Recipe: Wondra mac and cheese

I keep an unruly collection of jars, bottles and dispensers next to the stove. At any time I will have good, better and best olive oils, grinders for both white and black peppercorns, light and dark soy sauces, and a nearly fetishistic collection of vinegars. Also this: a blue canister of Wondra flour. My kitchen is naked without it.

Wondra, which you may think of only as a rescuer of watery gravies, is an excellent ghost ingredient that works best when you don’t realize it’s there. A little shake fixes the texture of a too-watery Instant Pot stew, and it can turn an oily stir-fry glossy. It’s also the best dredge for pan-seared fish and scallops as it creates the impression there is no coating at all, just crispness. I’ve seen Wondra in plenty of high-end restaurant kitchens for just this purpose.

Wondra melts away so readily because it has been pre-gelatinized; in other words, it won’t bind to itself. Imagine you make a really nasty gravy consisting only of flour and water. You cook and stir over a flame until that starchy, sticky texture goes away. Then you dry it out completely and render it into a fine powder. That’s sort of the process.

I reach for Wondra so instinctively that it has become the key ingredient in my mac and cheese. My recipe — a rigatoni gratin, really — veers far from the norm in that I have engineered it to have lots of crunchy crags that hold pockets of creamy sauce. As it isn’t overly rich or cheesy, it plays well as a side dish to grilled or roasted meat.

John Kessler worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1997 to 2015 as a food writer and dining critic. He now lives in Chicago.

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