Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese

     I know, 2 posts in the same day? I must have something important to do (studying). I'm just excited about my new blog. And yesterday was an eventful cooking day. I texted Joe and told him I went shopping so he's coming over for dinner. I gave him 3 menu options: chicken Francaise, chili, or buffalo chicken mac & cheese. I knew full well which one he would pick lol. He rationalized his choice by saying he didn't know what chicken Francaise is, and he's had my chili before, so there was really only one viable option. Fair enough. The mac & cheese was the one I was least sure about.

     I think I saw it first on Pinterest (LOVE) and I investigated further. A lot of people made their own cheese sauce with milk & flour, but I'm not ready to mess with that. I wanted easy mac & cheese... like add buffalo sauce and chicken to boxed mac & cheese. So that's exactly what I did. In case you couldn't tell, I'm no gourmand. I decided to class it up a bit, and got Velveeta instead of Kraft. I'm not sure why that's classier, but I feel like the cheese sauce is more "real" than the powder. And I like the shells.
     I also cheated on the chicken too, I got the pre-cooked Tyson stuff in a bag. Not the frozen kind, but the kind they keep next to the cheese. It's like, kind of gross. I mean, it tastes fine, but I was reading the ingredients, and there are a lot of chemicals. I might not do that anymore. (Buy that chicken, not read the ingredients.) I'm not like, super health conscious or into "natural" foods, but why would I buy that stuff when it's like almost as easy to chop up some boneless skinless chicken breasts and toss it in a pan? The only ingredient in that is chicken. It was kind of an aha moment. But anyway, I had it already, so I used it.

     The chicken was diced, so I just cut the pieces into even smaller ones, threw it in a skillet to heat it up with some wing sauce and bleu cheese. Let's talk about brand for a second. When you're doing buffalo anything, there's really only one option. Frank's Red Hot buffalo wing sauce, and Marie's bleu cheese dressing. End of story. So anyway, I tossed the chicken with the sauce. I eyeballed the amounts, just enough to coat the chicken. While I'm doing this, the pasta is just chillin in the colander (And I think I also overcooked the pasta. That's ok, Joe likes his pasta mushy.). 

     Something I haven't mastered yet is the art of having all parts of your meal be ready at the same time. Like the other day I was making spaghetti and meatballs, and the pasta was ready before the meatballs. That's definitely something I took for granted growing up... how was the side dish always ready at the same time as the meat and the rolls!? My mom is magnificent. I need to take notes while I'm home.

     Anyway, mixed up the macaroni, cheese sauce, chicken, and more hot sauce & bleu cheese. Then I decided I wanted to bake it. I put my gloppy mixture into a glass dish and sprinkled some panko breadcrumbs on top. The oven wasn't preheated, of course, but that was fine, I just turned it all the way up to broil. I just wanted a crunchy top. I kind of forgot about it for a minute and almost burned the breadcrumbs lol, but not quite. The crunchy top was a big hit with Joe, he commented on it. Bonus. Anyway, that's it. I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing in the casserole dish, but here's an individual serving of it.

      It looks SO orangey because of all the wing sauce haha. And you can see the lovely crunchy part. God, so good. It really did turn out awesome. I was a little heavy handed with the wing sauce- my roommate walked in and she was like "Oh my gosh, it smells so SPICY in here!" It did lol, but I love love love that smell lol. It tingled the nostrils, but it wasn't too overwhelming in the mouth. 

     I think I might try my hand at homemade mac & cheese eventually. It's just so good. And it's the same deal as the chicken. So many unnecessary chemicals, when you can just make your own cheese sauce. I'm still into the quick & easy for the most part, but as I get older I feel like homemade is becoming a bigger & bigger priority. And it's just more fun.

    Anyway, dinner was delicious, Joe had 2 helpings. I love cooking for other people :) There's still one serving left, maybe lunch tomorrow? Yum. Expect posts about chicken Francaise and chili soon!