Our favorite macaroni and cheese

Well… it was… then we had to go and mess with it.

Here is the original recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Mac-and-Two-Cheeses-with-Caramelized-Shallots-350762

Allow me to say… don’t deviate from it. That said, I’ll take you through what we did, and tell you where we messed things up.

So, we took the above recipe… and thought… you know what would make this better? Meat. Lots of meat. So, in the past, we’ve made it with bacon anyhow, so that was nothing new. But, we figured… ya know, add some ground beef into the works as well… and it’ll be like bacon cheeseburger mac and cheese; and how awesome is that?

For pictures… I’m just going to include the pictures of what you *should* do.

Cook up some bacon. Just about 4-6 strips will do it.

Use fresh shallots. The recipe calls for 3 cups… someone is insane. 1 cup is plenty. 3 Cups would be a shallot casserole with a side dish of macaroni noodles.

So, either using the leftover bacon grease, or the 3TBSP of butter specified in the recipe, cook the shallots until they turn a lovely golden brown. If they get a little crispy… that’s fine. They’re still amazingly tasty.

Meanwhile, get your 1/2 & 1/2 and cheese/flour mixture ready, your noodles boiling, your casserole pan buttered, and your oven preheated to 400 degrees. After 5-6 minutes on medium heat, the shallots will be done. Wash the pan out and add the half & half and hot sauce. Get that mixture hot and simmering, then add the cheese/flour mixture. Wisk all of that together until this:

Becomes this:

By this time, your macaroni should be done. Drain it and add it to the cheesy goodness. Fold and mix that in until everything is evenly spread and coated. After everything is happily coated, dump the cheesy noodles into the casserole dish and top with the bacon, shallots and goat cheese.

Then, it’s all into the oven for about 15 minutes.

We made ours tonight with a pound of beef, and used feta cheese instead of goat cheese. While it wasn’t bad… it was NOWHERE near the wonderfulness that the original recipe produces. (Original recipe that is… except for the 3 cups of shallots.)

Experimenting and trying new things is a rather important part of cooking… but in this case it didn’t work out as well as we would have liked. It was still rather tasty… but in more of a casserole way than savory mac and cheese way. … Try the original recipe… it is by far the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had.