemade mac (admittedly never chickpea pasta just regular), all the sauce has been absorbed, and while it's still delicious after reheating in the oven, I always end up wishing it was saucier.

Any tips for me?
posted by MiraK to Food & Drink (16 answers total)
 
Are you doing a baked or stove-top mac n cheese? I love baked, but stove-top is more adaptable. You could make the sauce and noodles separately now, and then just reheat and assemble the day of.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:38 AM on October 27, 2024 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: I was hoping to do it baked. But perhaps stovetop would actually make it easier for the green to stay and look green too.

Does anyone know if chickpea shells (small) reheat well? Has anyone made it ahead and reheated later? Did it retain texture and shape?
posted by MiraK at 5:28 AM on October 27, 2024


for the cheese, have you experimented with different ingredients? pourable mozzarella [miyoko], et cetera [freefromharm]

edit: chickpeas specifically, i've frozen [postpunk:] cutlets & they hold together well, though that might be the ingredient combo?
posted by HearHere at 5:42 AM on October 27, 2024


Best answer: I would make the sauce ahead of time and boil the noodles as close to serving as possible. Gluten-free noodles just go gummy, in my experience. I make mac n cheese all the time and it's great the first day and the second day I kind of have to cut the brick into slices to eat it.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:48 AM on October 27, 2024 [17 favorites]


I've made regular mac and cheese and frozen it, and then baked in the oven using the approach from Chris Nuttall-Smith's book "Cook it Wild". This is a camping specific book, but I liked the approach and have used it since if I want to freeze a mac and cheese in advance. The key features are under cooking the noodles by 2-3 minutes, having a bananas amount of sauce. It should just look far to saucy, because the liquid in the sauce will finish cooking the noodles when you bake it in the oven. Unfortunately I cannot comment on using this approach with gf chickpea noodles, I have not made this recipe with any gf noodle. When I do need to cook gf pasta, I only use the Rummo brand now, because it is impressively like regular pasta.
posted by ice-cream forever at 6:39 AM on October 27, 2024 [1 favorite]


We use Banza all the time but unfortunately I must report it doesn’t work as well for leftovers/ consuming after the first day as wheat pasta. I wonder if you could put the plain cooked pasta into one or more rectangular baking dishes, pour the sauce over the top but do not mix, and immediately freeze. Then you could do the mixing at reheating time. I haven’t tried this but it seems more promising than leaving it sitting in the sauce.
posted by staggernation at 6:47 AM on October 27, 2024 [3 favorites]


Best answer: My experience is that if you make the banza ahead of time it will 100% be gummy. Sorry.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 6:57 AM on October 27, 2024 [7 favorites]


This might not work for your culture but personally I'd just use whole chickpeas instead of chickpea pasta. Much better texture, and a flavor that won't disrupt anything.
posted by trig at 7:28 AM on October 27, 2024 [4 favorites]


Banza is tricky. Its texture is pasta-like for a relatively short window, unfortunately. Could you use beans or chopped cauliflower or other vegetables in the sauce instead? Or rice macaroni? That can get really soft if it sits in sauce for a long time but I find that the texture is more tolerable than the gumminess of Banza.
posted by corey flood at 7:48 AM on October 27, 2024 [2 favorites]


Are you open to other gluten free pastas? I’ve been GF for 15 years so I’ve had occasion to taste the gamut of gluten free pastas and in my experience they all get soggy…. Except for the ones that are made entirely of corn.

There’s a lot of corn brands available, I don’t know where you live but here in Canada the store brand PC ones are corn as are the store brand Asda and Sainsbury’s ones in the UK. There’s an Italian brand, Rummo, that makes a truly phenomenal corn version of their pastas, it’s more expensive but also super super good if you can find it.

Corn pastas get dry, not gummy, when they’re cooled and stored. Then they soften again when reheated.
posted by cabbage raccoon at 8:20 AM on October 27, 2024 [3 favorites]


Riffing on corey flood's suggestion, one vegetable that would make a very good replacement for pasta is blanched celeriac. You'd have to julienne it, and that would be a pretty overwhelming job if you don't have a mandolin or a food-processor that can do it. But the texture and taste would be great, and it won't go gummy.

Cut the celeriac into matchsticks (as you work, throw the finished matchsticks into water with some lemon juice or vinegar to avoid browning) and then blanch them in boiling salted water until they are al dente and the taste is milder. It's less than a minute as I remember it, you'll have to test for crunch and taste. You don't want soft and mushy, since there is more cooking time to come.

This might even be better after a few days in the fridge or freezer...
posted by mumimor at 8:24 AM on October 27, 2024 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I’m here to echo the comments about making banza ahead of time - it just doesn’t work well. If you are committed to Banza, you really need to boil the pasta within an hour or two of serving. Personally, I won’t even eat Banza that was cooked the previous day because I find the texture offputting, and I’d say I’m fairly average in terms of willingness to eat leftovers.

If you make the sauce ahead of time and boil then bake the noodles same day, that would work nicely.
posted by samthemander at 10:52 AM on October 27, 2024 [4 favorites]


Tinkyada rice pasta reheats decently as long as it wasn't overcooked the first time. I've never made a baked pasta with it, only stovetop but it consistently held its shape and texture as leftovers.
posted by fiercekitten at 6:29 PM on October 27, 2024


If you’re open to other pasta brands, we use Jovial gluten free macaroni for mac-n-cheese. It’s still pretty good the second day, and the cheese is still gooey. Honestly, though, second-day gluten free pasta might be passable as leftovers, but it’s not something I’d serve to guests.

If you’re open to other ideas for green goo, Chana Palak is delicious and maybe even better the next day, or you could do just creamed spinach. Or you could use your cheese and spinach idea but instead of pasta mix in beans or cut up cauliflower or some other vegetable.
posted by Kriesa at 7:18 PM on October 27, 2024


Response by poster: Thank you everyone! Since I've already bought my boxes of Banza, all the cheese, and the spinach, I'm going to stick to making the same dish I had planned to make, but I'll just have to boil the pasta an hour or two before the party starts. Thank you for the unambiguous information that Banza can't be made ahead. Exactly the warning I needed.
posted by MiraK at 5:20 AM on October 28, 2024 [2 favorites]


For future reference, Jovial cooks up nice and reheats well the next day, with no gumminess. I ate some reheated Jovial caserecce for lunch today.

https://jovialfoods.com/gluten-free/brown-rice-pasta/
posted by joycehealy at 5:06 PM on October 28, 2024 [2 favorites]


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