We often refer to Tuesdays at our house as “Taco Tuesdays.” My kids love tacos, and at some point, I’ll share my taco seasoning mix with you. 🙂  This week I had to resort to a little creativity, as we our freezer is out of hamburger. To mix things up, I developed a recipe I call Mexican Macaroni and Cheese. With chorizo, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, and monterey jack cheese, Mexican Macaroni and Cheese is not your typical mac ‘n cheese. The dish is homey and cheesy, but it also gets a nice kick from the different South-of-the-Border spices. My kids loved it, and I think we’ll add it into our Taco Tuesday rotation.
The recipe…
If you’ve read my post on the Easiest and Yummiest Mac ‘n Cheese, you know that I use a fast roux for my comfort food recipes. I do not use canned or processed soup/cheese! For Mexican Macaroni and Cheese, I took this recipe a step further by adding minced chipotle, adobo sauce, fried chorizo, and cumin. I stirred in a co-jack shredded cheese mix for the perfect velvety smooth sauce to wrap around my cooked macaroni. I decided to top the Mexican Macaroni and Cheese with crushed tortilla chips and bake the casserole at 350° F for 25 minutes. This created a bubbly masterpiece to which I added a nice, green spinach salad and called dinner, done!
This recipe makes a heaping-helping, so you’ll have plenty of leftovers! I’m super excited to have it in my lunch this week. If the cold mac seems a little too stiff, just add a splash of milk per serving. Then,  reheat in the microwave, covered of course! 🙂
Ingredients
- 9 oz. pork chorizo, fried and drained
- 2 T. butter
- 3 T. flour
- 2 1/2 c. milk
- pinch salt/pepper
- 1 T. chipotle chili, minced (about one whole pepper), may add more to increase heat, depending on chorizo seasonings
- 1 t. adobo sauce, may add more to increase heat, depending on chorizo seasonings
- 1 t. cumin
- 8 oz. colby and monterey jack shredded cheese
- 3. elbow macaroni
- 1 c. crushed tortilla chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F.
- In a medium skillet, fry chorizo until done. Drain and set aside.
- Cook macaroni noodles as directed on box.
- Melt butter over low heat in medium saucepan. Once melted, whisk in the flour slowly, making sure to combine well.
- Cook and stir over medium heat for several minutes (3-4 min.) to remove the “flour” flavor, but make sure it doesn’t darken in color.
- While roux is hot, slowly whisk in milk. This should take a good 30+ seconds. Do it slowly so that there are no lumps!
- After the sauce has thickened and is bubbly, stir in the salt, pepper, minced chipotle pepper, adobo sauce, and cumin.
- Whisk in cheese until smooth.
- Fold in chorizo and cooked macaroni noodles.
- Place in greased casserole. Top with crushed tortilla chips and bake for 20-25 minutes, until bubbly.
Wishing you all peace and well-being this week. It has been a challenging one, but we have so many blessings to be thankful for!