A Little Cheesy...

April 16, 2012

I must admit, I have my lazy moments. I love to cook, but I also love my crock pot! So today's fun food mixture is a spicy cheesy mac and cheese... IN THE CROCK POT!

Now I should have stirred this more, maybe every 30 minutes to help prevent the cheese from caking on the sides. But I had errands to do. So I tossed this all together after work and headed back out for my errands. The only thing you have to be careful with - is unlike pot roasts or pulled pork in the crock pot, you can over cook pasta so you do have to be mindful of your time.

That said this was super easy and super quick. It was nice to be able to come and toss everything together and have dinner ready when I got back. It did take a little prep work, but not too much. I slightly cooked the pasta, but you could cook them entirely in the crock pot and give yourself more time to run around too (add a little extra milk if you do). For me, well, I did have errands to do but I was also very hungry! So I didn't want to wait any longer than necessary.

Along with cooking the pasta some, I also melted the cheese with the milk and butter; but everything else mixed together and cooked in the crock pot. So three pots for clean up isn't too bad... especially when one just cooked the pasta for a few minutes.

I don't know about you - but I like a little spice in things... If you want a little kick in your mac and cheese - this is a good one. I used pepper jack, chili powder and some red pepper flakes. A light spice but not too much - to me anyway :) If you don't like as much spice you could easily leave some out or just use extra cheddar. You don't have to make it spicy. I enjoy spice. That's the beautiful thing about mac and cheese - there are a ton of different ways you can make it.

At times I have to make myself avoid the spice. But it just sounded like a good little tweak to a fabulous old-school meal. Personally I think bacon would taste good with mac and cheese too. Then again - I fondly remember the hot dogs with mac and cheese from my younger years too. Lets face it... just about anything is good with cheese. It's kind of like deep frying things... there are some things that just always seem to be good :) Cover it in cheese or deep fry it and you can't go wrong! I saw a thing today about deep fried cheese curds - but I digress :)

Anyway - it came out great! Not the healthiest meal by far, but it was oh sooo good!

Here's what I did to make the mac and cheese in the crock pot.

Ingredients:

2 Cup Shell Macaroni (uncooked)

1/4 Cup Butter

8 ounce Sharp Cheddar Cheese (shredded)

1 Cup Pepper Jack Cheese (shredded)

1 Large Egg

1/2 Cup Sour Cream

10 3/4 ounce Condensed Cheddar Cheese Soup

1 Cup 2% Milk

1/2 tsp Yellow Mustard

1 tsp Black Pepper

1/2 tsp Onion Powder

1/2 tsp Garlic Powder

1/2 tsp Chili Powder

1/2 tsp Red Pepper Flakes

Cook pasta for 5 minutes and drain. Place in crock pot.

In medium saucepan melt the butter then add cheese and milk and stir continually until melted and blended smoothly. Once melted pour into crock pot and add all other ingredients. Mix well.