Macaroni & Cheese

We absolutely love macaroni and cheese. Katie is kind of a snob about it, though. She doesn’t much care for things like meat, bread crumbs, or stinky cheese in her dish. Scotty completely agrees on the bread crumbs and stinky cheese, though he’s far more open to the idea of meat in his food (he claims he didn’t get to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian). Anyway, after years and years of practice, we’ve finally created a macaroni and cheese recipe that is both yummy and super-easy, both of which we consider to be incredibly important in a staple dish such as this.

Ingredients

  1. 8 oz macaroni noodles (big or small, doesn’t matter)
  2. PAM (or some other non-stick cooking spray)
  3. 8 oz shredded cheese (we like HEB’s Mexican Blend without jalapenos)
  4. 1 1/4 cup milk (preferably not fat-free; 1% is OK, though)
  5. 1 teaspoon salt
  6. 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

  1. Boil the noodles for eight minutes in a pot of water on the stove. Remove and drain.
  2. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
  3. Grease a baking dish (I like to use a round Corningware dish, but a square casserole dish will work just fine as well) with the non-stick spray.
  4. Place HALF of the shredded cheese in the bottom of the baking dish.
  5. Pour the noodles over the cheese.
  6. Add the other half of the shredded cheese to the top of the noodles.
  7. Sprinkle the noodles and cheese with the salt and pepper.
  8. Pour the milk over everything and stir well so that everything gets nice and mixed together.
  9. Place dish in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Halfway through the baking process, remove the dish from the oven and stir everything really well again. This makes sure that everything bakes nice and evenly.
  10. Arguably the most important step: ENJOY!!

A Variation on Mac ‘n Cheese

Even though I (Katie) don’t usually want meat in my macaroni and cheese, I’ll make an exception for ham as long as there’s the perfect amount – not too much, not too little. If you want to add meat to this macaroni and cheese, here’s my recommendation. Using the above recipe, follow the directions exactly except when you’re putting everything into the baking dish, add about 3/4 cup chopped ham (pre-cooked) somewhere in the middle and continue with the rest of the ingredients, stirring when finished so it’s all mixed together nicely. It is absolutely wonderful. We do this when we have leftover ham or a hamsteak we need to eat before it goes bad.