Stovetop, one-pot French onion macaroni and cheese couldn’t be any easier. Starting with deeply caramelized onions deglazed in white wine and simmered with thyme and beef broth, you’ll wonder why you ever buy canned soup.

Then, all it takes is adding pasta and cheese for a decadent but mess-free meal in under an hour. Seriously. One-pot is all it takes!

It’s simple, but it’s also the perfect one-pot meal for date night in. Pair it with a little grilled chicken and a glass of chardonnay to enhance the buttery flavor.

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French Onion Macaroni and Cheese: A Brief History

Way back when I was about five months pregnant, I shared a video from The Cooking Channel for a casserole-style French Onion Macaroni and Cheese. I remember thinking, “OH! I love French onion soup. And I love mac and cheese. How have I never made this before?”

In my pregnancy-craving-fueled delirium, I forgot how much I hate both béchamel-based cheese sauces and baked macaroni and cheese with bread on top. No, I don’t care if it creates variety in the texture.

Plus, who likes using every pot and pan in the house to make something as simple as macaroni and cheese? No one.

So, I Set Out to Make a “One-Pot” Version…

By this, I do actually mean ONE pot. Sometimes this means “one pot that you’re going to have to wash in the middle.” We’re literally cooking it all in a single pot. You might want a separate bowl to hold your grated cheese, but that’s it.

In order to do that, every single step needs to count toward the final product. That means we’re not boiling our pasta in water that would need to be dumped.

Instead, the pasta cooks in the exact right amount homemade French Onion Soup, so that there’s enough left to start a sauce, too.

The starch that releases from the pasta is enough to thicken the soup. So, you don’t even need flour for the sauce.

And the cheese is still the star. Considering how great gruyere is, I want to be able to taste it. It truly is the best of both worlds: a great bowl of mac and cheese AND a great bowl of French onion soup.

Choosing the Right Cheese for French Onion Macaroni and Cheese

Head to the fancy cheese section of your grocery store. This is where you’ll find a nice block of gruyere. If you have a Trader Joe’s, you’re in luck. Theirs is really yummy.

I once tried this applewood smoked gruyere to be extra fancy, and WOW! So good. This is such an easy recipe, but if you use a really nice quality cheese, it’ll just blow your mind that much more.

Now, I know that gruyere can either be A) hard to find or B) too expensive. Well, I have good news for you!

If you can’t find gruyere, grab a block of swiss cheese and some parmesan. But try to get real parm, the kind in a wedge, if you can. The powdered stuff doesn’t work the same.

To redo my photos, I tried this with swiss and a nice parm that was in the remnants bin of our cheese department. You can find really cheap bits of good cheese there, too, so check it out.

Picking the Right Pasta

Macaroni is an obvious classic, but when I can find it, I like to use cavatappi. It is larger than elbow pasta, and has ridges around the outside that hold the sauce better.

Other good pastas to try are rigatoni, penne, or rotini. When you want to make a star of your sauce, a textured pasta will serve you best. That’s not to say that a fun shape like bowtie won’t work. Play around and see what you like.

How Do You Avoid Mushy Pasta?

Easy. Keep an eye on it, and as soon as the liquid in the pot seems to dip, pull a noodle and bite into it. There should be a thin white ring of uncooked pasta while the rest is cooked.

At this point, you’ll add the cheese. The amount of time it takes to melt the cheese down into a sauce, the pasta will fully finish cooking through, but won’t become mushy.

What if My French Onion Soup is Too Sweet?

The pitfall of caramelizing onions is that the sugars come forward. It’s tempting to go overboard with salt to balance the flavor, but that’s not the best way to deal with too-sweet French onion soup.

If you remember from the chocolate chip cookie recipe, salt actually helps make the sweetness more prominent. In a cookie, this is a great thing. In a dish that is meant to be savory, not so much. So, instead, you’ll want to balance with a different flavor profile.

Something acidic like lemon juice or dry wine will tone it down. In this case, white wine or cooking sherry helps to calm the sweetness but also introduces a flavor familiar to classic French onion soup.

French Onion Macaroni and Cheese and Salad for Dinner

So far, I’ve heavily hinted a couple of times that this is a great way to make a date night dinner at home. Now, of course, you could serve up two gorgeous bowls of pasta with a bottle of wine and call it a night. Ta da!

OR.

Hear me out… head over to the Blueberry Arugula Salad recipe and whip up one of those, too. A simple vegetarian salad to go with your simple vegetarian pasta dish, and you still won’t have a ton of dishes to wash.

And since I already mentioned the Chocolate Chip Cookies, maybe make up a batch for dessert. Either that or my One-Bowl Chocolate Cake will make a nice easy but still elegant and decadent dessert to top off your romantic evening in.

Let’s Get Cooking!

It really is that easy to make up some French Onion Macaroni and Cheese. Just because it looks fancy and sounds decadent, that shouldn’t deter you. All you need is one pot and your stove.

Did you try this recipe when I posted it before? Or maybe you’ve just tried it. I hope you’ll comment below and let me know how it worked for you! Don’t forget to subscribe for awesome freebies and newsletters!