As someone that has never experienced Thanksgiving before, I was pleasantly surprised when I got invited to celebrate Friendsgiving with friends that aren’t able to celebrate Thanksgiving with family at home in the USA.
The idea of Friendsgiving was something that I was vaguely familiar with from hearing American students talk about it last year and was quite excited to join in with my friends this year.
The one problem with this, is that I have never cooked for a large group of people before – especially not for a special occasion that is important to my friends.
I decided to cook Mac and Cheese for this occasion, mainly because I thought it would be easy (spoiler alert: it wasn’t easy at all for my skill level).
I completely misjudged the ability I had with cooking Mac and Cheese. This could have been expected since my only experience with cooking Mac and Cheese before was with ready meals from Tesco and popping that in the microwave.
However, I got advice from a friend of mine to use this viral recipe for Mac and Cheese from TikTok – Tini’s Mac and Cheese.
Trying the Recipe
Tini’s Mac and Cheese recipe intimidated me when I first watched the TikTok and looked at the recipe written out (the Tini’s Mac and Cheese that is hyperlinked will send you to the recipe in Tini’s Substack).
There is a lot of cheese, and when I say that I mean a lot.
When gathering ingredients for this recipe I had to adjust the American ingredients to British ones that I could find, which was frustrating.
The time wasted in Tesco looking for Colby jack cheese would never be gained back.
I ended up getting Cheddar cheese, Red Leicester cheese, and Grada Padano cheese to make up for the cheeses I couldn’t find.
When grating the cheese, I didn’t do as much as Tini. Mainly because I was only using 500gs of pasta and because I thought the amount I grated was enough for what was needed.
After the pasta was boiled and set aside (with the grated cheese), it was time to cook the roux.
I have never cooked a roux before, and I was worried this is where everything would go wrong. When I saw my flour, spices, and the can of evaporated milk I poured in start lumping together – I freaked out.
Apparently, this is a normal process and all you need to do is add the cups of double cream for the mixture to smooth out, but for a first-time cooker this was a shock.
All in all, the recipe was a success and there was many compliments coming my way during Friendsgiving – something I wasn’t expecting but would gladly accept.
Seeing everyone’s dishes all splayed out and seeing the effort people put in for this special occasion was heartwarming and I can’t wait for the next time I can put my cooking skills to the test for another potluck type occasion.
Feature Image Credit: Kristina Wikensten
Comment Editor
2nd year - History and Journalism student
