Crock Pot Challenge Meal #12: Mac n Cheese

Mac n Cheese is one of my favorite meals.  I can eat it out of the blue box like I did when I was a kid and I'm even happier trying to find the best Mac n Cheese in Atlanta.  There are a lot of restaurants who server amazing Mac n Cheese, but I'm leaning towards Fox Bros. BBQ right now.

When I was doing research for my recipes to try during the Crock Pot Challenge I knew I had to have a Mac n Cheese in the mix.  I found a fantastic recipe on the blog Whisk and A Prayer written in 2010, check it out here.  I love that about blogs and the Internet - something someone wrote two years ago is still relevant and searchable.

Not your typical slow cooker recipe, this one only cooks for a total of three hours.  (I think we cooked ours about 30 min longer than that, we were running errands and just kept it going.)  A three hour slow cooker recipe is perfect for a weekend lunch or dinner.  The ingredients are mixed in the Crock Pot and then basically forgotten about until it's time to eat.

The recipe says to par cook the pasta before adding it to the crock pot.  I skipped this step, because I didn't read it.  While I was worried it would make the pasta too hard, it was actually perfect.  I think if I had cooked them they would have been too soggy.

Mac n Cheese still in the Crock Pot.  Not a creamy cheese and still delicious!

The recipe is absolutely a Keeper and it's an easy dish to bring to a pot luck party or to server to a large group of people.  I think we'll get 4 to 6 servings out of the dish.  If the Mac n Cheese was served as part of a larger pot luck style dinner, it could easily server 10+.

We will add some sauteed onions and probably some bacon next time around to add a little bit of flavor.  I think we'll try at some point with only one egg and we'll bump up the butter, too.  Besides that, the dish was just perfect.

After the Overnight Oats failure in Meal #11, I'm glad I redeemed myself with the Mac n Cheese.