Bacon Mac & Cheese

If anyone has not yet noticed, it’s pretty evident that we LOVE pork. Yes, we like the “other white meat.” We actually prefer pork over beef (we rarely buy beef and rarely eat it). A good number of people abstain from eating pork, but we are a fan and supporter of the domestic pig. 🙂 

This post is about one of our favorite meals: Bacon Mac & Cheese. The delicious taste of bacon incorporated with the cheesy, creamy taste of Mac & Cheese just calls for a celebratory post. We’ve made typical mac and cheese in the past, but decided to add bacon to it this time. We were speechless at the taste. But as the saying goes, everything taste better with bacon.

Before preparing the Mac & Cheese, I cooked 4 strips of bacon on a skillet. Because bacon is a highly processed food, we usually buy uncured bacon that does not contain nitrates/nitrites. We let the bacon cook for roughly 5 minutes on medium low heat, just until the bacon slices begin to curl slightly (don’t overcook the bacon!).

Sizzling Bacon

You will see plenty of bacon fat in the skillet. If you choose, you can dispose of the fat. We sometimes keep the fat in a container to use at a later time for another meal (Grits cooked with bacon fat  is delicious. We also use bacon fat as a substitute for butter when making pan fried eggs).

To prepare the Mac & Cheese, we followed a recipe but made simple adjustments:

• Add garlic powder and black pepper to the cheese sauce
• Reduce the cheddar cheese from 2 cups to 1 3/4 cups
• Add 4 slices of American cheese.

Prior to pouring the cheese sauce over the macaroni, we cut the cooked bacon strips into medium pieces and evenly distributed the pieces over the macaroni.

After about 30 minutes in the oven, the meal was ready. It was awesome, cheesy, and savory (I omitted the bread crumb topping, but may try that the next time).

Right out of the oven