There’s masses of cheese and plenty of smoked bacon. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a low heat. Stir in the plain flour and cook for 1 minute. Add the mustard, take the pan off smoked mac and cheese heat and gradually whisk in the milk and cream.
Put the pan back over the heat, stirring constantly, until it boils and thickens. Take the pan off the heat again, remove the bay leaf and add the cheddar. Stir until the cheese has melted. Season with lots of black pepper and some nutmeg. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and stir in the macaroni. Cook for 10 minutes, or until al dente, drain well and add to the sauce.
Fry the bacon in a frying pan until crisp. Stir into the macaroni cheese and pour the mixture into the ovenproof dish. Mix the breadcrumbs with the Parmesan and scatter over the top. 30 minutes, or until golden-brown and bubbling. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking. That could have been a moderately good score, a passing grade, if the rating system had been different.
That would have indicated that Brian was giving supper a medium-high evaluation, and unfortunately, that was not the case. Unfortunately for him, at least, but not so much for the rest of us, as that meant more for us. We were having smoked macaroni and cheese, a result of my attempt to appease all members of the family. I believe it’s almost by law that 4-year-olds have to love mac and cheese, so Big Sister was a given. Benson hadn’t had pasta yet, but he loves practicing his pincer grip and picking food up — maybe to eat, maybe to smash, maybe to fling — so noodles sounded great.
I’m the cook, and I was into the idea. A friend had just given us a delightful selection of cheese varieties he had smoked, and while boxed or even regular homemade macaroni has almost no draw for me, adding a smoked element completely changes the game. Plus, I had some tricks up my sleeve that I had been wanting to try, in the form of some pureéd sweet potato. Suddenly, this sounded exactly like my kind of dish.