Evaporated Milk For Macaroni Cheese

Our answer

Nigella uses evaporated milk in her recipe for Macaroni Cheese (from NIGELLA EXPRESS) as it is a useful storecupboard standby ingredient and it adds some extra richness to the sauce. Evaporated milk is also sometimes labelled as unsweetened condensed milk and we have seen it in France labelled as "lait concentré non sucré". Nestle sell it under the Gloria label and there is also the Regalait brand. Some of the major supermarkets also sell an own-label version.

However if you are not close to a large store then we would suggest using the UHT crème légère fluide that is sold in most supermarkets. This has a fat content of around 12%, which is a bit higher than the 8% fat content of evaporated milk, so if you prefer you could use 200ml of the crème légère and 50ml of milk instead. If you are in the US then you can use half and half or light cream as an alternative.