Hey guys! With all the craziness that surrounds our lives on a day-to-day basis, sometimes we need to create something in the kitchen that’s easy to make and bake in the oven, so that we can continue on doing what we have to do and hopefully get some solid leftovers while we’re at it. If you ever feel like that, which I’m sure most people do, try this recipe out. It’s a buffalo style baked macaroni and cheese using our sauce mix, and with a few other ingredients you can make a dinner for the family on the fly and still have some left over for an easy lunch the next day. I choose to use some leftover chicken that I cooked the previous night in order to make this recipe happen, but you could easily use rotisserie chicken from the grocery store as a solid substitute if you didn’t have anything laying around.
In the first step, Mac Daddy cheese sauce is added to the milk and butter...recipe to follow. This comes up to a simmer and then gets set aside until final assembly.
This recipe calls for making a quick buffalo sauce, we choose franks as our standard hot sauce, but you can easily pick up some pre-made buffalo sauce too, that will also work just fine.
Before the final cook, all the ingredients are mixed together. Behold the cheesy goodness! You will see in the recipe that I have added a few more things to the sauce, just to take it to some next level stuff.
The final product, in all its gluten-free glory. You can make this recipe gluten free simply by choosing your desired pasta, and opting for some gluten free breadcrumbs.
Ingredients
8 oz Elbow macaroni
1 1/2 cup Milk
4 oz Butter
1 pkg Mac Daddy Cheese Sauce
8 ea Cherry tomatoes, halved
1 ea Jalapeno pepper, diced
1/2 can Petite peas, drained
1/2 cup Breadcrumbs
For the topping
4T Butter
4T Franks hot sauce
2T Bleu cheese dressing
1 cup Diced cooked chicken
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Bring a medium pot of water to a boil, cook macaroni until al dente, about 5 minutes tops. Drain pasta and shock under cold water. Set aside.
In a medium saucepan, combine milk, butter, and cheese mix. Heat over medium until the sauce is simmering, whisking frequently as to not burn the sauce. Allow to simmer about 3 minutes, then turn off heat. Add your tomatoes, peas, and jalapeno (optional) and set aside.
In a small saucepan, make the buffalo chicken topping. Combine the butter, hot sauce and bleu cheese dressing and bring to a simmer. whisk to combine and add chicken.
To assemble: Stir in drained pasta into the cheese sauce, mixing well to combine. Spray a 9" casserole with nonstick spray, and pour in macaroni and cheese mixture. Evenly distribute buffalo chicken topping across the casserole, and then top with breadcrumbs. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes, or until it is bubbly and nicely browned on the top.
That's it! A quick meal with an epic flavor profile. Email us with any questions, and enjoy what's cooking.
