Smoked Bacon Mac & Cheese!!

I knew when I read the recipe on Gary House's blogsite, http://www.cooking-outdoors.com/smoked-bacon-mac-n-cheese-recipe/, that this was going to be good. (I also learned that Gary House is a heckuva nice guy).

I didn't change much, except to double his recipe. Here's his original recipe and I'll add some thoughts at the end:

Smoked Bacon Mac n Cheese recipe

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Recipe type: Side dish

Author: Gary House

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 20 mins

Serves: 6 – 8

Ingredients

• 16 oz large elbow macaroni, cooked
• 6 slices of smoked bacon, cut in 1″ pieces
• 2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
• 2 cups mexican blend (cheddar/colby) cheese, shredded
• 5 oz 3 cheese blend (parmesan/asiago/romano) cheese, shredded
• 8 oz cream cheese, cubed
• 1 pint heavy cream
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tbs salt
• 2 tbs pepper
• 1 cup crushed corn flakes
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 3/4 stick butter, about 9 – 1/4″ pats
• cooking spray

Instructions

1. Prepare elbow macaroni according to package instructions.
2. Mix elbow macaroni, bacon, cheddar cheese, mexican blend cheese, 3 blend cheese and cream cheese together.
3. Mix heavy cream, milk, salt and pepper together.
4. Add milk mixture to macaroni mix and blend together.
5. Pour Mac n Cheese into cooking container.
6. Combine crushed corn flakes and bread crumbs together.
7. Spray all sides and bottom of a 8 x 8 x 4 inch container.
8. Pour Mac n Cheese into container.
9. Spread bread crumb mixture over top of Mac n Cheese to cover.
10. Place pats of butter on top of crumb mixture.
11. Smoke at 225 degrees F for one hour.

Notes

Container size can vary, just cook till cheese melts and top browns!

Back to me now, I doubled the recipe because we had 20 or so expected for a Super Bowl party. That made for an extremely heavy foil pan (9x13x4) that I picked up at the Dollar Tree. Get your foil pans there if you can. For a buck, they're a good deal, as opposed to $3 for the same thing at Wal-Mart or Target. 

I probably could've gotten away with a smaller quantity. Doubling it made A LOT of mac and cheese. 

Couple of observations, I pre-cooked the bacon in a skillet (tried smoking it in the smoker and that was taking too long) and mixed it in. It gets very heavy when mixing all of the ingredients. It's worth it, but bring a strong wrist. We also only were able to get in about 2/3 of the milk cream mixture without overloading the pan. My wife thought that made the dish a little dry. I thought it was fine. 

Also, the flavors of the cheese were amazing, but I didn't get much taste of smoke (it was on for about 3 hours) and I think the cheese drowned out the taste of the bacon a little. Gary's recipe calls for six pieces, I think I did about 14, chopped into thumb-sized pieces. It wouldn't have hurt any to add more. A guy at my office suggested mixing in a little of the bacon grease for flavor. That might be an idea, not sure. But if you're questioning if you should try this, by all means, do it!