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There are few more comforting meals than classic mac and cheese.

It’s simple and rich kid food that grown ups love, too.

And this baked Brussels sprouts mac and cheese is one I turn to again and again.

(Adding some vegetable matter makes me feel better about eating a dish that’s mostly carbs and cheese.)

I used orrecchiette here rather than the traditional elbow macaroni because I had it around and I find the shape pleasing, but you can use any small-ish pasta shape you like.

I start by covering my pasta with water and letting it sit in a bowl while I work on other things. This means you don’t have to boil the pasta. It will cook in the oven, but it will be pre-hydrated so it doesn’t absorb too much of the sauce. (It’s a technique I also use in this baked ziti.)

The Brussels sprouts get sliced thin and go into the oven where they get deeply browned in spots to bring out that wonderful roasted brassica flavor (like they do in this butternut squash and Brussels sprouts in agrodolce).

And that roasting happens while you make the cheese sauce.

There are numerous styles of cheese sauce for mac and cheese out there.

Some use processed cheese like Velveeta, some use evaporated milk, some use sodium citrate as a modern technique for emulsifying the sauce.

Others go a more custard-style route and use milk or even cream and eggs. And of course there’s the stuff that comes in a box and uses powdered cheese.

My version uses a good old fashioned béchamel, or more precisely, a Mornay sauce, which is just the fancy French name for a béchamel sauce with grated cheese stirred into it.

Béchamel starts with a roux, which is a mixture of equal parts butter and flour (or any fat and starch) that get cooked together in a pan.

I start by sautéing some shallots in the butter before adding the flour to make the roux to add some flavor, but you could skip the shallots if you aren’t feeling them or don’t have any.

This step coats the flour particles with fat which makes it easier for them to disperse in the milk.

It also cooks the raw flour and gives it a slightly toasty flavor that adds some depth to the sauce.

Then milk gets added to the roux and brought just to a simmer, which will make the sauce thicken slightly and coat your spatula.

Then the sauce comes off the heat and you stir in a mountain of shredded cheese.

I used a sharp cheddar here to keep things simple, but you could use gruyere or fontina or gouda or any combination of these cheeses.

The important thing is that you don’t start with the pre-shredded stuff here, because it has additives that interfere with melting smoothly in a sauce.

So pull out the trusty box grater or your cheese-grating device of choice and shred it yourself.

Then the pasta gets drained and mixed with the cheese sauce and tucked into a baking dish and the roasted Brussels sprouts get added in.

But then there’s the thing that takes this over the top, the generous layer of panko breadcrumb topping.

The panko gets tossed with salt and pepper and some smoked paprika and thyme. Then a little bit of olive oil goes.

Then the mixture gets sprinkled over the top and the whole thing goes into the oven where it bubbles and sputters and the top gets browned and delightfully crispy.

Then you just need to let it cool long enough to dig in.