Pumpkin Mac & Cheese

This is definitely the healthiest mac and cheese on my blog.  Whole wheat pasta, a whole can of pumpkin, and less cheese than most of my other recipes.  It's also not as decadent as my other mac and cheese recipes, but is a great everyday meal!  Who doesn't like a quick to make, creamy, cheesy pasta dish?  It also whips up in less than 20 minutes, which can't be said for that many other healthy-ish recipes.

 

The original recipe is from Paula's Plate.  I doubled it, added a little butter, changed the type of macaroni to whole wheat, and significantly cut back on the amount of nutmeg because nutmeg overwhelms dishes so easily.  I also added hot sauce and mustard to punch up the flavor a bit, plus mustard accentuates the cheesy flavor in mac and cheese.  My method is also a tiny bit different.

 

Even though this is a really quick recipe, please do try it at least the first time with freshly grated cheese.  You can easily grate it (and stick some frozen veggies in the microwave to steam) while the macaroni cooks.  The powdery stuff on pre-grated cheese may negatively affect the texture of the finished mac and cheese.

 

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Mac & Cheese

 

2 1/2 C chicken broth (or veggie broth to make it vegetarian)

2 C milk

3 Tbsp butter

1 lb whole wheat macaroni 

16 oz can pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, only ingredient should be pumpkin)

1/8th tsp nutmeg

2 tsp hot sauce (Tabasco or Frank's Red Hot, not something too over the top spicy)

1 Tbsp yellow mustard

2 C freshly grated sharp cheddar

1/2 C freshly grated parmesan

salt and pepper to taste

 

Pour broth, milk, and butter into a large nonstick skillet.  Milk burns easily, so nonstick is very helpful!  Heat over medium-high until it starts getting a little bubbly, but watch it carefully because milk boils over very quickly.  Add macaroni noodles, stir, reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until macaroni is cooked through, stirring every 3 or 4 minutes.  This took about 12 minutes for my box of pasta but how long it takes will 100% depend on the brand and type of macaroni you're using.  If the liquid gets completely absorbed, add a little more milk and broth.

 

When macaroni is cooked through, stir in the can of pumpkin, nutmeg, hot sauce, and yellow mustard until nice and hot.  Remove skillet from heat and stir in cheese, then salt and pepper to taste.  It's important to remove the skillet from the burner before adding the cheese so the cheddar doesn't get too hot and become grainy!

 

Serve immediately.

 

Yield:  About 6 main dish servings

Instant Pot Mac & Cheese

I'm back!  Wasn't gone for any particular reason and I was still cooking, just not adding new recipes to the blog.  Anyway!
   

Because I am me, occasionally I just google "mac and cheese."  On my most recent googling, I came upon the photo for this Instant Pot mac and cheese over at Family Fresh Meals.  It looked so good and creamy, didn't have either of the Devil's Cheeses (American cheese or Velveeta), and I love my Instant Pot, so it got slapped on the menu for Easter.  

 

Oh boy, did this mac and cheese not disappoint!  It is simply phenomenal.  Silky smooth sauce, very cheesy, very creamy, great flavor.  The spiral noodles hold onto the sauce perfectly and the garlic powder- something I had never added to mac and cheese- adds something really nice and subtle.  My beloved husband, who has been staunchly loyal to Creamy Baked Mac & Cheese, gave it 10/10 and thought it was almost as good as his favorite.  Which he says gets 11/10 because why not?

 

Make this if you have an Instant Pot and love mac and cheese!  I'm also happy to say it reheats decently.  Not the best ever and not as creamy, but it does not deconstruct into a puddle of stringy, overcooked cheese and grease.

  

Quick Note:  Please be sure to use fusilli pasta.  Different shapes of pasta have different cooking times and need different amounts of liquid to cook properly.  I have no idea how this would turn out with macaroni or some other shape of pasta.  Also, one pound of fusilli means literally a pound.  16 ounces by weight, not by volume.  I'm adding this information because a lot of people in the comments over on Family Fresh Meals experienced some confusion in regards to these two things!

  

 Instant Pot Mac & Cheese

 

4 C water

1 tsp dried mustard

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp garlic powder

3 Tbsp butter

1 lb fusilli pasta (the larger corkscrew type)

5 oz can evaporated milk

12 oz sharp cheddar, freshly grated

4 oz monterey jack, freshly grated

1 oz parmesan, freshly grated

 

In the Instant Pot, stir together water, dried mustard, salt, garlic powder, and butter.  Make sure there are no lumps of dried mustard or garlic powder.  Add pasta, stir, and press down gently with the spoon to make sure the pasta is as covered with liquid as possible- there should not be an island of fusilli above the surface of the liquid.

 

Place on Instant Pot cover, set to seal, and cook on manual for 4 minutes.  Place a dishcloth over the steam release vent, then do a quick pressure release.  There is a very good chance that starchy water will spray up out of the steam release vent, so do keep the towel on it!  

 

Since the Instant Pot is done cooking, it will have switched to Keep Warm.  Don't turn it off!  

 

When all the pressure has been released, remove the lid and stir the pasta.  There will still be some liquid in the pot, that's fine- do not drain it.  Add the can of evaporated milk, then stir in half of the cheese until completely melted.  Then add stir in the rest of the cheese and dig in!

 

Enjoy your mac and cheesy heaven!

  

Yield: 8 side dish servings or 6 main dish servings

BBQ Mac & Cheese

I've mentioned this before, but I was a very picky child.  My mom is a good cook, but ungrateful little me had very particular taste buds.  My palate expanded hugely when I was a foreign exchange student my freshman year of high school, and I returned to the US as an adventurous eater, but my parents separated while I was out of the country and my mom didn't cook much after that.  That's pretty much when I started learning to cook!

Because all of my years of being fortunate enough to have my mom cook dinner every night coincided with me being a picky eater, there aren't actually very many recipes in my "lifetime favorites from Mom" recipe category.  I've always loved her white chicken chili, 57 Meatballs, a mushroom chicken casserole recipe I haven't had since I was about 13 years old, an herbed chicken and potatoes recipe I haven't made yet, pumpkin spice cookies, and... this recipe.  (Side note: why haven't I shared any of these favorite on this blog in the 5 years I've been posting?)
  
It's not really the kind of recipe my mom would usually make and I'm not sure why she chose to make it since the ingredients are a bit odd, but make it she did.  As a mac and cheese lover from the start, even the rather strong flavors appealed to me and this was one of my favorite things my mom made when I was a kid.  The original recipe was apparently called Macaroni for Morons (mean!), but young me named it BBQ Mac & Cheese and that's how it has been known ever since.  There isn't any BBQ sauce in it, but it has a slightly similar flavor and apparently 6 year old me thought it tasted like BBQ sauce.  My mom's version actually has more butter, more cheese, and no mustard, but my husband and I like it this way :)
 
BBQ Mac & Cheese
  
1 lb macaroni
4 Tbsp butter
1/2 C chili sauce (Heinz chili sauce, not the spicy asian kind)
1/4 C Worcestershire sauce
1/2 Tbsp dijon mustard
2 C grated sharp cheddar cheese
black pepper and seasoned salt to taste
  
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil and add macaroni.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until macaroni is tender.  Drain and return to pot.  Add butter, place pot back on burner over low, and cook until butter melts.  Add chili sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard, and stir to combine.  Add cheese and stir until melted and hot.  Stir in pepper and seasoned salt to taste.
  
Yield:  About 8 side dish servings.

Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese

This recipe really surprised me by how good it is!  I was just looking for a quick, easy, no fuss mac and cheese to serve along with Easter dinner, and came upon this one on Recipes That Crock.  Cream of mushroom soup in mac and cheese, how odd, but I decided to give it a go because you'll never know if you don't try.  Wonder of wonders, it turned out really well.  My husband ranked it in his top 3 mac and cheese favorites and I thought it was really good, too.  This is a great choice if you're cooking a bunch of things and need a side dish that can tend to itself for a while, or if you're headed to a potluck and need something that will stay nice and hot and tasty.

 

Quick Note: You can puree the cream of mushroom soup with a food processor or immersion blended if you (or the people you're serving it to) won't like the little bits of mushroom in the finished mac and cheese.  Also, use freshly grated cheddar for this because the coating on purchased grated cheese may prevent it from melting into the sauce nicely.

  

 

Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese

 

12 oz macaroni (cavatappi is pictured because the store was out of macaroni)

10.25 oz can cream of mushroom soup

1/2 C milk

2 tsp yellow mustard

1/2 tsp seasoned salt (or more to taste)

1/4 tsp black pepper 

12-16 oz freshly grated cheddar cheese, divided

 

Cook macaroni in salted water until partly softened, but still underdone.  Drain and return to pot.  Add cream of mushroom soup, milk, seasoned salt, and pepper, then stir in 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 C grated cheddar (I used 3).  Taste and add more salt if needed.  Grease the crock of a small slow cooker and add mac and cheese.  

 

Cover and cook on low for about 4 hours, or high for about an hour and a half- exact amount of time will depend on your slow cooker.  You can stir halfway through to make sure it cooks evenly, but don't stir after that or the mac and cheese won't have a baked consistency to it.

 

Remove lid, sprinkle with an extra 1/2 to 1 C grated cheddar, and continue to cook until cheese has melted.

 

Yield: 10 side dish servings

Bess Truman's Mac & Cheese

I can't even remember how I came upon this recipe, but I found it on the American Table website .  It's apparently the mac and cheese recipe of Bess Truman, Harry S Truman's wife.  It's one of the simplest mac and cheese I've seen, and I'm always happy to try a new mac and cheese recipe, so gave it a go.  The results were interesting.  There's no sauce to speak of, but the mac and cheese is pretty moist (in a good way) from the milk.  It has a surprising amount of flavor, considering how few ingredients there are.  My husband wasn't fond of this recipe because he prefers saucy mac and cheese, plus he's just generally particular about mac and cheese.  I really enjoyed it, though, and would happily both make and eat it again.

 

I wanted to stay true to the original recipe, so the only thing I changed was to sprinkle salt on the noodles.

 

Bess Truman's Mac & Cheese

 

1/2 lb macaroni noodles

salt to taste

2 C grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 egg

2 C whole milk

1/2 stick salted butter, cut into pats

 

Preheat oven to 350 and grease an 8 by 8 baking dish.

 

Cook 1/2 lb macaroni in lightly salted water.  Spoon half of it into the prepared baking dish, and sprinkle on a little salt.  Sprinkle on half of the cheddar.  Top with the rest of the noodles, a little more salt, and the rest of the cheese.  Beat the egg, then stir in the milk.  Pour evenly over the mac and cheese.  Arrange pats of butter evenly on top.

 

Bake mac and cheese for about 45 minutes, until golden and bubbly and the interior temperature reaches 160 degrees.  I covered mine with foil 35 minutes in so the cheese wouldn't brown too much.  Let mac and cheese sit for 10 minutes before serving so it can set a bit.

 

Yield: 8 side dish servings

Monster Mac

This recipe is a Cheese with Noodles creation.  I added components of several different recipes, along with some different things I wanted to try, then a couple more changes born of necessity.  My husband and I call it Monster Mac because it features muenster cheese and we've always called it monster cheese.  I tried thinking up a fancier, more descriptive name, but Monster Mac (like Monster Mash!) stuck. 
  

As implied by the name of my blog, I LOVE mac and cheese.  I'm basically always open to trying a new recipe, but am also really particular.  This time around, I was looking for a mac and cheese that was very saucy, velvety, and smooth, and made entirely on the stove.  It's unfortunate or me that by far my favorite cheese for mac and cheese (and pretty much everything else) is sharp cheddar, because it gets kind of grainy when melted.  I also hate Velveeta and American cheese with the burning fury of 1,000 suns, so adding that to help make a silky smooth sauce wasn't an option.  To combat the graininess, I decided to use cornstarch instead of flour (cornstarch makes for a smoother sauce), and used Muenster cheese for part of the cheese since it melts really nicely.  I also made sure to remove the pot from the stove before adding the cheddar because excess heat + chedder = grainy city.
  

The mac and cheese turned out quite well.  Lots of flavor, mellow and buttery from the Muenster but still with adequate bite from the cheddar, and definitely lots of creamy sauce.  The spiral pasta held all the sauce wonderfully and was definitely a good choice.  The sauce wasn't as perfectly silky smooth as I hoped, but definitely smoother than many cheddar based sauces.  I think it's just not possible to make a completely smooth cheddar based sauce.  Luckily, this one comes decently close!
  

Quick Note:  I actually think this would make a great cheesy pasta side dish (or maybe add diced ham to make a main dish?) if you only add 1/2 C milk near the end and completely leave out the cheddar.  The muenster also makes the pasta hilariously stringy as it melts- like, over the top, looks like you're making cotton candy.  As it melts and add the extra milk and sour cream, the stringiness from the muenster goes completely away, but if that appeals to you, there's no reason why you couldn't pull it off the heat and serve it before that happens.
  

  
Monster Mac

  

1/2 lb spiral pasta

1 3/4 C milk, divided

1/2 Tbsp cornstarch

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp hot sauce (I used Frank's Red Hot)

2 tsp mustard

pinch cayenne

4 oz muenster cheese (mine was in slices already, I just tore it into pieces)

1/2 C sour cream

1/2 lb freshly grated sharp cheddar cheese

salt to taste (I used 1/2 tsp)
  

Cook macaroni in salted water.  While it cooks, whisk together 3/4 C of the milk, cornstarch, egg, hot sauce, mustard, and cayenne.
  

Drain pasta, add egg mixture, and return to low heat.  Stir constantly until sauce thickens.  Add muenster cheese and cook until melted.  Add sour cream and remaining 1 C milk and cook, stirring frequently, until hot.  Remove pot from heat and stir in cheddar until melted.  Add salt to taste, then serve immediately.

 

Yield: 4 main dish servings, 6-8 side dish servings

Secret Recipe Club: Mac & Cheese Bites

For Secret Recipe Club this month, I was assigned the blog Lori's Culinary Creations.  The author, Lori, lives in Utah with her husband and their parrot, kitties, and dogs.  They like to ride around on their Harley in their spare time!  Lori sounds like a pretty interesting lady to me, and as a fellow animal lover, I'd like to meet her and her pets.

   

Lori's blog is packed with tastiness.  I was particularly drawn to Jalapeno Popper Burgers (which I did actually make already, yum), Seven Layer Salad (which I plan to make soon), and the one I made for this post, Creamy Muffin Tin Mac & Cheese Bites.  About time I finally make mac and cheese for Secret Recipe Club!  This was a complete impulse recipe for me because I happened to have all of the ingredients on hand.  I did have to use egg noodles instead of macaroni because it's all I had, I used milk instead of wine (personal preference), and baked the mac and cheese in mini muffin tins instead of normal sized ones.  They turned out really well.  My husband prefers his mac and cheese unbaked and had his straight from the pot, he really liked it and gave it a score of 9/10.  He is very picky about mac and cheese, so that's a great rating!  He did admit to liking the muffin bites as well.  

  

I don't know that I'll go out of my way to make the bites just for us again, but I can definitely see myself making them for an appetizer to bring to someone's house (they're very good room temperature) or as a lunch for kids.  We will definitely have the base mac and cheese recipe again though because it was really good.  Thanks, Lori!

   

 

Mac & Cheese Bites

  

10 oz macaroni by weight

3 Tbsp butter

1 clove garlic, minced

4 Tbsp flour

2 1/2 C milk

1 Tbsp dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

4 oz grated swiss cheese

8 oz grated cheddar cheese

small amount extra cheddar for garnish

paprika, for garnish

  

Preheat oven to 425 and grease a 24 cup mini muffin tin.

 

Boil macaroni until al dente in a pot of salted water.  Drain and return to the pot.

 

Make the sauce while the macaroni cooks.  Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium-high and add garlic, cook until it just starts to turn golden.  Add flour and cook and stir for a minute, until flour is smooth.  Whisk in milk 1/4 C at a time  for the first cup and a half, making sure the sauce is smooth between additions, then add the rest.  Stir constantly until sauce comes to a simmer, then continue to simmer while stirring for a minute or two.  Remove from heat, whisk in mustard and salt, then stir in cheese until smooth.  Stir sauce unto cooked macaroni.  Spoon mac and cheese into greased mini muffin tin (you will have extra), sprinkle with a little extra cheddar and paprika, and bake at 425 until golden on top, about 12 minutes.  Remove muffin tin from oven and let them sit for 10 minutes or so before carefully removing them, blotting off any excess grease with paper towels, and serving.

 

Yield: 24 mac and cheese bites, plus a bowl or two extra to have for lunch!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Mrs Jones' Baked Macaroni & Cheese

As my blog name hints, I am a huge mac and cheese lover and always have been.  I've probably tried more mac and cheese recipes than any other type!  At the same time, I'm pretty particular about my mac and cheese.  A recipe has to be just right to get two thumbs up from me.  Maybe 1 in 8 mac and cheese recipes I try are ones I deem tasty enough to make it to my blog.  Those include the magnificent Creamy Baked Mac and Cheese (my husband's favorite), Beer Mac and Cheese, and Stove Top Mac and Cheese.  I also made Ina Garten's Mac and Cheese for Ina Fridays and enjoyed it, but wouldn't have posted it on the blog if I hadn't made it specifically for that recipe group.

So what I'm getting at here is that I'm always trolling for more mac and cheese recipes, and when I do make one, it has to be freaking fantastic if it's going to join my little mac and cheese recipe family.  Ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to say there's a new cheesy, noodley member of the family!  The recipe is called Mrs Jones' Baked Macaroni and Cheese and I found it on a blog called Chick in the Kitchen.  I honestly have no recollection of how I came upon the recipe, I just know it was a couple of months ago.  We moved recently and with all the craziness of buying a house, packing, moving, and not being able to use the kitchen for several weeks, I had in the back of my mind the idea that I would make this mac and cheese recipe once I made my way back into the kitchen.  That happy day finally occurred recently, so of course this is one of the first things I made!  Oh and for those wondering, apparently Mrs Jones was the preschool teacher of the cousin of the blog author, Dara, some number of years ago, and the recipe has been in her family ever since. I altered it a smidgen (increased the Worcestershire sauce and added some salt), but my version is pretty true to the original.

Okay, on to what people may actually care about: a description of the recipe.  This is NOT a creamy, saucy mac and cheese.  There's actually no sauce to speak of.  Instead, the cheese, eggs, and milk make a rich, custard-like binder for the noodles.  It's not dry at all, either, and that's coming from someone who loves lots of sauce!  The mac and cheese also has awesome flavor from all of the sharp cheddar and the dried mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne pepper in the sauce.  All the flavors really work together perfectly.  Even my husband really liked this mac and cheese, and he's a guy who groans whenever I make any recipe other than Creamy Baked Mac and Cheese because he loves that one.  This recipe is definitely a keeper and one I'll still be making 50 years from now!  Thank you, Dara, Dara's aunt, and Mrs Jones!

Mrs Jones' Baked Macaroni & Cheese

1 lb regular or whole wheat small pasta shells (I used Barilla White Fiber)

2 Tbsp butter

1 lb shredded sharp cheddar cheese

2 eggs

12 oz can evaporated (NOT condensed) milk

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground mustard

1 pinch cayenne pepper

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 casserole dish.  Boil shells in salted water, drain, and return to pot.  Add butter and stir until it's melted, then let the pasta cool for a few minutes so it won't melt the cheese.  Stir it occasionally so it will cool faster.

While the shells cool, whisk the eggs in a small bowl until smooth.  Whisk in evaporated milk, salt, ground mustard, cayenne pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

When pasta has cooled a bit, stir in the grated cheese until it's evenly distributed.  Spoon pasta into the prepared baking dish and pack it down lightly with the back of a spoon.  Pour the egg mixture evenly over top.

Bake, uncovered, until the edges are bubbly and the top is golden, about 30 minutes.

Yield: 8-10 main dish servings or twice as many side servings.  Mac and cheese is ALWAYS a main dish at my house!

Ina Fridays: Mac & Cheese

*First of all, please forgive me if the spacing in this post and recent posts is crazy.  Blogger seems to be spazzing out and keeps changing my spacing in already published posts.  How I have it right now looks fine in Firefox and Internet Explorer on my computer, but I'm not sure how it looks on others*

I've joined a new cooking group!  This is a small group that prepares an Ina Garten recipe once a month.  There are guidelines for the type of recipe each month (such as main dish or appetizer), but other than that, we're free to pick whatever recipe we want.  I'm quite fond of Ina Garten's recipes and a couple of them I've been making for half my life (like Rosemary Roasted Carrots and Parker's Split Pea Soup), so am excited at the prospect of trying a new one of my choice each month.  The fact that I can choose which recipe to make is very nice since I can either choose something that fits my dietary requirements, or else pick something to make as a special treat. 

This month's assignment was a main dish recipe.  It only took about 3 minutes of digging through recipes on the Food Network website to find Ina Garten's recipe for macaroni and cheese.  What better first recipe to make for a mac and cheese devotee like myself?  I haven't cooked a pasta dish since September, so was pretty excited to make this! 

  
The recipe was quite easy to make, not any more complicated than other baked mac and cheeses.  I'd never used gruyere, tomatoes, or fresh bread crumbs in mac and cheese and was curious to try them out.  The only thing I changed about the recipe was to cut it in half so we wouldn't have tons of leftovers.  It ended up making a good amount anyway! 

The recipe came together very well and looked great, but I was a bit nervous when I tasted it before sticking it in the oven.  I have an extremely low tolerance for processed cheese/Velveeta, and to my surprise, the sauce had a processed cheese taste and texture.  It gave me the "Velveeta shudder", never good! 

Luckily, it was much better after the stint in the oven, and I ended up enjoying the mac and cheese pretty well.  I think my gruyere was to blame.  There were two varieties to pick from at the store, one was $10 a pound and the other $20.  I really didn't want to spend $10 on a little hunk of cheese, so picked the less expensive one, which was softer.  When I tasted it before grating it, it actually tasted like American cheese to me rather than gruyere!  Now I really want to make it again with the firmer, pricier gruyere in spite of the cost, because I'm sure it will taste better.

The verdict:  Cheese issues aside, this was a really nice mac and cheese, creamy with good flavor.  I didn't need to adjust the seasonings or amount of milk or cheese at all.  The sauce was pretty darn thick, but I wonder how it would be with the better gruyere.  I personally enjoyed the tomatoes on top and the fresh, buttered bread crumbs were really nice.  My husband picked off his tomatoes but thought the bread crumbs were fine, which is a first for him- he usually does not like bread crumbs on pasta.  He rated it 6 stars out of 10, but was raving over it as he ate and had two servings.  I think he'd actually give it a higher rating except that he's extremely devoted to my "signature" mac and cheese recipe (the one the blog was named after, and that he rates "9,000" stars) and was stubbornly opposed to me even making this one.

All in all, this is definitely a mac and cheese worth making if you want something a little different!  My one suggestion would be to buy good gruyere.

Ina Garten's Mac & Cheese

8 oz cavatappi or macaroni

4 T butter, divided

1/4 C flour

2 C milk

1/2 Tbsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg

8 oz gruyere (by weight), grated

4 oz cheddar (by weight), grated

1-2 small tomatoes, halved and sliced thinly

2-3 slices bread, crust removed and made into crumbs in the food processor

Preheat oven to 375 and grease a 2 quart baking dish.  Boil pasta in lightly salted water until tender, and drain.  Make the sauce while the pasta cooks.  Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a medium sauce pan over medium heat, then whisk in the flour until smooth.  Cook and whisk for another minute or so, then whisk in the milk in small additions of about 1/4 cup each, making sure sauce is completely smooth before you add more milk.  Cook sauce, whisking frequently, until thickened, then about a minute more.  Remove pan from heat (this is important so the cheese doesn't get gritty), and whisk in the salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then whisk in the cheese a handful at a time until smooth. 

Stir the sauce into the cooked pasta and spoon into the greased baking dish.  Top with the sliced tomatoes.  Melt remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and mix it with the bread crumbs, then sprinkle it evenly over the pasta and tomatoes.  Bake until the crumbs are golden and the sauce is bubbling around the edges, about 20 minutes.

Yield:  About 6 main dish servings (I halved the recipe which supposedly would make 3 servings, but those would be truly gigantic servings!)

Here's a list of the other bloggers that participate in Ina Fridays!

•   Alyce @ More Time at the Table
•   Ansh @  Spice Roots 
•   Barbara @ Moveable Feasts  
•   Bhavna @ Just a Girl From AAmchi Mumbai..
•   Chaya @  Bizzy Bakes
•   Linda,  @ Tumbleweed Contessa
•   Mary @ The Egg Farm
•   Minnie @ The Lady 8 Home
•   Mireya @ My Healthy Eating Habits
•   Patti @ Comfy Cuisine
•   Peggy@ Pantry Revisited
•   Rocky Mountain Woman @ Rocky Mountain Woman
•   Veronica @ My Catholic Kitchen

Chaya at Bizzy Bakes sadly lost her daughter recently.  Chaya, my heart goes out to you and your family!

Beer Mac and Cheese

Alright, time to play catch up with my backlog of recipes that need to be posted!  This one is for Beer Mac and Cheese.  One of our favorite restaurants has an amazing beer cheese soup on the menu, and we love the Welsh Rabbit I make for Easter every year, so my mac and cheese loving brain logically made the leap between those dishes and mac and cheese.  I pretty much winged the recipe and the sauce was based on the one from Welsh Rabbit.  Got the idea for the pretzel topping from this recipe on AllRecipes.

The resulting mac and cheese was divine.  The amount of beer flavor was perfect, and it was nice and cheesy.  And the pretzel topping?  Also great!  By only broiling individual servings with the pretzels, the mac and cheese stayed nice and saucy without getting gritty, and leftovers didn't suffer from mushy topping since.  I just reheated it in the microwave, stirred in a little milk to keep it creamy, then sprinkled the individual bowls with a bit more cheddar and the pretzel topping before tossing the bowls under the broiler with the topping.  What could be better?

Beer Mac and Cheese

12 oz macaroni
3 T butter
2 T flour
1 1/4 C milk
3/4 C wheat beer (I used Pyramid Hefeweizen)
2 t Worcestershire sauce
2 t dijon mustard
3/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t paprika
3 C grated sharp cheddar

Topping:
extra grated cheddar

1/2 C roughly crushed pretzels
2 T melted butter
1/4 C parmesan cheese
1/4 t dried parsley

 Boil macaroni in a large pot of lightly salted water.  Drain, return to the pot, cover the pot so the macaroni stays warm, and set it aside. While the macaroni cooks, make the sauce.  Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and add flour.  Whisk until golden, about 1 minute.  Add the milk, about 1/4 C at a time, whisking until smooth after each addition.  When all the milk has been added, pour in the beer all at once and whisk until smooth.  Whisk in the Worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and paprika.  Bring sauce to a simmer and cook about 2 minutes until thickened, whisking the whole time.  Remove sauce from heat (this is important!) and stir in the grated cheese until melted.  Add the sauce to the pot with the drained pasta and stir to combine.

Preheat the broiler and move the oven rack to the highest position.  To make the topping, just toss together everything but the extra grated cheddar in a small bowl.  Spoon macaroni and cheese into either individual broiler safe dishes or into 1 larger dish.  Sprinkle with a bit of cheddar, then the topping.  Place under broiler and broil until golden brown, being sure not to walk away or it could burn!  This should only take a couple of minutes.

Enjoy!  This is great with Cucumber Dill Salad.

Yield:  About 8 servings.

Amazing Stove Top Mac and Cheese

I love cooking, but don't really like watching cooking shows or the Food Network. It's just not very interesting to me. I do like the recipes of some TV chefs, like Giada de Laurentiis (I have 3 of her books and have made a lot of her recipes with great success), but I've never seen her on TV. The only TV chef I enjoy watching is Alton Brown. My husband and I watch old episodes of his show sometimes. This particular mac and cheese recipe is his. It's one of those recipes that I saw online, realized I had all the ingredients, and scurried off to the kitchen to make. The method is rather different from most other mac and cheese recipes, and the result is delicious. Flavorful, cheesy, and as smooth and creamy as any Velveeta based sauce. The down side is that it doesn't reheat particularly well, but it's so easy to make that it's okay! You could try using another kind of cheese instead of the cheddar (maybe pepper jack, swiss, or a bit of parmesan?) and I'm sure those would be great, too.

Amazing Stove Top Mac and Cheese

8 oz macaroni
2 eggs
1 t salt
a sprinkle of pepper
1/2 t hot sauce (I use Frank's Red Hot Sauce)
1/2 t prepared yellow mustard
3/4 C milk
1/4 C butter, cut into pieces
10 oz freshly grated medium or sharp cheddar cheese

Cook macaroni in a large pot of lightly salted water. While it cooks, whisk eggs until smooth, then whisk in salt, pepper, hot sauce, and mustard. Whisk in milk. When macaroni is cooked, drain and return to pot. Put pot on stove over low heat and add butter. Stir until melted. Stir in egg and milk mixture and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened: about 3 minutes. Remove pot from heat and stir in cheese.

Yield: 4 servings as a main dish, 6 as a side

Creamy Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Update: 2/22/16:  I now have several mac and cheese recipes posted on my blog, and this one is my husband's favorite.  It's the ultimate mac and cheese recipe and what we both consider to be the title recipe of my blog.

It has occurred to me that I have not yet posted a SINGLE macaroni and cheese recipe on this blog, even though I named the blog after mac and cheese! I've even made macaroni and cheese since starting the blog, just haven't added the recipe for some bizarro reason.
 
As implied by the title, I love macaroni and cheese. Love it. My level of adoration is a little embarrassing, seeing as I'm almost 27 years old, but whatever. Macaroni and cheese is too perfect not to love. Over the years I have tried a multitude of recipes and have a couple of favorites. The one I'm posting here is a slight alteration of one from AllRecipes and is one of the best I've ever had. This is a baked mac and cheese. Usually baked macaroni and cheese is not very creamy, but this one most certainly is, thanks to the entire brick of cream cheese that you stir into the sauce. It's also very rich and cheesy (more than twice as much cheese as pasta will do that!), and just... good. Reheats great, too. If you love saucy, cheesy, creamy macaroni and cheese, I suggest you give this one a try.
 
Story time: People are so fond of this mac and cheese that I often bring it to potlucks, and I always bake it in the same Fiesta dish. We actually call it the mac and cheese bowl because it's the main thing I use it for. Anyway, few months ago, we brought this mac and cheese to a potluck at some friends' house and ended up leaving the leftovers there when we had to leave early. A couple of days later, we were back at their house and when I peeked in their fridge, I found my mac and cheese bowl inexplicably half full even though it had almost all been eaten up. Magically replenishing mac and cheese bowl? Sadly, no. They just loved it enough that they made some themselves!
 
Quick note: Excess heat makes cheddar cheese get gritty. To make sure your mac and cheese is smooth and wonderful, be sure to add the cheddar cheese to the sauce when the pot is off of the burner and the sauce is no longer boiling. The cheese will also get gritty if you bake it too long, so just bake it long enough to make the topping golden.

Other Quick Note:  If you're planning on having leftovers, skip the cornflake topping entirely.  Just sprinkle the extra cheese on top.  The cornflake topping is great the first time around, but it takes a serious hit when microwaved.  Sog city.  
 

Creamy Baked Macaroni and Cheese
 
8 oz macaroni
1 t salt for water
1/4 C butter
3 T flour
2 C milk
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1 T dijon mustard
8 oz cream cheese
12 oz shredded medium cheddar
 
Topping:
4 oz shredded medium cheddar
2 T melted butter
1 C cornflakes, crushed (you can use panko or cracker crumbs instead if you would prefer)
1 t dried parsley
 
Preheat oven to 400 degrees and grease a 2 quart baking dish. Boil pasta in large pot with 1 t salt. In a medium sauce pan, make a roux with the butter and flour. Let cook while stirring for a minute or two. Stir in milk a little at a time, making sure sauce is smooth after each addition. Add salt, pepper and mustard, then stir in cream cheese until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in cheddar cheese. Pour into prepared baking dish and sprinkle with remaining cheese. In a small bowl, stir together butter and crushed cornflakes and sprinkle on top of casserole. Bake for about 20 minutes or JUST until topping is golden, then sprinkle with parsley. You can leave off the topping and just do the extra cheese and parsley if you want.
 
Yield: about 12 servings as a side dish