Chili Mac and Cheese

We really enjoyed this chili mac recipe, especially since it makes two meals in one. First, we made the chili and had a regular chili dinner, garnishing it with sour cream, sliced avocado, and grated Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses. Flavorwise, this was one of the best chili recipes we’ve had.

The only caveat I have is that this recipe will make a very, very spicy chili. (I don’t deal well with a lot of heat in food, and so I halved all of the ingredients that produce heat—the jalapeño and Anaheim peppers, the hot pepper sauce, and the chipotles en adobo. This provided just the right amount of heat for my taste.)

At first glance, I felt the proportion of the beef to the beans and vegetables was a bit off, but the fact that the beef was less dominant worked well and made for a slightly “heart-healthier” chili. The chili mac was a great variation on mac and cheese. It’s also a good way to use leftover chili as an alternative to several meals of just chili.

This chili mac was delicious. I used a vegetarian chili and made the macaroni and cheese part as per the recipe. The only downside was that it was hard to serve as it’s very fluid. I would definitely make this again but maybe use less of the liquid from the chili.

This deceptively simple idea is to take the well-known combination of spaghetti and chili beyond a Cincinnati three- or four- or five-way and make it worthy of a mention in a Calvin Trillin essay. This chili mac recipe makes the nicest cheese sauce, tops it with your favorite homemade chili, adds a crisp topping, and gives you a winner that’s greater than all the parts.

I used our current favorite chili, which is a Vegetarian Chili made with white beans from Rancho Gordo. It had a pretty good level of spice from the chipotle. In the flour and spice mixture for the cheese sauce, I used half-and-half in place of cream and milk and a pipe rigate shape of pasta from Whole Foods organic line. Having a previous batch of chili frozen, I just had to remember to pull it out to defrost overnight in the refrigerator, so the assembly for this dinner went quickly without being an all-afternoon project.

Knowing this recipe requires 3 cups of chili, I will make sure that amount is conveniently frozen in the future as well. The sauce comes together very easily, and while the addition of mustard and spices to your flour mixture gives your roux an immediate tint, watch carefully and you will see it begin to brown, and that’s when you’re ready to add the cream and milk. The white sauce has a bit of a punch (I wasn’t shy with the black and red pepper), but the cheese and baking mellow it. I was a little concerned that my chili was on the “wet” side, and gently spooned in the mac and cheese mixture, similar to dumpling dough. The baking time was spot on and when I served it out 10 minutes later, it was thick enough to look very appetizing in wide shallow bowls.

We certainly expected it would be good, but really were overwhelmed at how much better than “good” it was. Both of us simultaneously and enthusiastically rated this an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. Extreme comfort food but nice enough that we would share with company if we weren’t so greedy. The relatively small amount of pasta is deceptively satisfying. Can’t wait to have this again. Leftovers reheat perfectly in the microwave. Our version was vegetarian, and one didn’t miss the meat at all, though of course, that would work as well. I used panko in place of bread and the crispness was perfect.

The creamy macaroni & cheese and the spicy chili marry very well underneath the toasty cheesy crust—just the thing to make when you want to see all smiles around the dinner table! If you’re unsure about your guests’ tolerance for spicy food, I would omit the jalapeno chiles and hot pepper sauce (I did).

I would also suggest making the garlic-chile purée with half a can of chipotles en abodo first (don’t unplug the blender yet). Add the mixture along with the beans, beef, etc. to the pot and taste the chili. Then whiz the rest of the can of chipotles in the blender to fine-tune the heat to your liking. My dining companion told me, “I can’t find anything wrong with it,” while enjoying this flavorful comfort food, and I concur! I served mine with homemade dinner rolls but biscuits or cornbread would also be fantastic with this chili mac.

This chili mac recipe was a lot of fun to make and eat. If you do it the way that I did, it can be made in stages, making it much easier on yourself. I made the chili on a Friday and put it in the refrigerator in the pot I made it in until Sunday morning when I made the mac and cheese. I made the mac and cheese in the morning, put the casserole together, and then put it in the refrigerator, freeing me up for a day of football, knowing that we would have a nice dinner to look forward to.

I made the chili that was included with this recipe. I must say, when I saw that for 1 pound of ground beef, an entire 7-ounce can of chipotles en adobo was used, I was concerned that it would be extremely spicy. I actually kept reading the recipe, thinking that I had read it incorrectly. I hadn’t and made the chili as written. Oh, my goodness, it is indeed spicy. I did count on the mac and cheese tempering the heat of the chili, and it did to a great extent. (A cold beer also helped.)

The mac and cheese recipe is excellent. I particularly like that the roux, instead of just having flour and milk, or in my case, half-and-half, there was also mustard powder, garlic powder, black pepper, and cayenne pepper, which made for a wonderfully flavored cheese sauce. The recipe made extra cheese sauce, which my pasta really swam in. I was very pleased with that, however, after the whole dish was put together, the pasta absorbed all of the excess. I might actually use this recipe for mac and cheese on its own. I used cavatappi for the pasta. It’s a really fun curly q-shaped pasta that nicely traps the cheese sauce.

Both of these things together—the chili and the mac and cheese— made a comforting dish that I would recommend to folks who want something comforting and full of flavor. For folks who don’t like spicy food, perhaps you should make your favorite chili recipe, or cut back on the chipotles in adobo in the chili included here. The chili yielded 11 cups. I used 3 cups for this recipe and I have 4 containers of chili in the freezer so that I can make this chili mac again with even less work.