Stovetop, creamy Macaroni & Cheese with a little kick of Pepper Jack cheese!
It’s Monday again. I hate when that happens. Did you have a good weekend? I went to see “The Package” concert on Saturday. That’s New Kids on the Block, 98 Degrees, and Boyz II Men. NKOTB was a little before my time but I still had fun. Even though I only knew about 20% of the songs. Now the countdown begins for the Jay-Z/Justin Timberlake concert. I’ll know alllll those songs.
This is a great weeknight meal and perfect for Meatless Monday. We happened to have some leftover (delicious) grilled chicken that the Mr. made so I paired it with that. The pepper jack isn’t overly spicy and I think it’d be fine for kids (here’s a tamer version if you’re worried about spice). It’s super creamy and cheesy. I tried to take a cool picture of the melty cheese stretching but I underestimated how hard it would be to hold the fork and the camera still to get the shot. So you get an out of focus picture of my bite. Sometimes I wish I had a tripod.
Pepper Jack Stovetop Macaroni & Cheese
Ingredients
- ½ lb rotini noodles I used a tomato & spinach garden pasta
- 3 Tablespoons butter
- 3 Tablespoons flour
- 1 ½ cup milk I used 2%
- salt & pepper to taste
- pinch of red pepper flakes
- 1 ½ cup pepper jack shredded
- ½ cup mozzarella shredded
Instructions
- In a large pot, bring salted water to boil and cook your noodles.
- Drain noodles and set aside.
- Using the same pot (or a new one if you like to do dishes), melt the butter over medium high heat until bubbly. Whisk in the flour, one tablespoon at a time, making sure to fully cook each addition.
- Cook the flour until it is no longer raw. The mixture (a roux) should be thick and pale yellow.
- Add in the milk, while whisking. Continue cooking until the mixture thickens and is creamy.
- Season with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Remove from heat and stir in your cheeses. Stir until fully melted and incorporated.
- Add your drained pasta to the cheese mixture and stir to fully coat.
Nutritional information is an estimate and provided to you as a courtesy. You should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe using your preferred nutrition calculator.
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Things you may need…
Garden Rotini Noodles
a good whisk
Colander
Or maybe you’d like…
Stovetop Creamy Mac & Cheese
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This sounds soo good! I love all things pepper jack 🙂
This looks amazing!! 🙂 I definitely Pinned this for later!
My children would say it would take me at least 3 pots to make this dish. It probably would. But it sounds so good and easy to make. I have all those ingredients right now. I’d love it if you would link this up to What’d You Do This Weekend? http://www.tumbleweedcontessa.com/blog/whatd-you-do-this-weekend-19/
Wishes for tasty dishes,
Linda
Tubmleweed Contessa
Oh my goodness, you just made me feel old 😉 NKOTB was totally my time!! And the others too. Glad you had fun! And this looks amazing. Drool!!
I transposed the amounts of cheese to be added, so I ended up using 1-1/2 cups of mozzarella, and 1/2 cup of pepper jack! I also added a few shakes of garlic powder and 7 cut-up slices of drained bacon – it came out GREAT! Thank you so much for posting this!