Bomb Diggity Mac N' Cheese

Horseradish Mac and Cheese 

In grade school I remember learning about food groups and filling in a pyramid etc. etc... All well and good for most, but in my mind there are really only three food groups: coffee with enough cream to stop your heart, cheese, and whiskey (which used to be white wine - a recent switch). Over the last couple of years I have been working on perfecting my homemade mac and cheese recipe.  Today I truly believe I have cracked the code with horseradish and hot sauce mac and cheese.  This one is a home run! 

Ingredients 

1 LB Elbow macaroni 

6 TSP Butter 

1/4 Cup Flour 

3 Cups Whole milk 

1/2 LB Cheddar 

1/2 LB Horseradish cheddar  

3/4 Cups Panko bread crumbs 

Hot pepper sauce 

Preheat oven to 325º

Grease cupcake pans for mini mac and cheese cup cakes - a winner at any party - or grease a baking pan for meal size mac and cheese. 

Heat milk to a simmer.

Melt butter over medium heat making sure not to burn, add flour and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add milk 1 cup at a time and cook for 8 minutes stirring when needed. Add cheese and let it melt. Add hot sauce, salt, and pepper to taste. Cook pasta one minute less then box recommends. Add to cheese. Place macaroni and cheese mixture in your muffin tins or baking pan.  Cover with bread crumbs and then with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes.  Uncover and brown.

Suck the air out of it...

3.7.14 The importance of vacuum sealing  

After my mother died, my father went on a sleep strike for about a month. During the wee hours of the morning he took to watching QVC. As seen on TV became as seen at the Silver’s house, every day like clockwork the UPS truck would come screaming up the dirt driveway to deliver a “package of promise” as my father called them. He’d order everything from a bike with no pedals to a spray glue that promised to fix most house hold leaks. These were trying days, but as they say every dark cloud has a silver lining. 

In one of these boxes came a vacuum sealer, one of my favorite kitchen items ever. Wildwood uses is for some advanced cooking styles such as intense pickling, sous vide and compressing. At home I use it to make my life easier. On a normal night my boys and I will walk in the door around 5:30 and it is always to my surprise that the house is dark and cold and that in the time I was gone not one secret elf came in and drew a warm bath, turned on the lights or made dinner! On these nights I have to make my growing boys something of substance with protein and have it on the table fast. This is where my vacuum sealer comes in. Usually on Sunday I do a great deal of cooking, while my boys ransack the house building forts, breaking things and spreading super hero wars from one end of the house to the other. I usually cook a couple chickens a soup and a pork butt AKA pork shoulder. I then vacuum seal the meats and stick them in my freezer so that I have something to feed my boys on these dark nights. The recipe I share now is a no fail pork shoulder that you can portion and vacuum seal for multiple meals.

Some of these meals include 

Pork tacos 

BBQ pork sandwiches 

Pork noodles 

Pork quesadillas 

Here’s my pork:

PORK SEASONING MIX- Cover your boneless pork shoulder in seasoning bellow. Sear on flattop or in a cast iron skillet browning all sides-2-4 minutes per side and roast in the oven covered at 300 for 4 hours

2T salt

2 T light brown sugar

1T black pepper

1T granulated garlic

1T smoked paprika

½ t cayenne

1/2 t cumin

Combine seasoning & coat pork

When it’s done the pork should break apart easily, pull, cool and vacuum seal in small batches.