EPIC Bacon Mac and Cheese!

This mac and cheese is EPIC in all ways. Epic proportions, epic ingredients. Epic taste.

Epic.

I felt the need to feed my roommates something delicious and powerful. I was set on making a dish with abslolutely no regard to dieting whatsoever. Something with loads of flavour and fat. (I say LOADS and FLAVOUR now because I'm living in the UK, which is awesome!)  This is the best way I have ever done mac and cheese in my life.

Here's our spectacular ingredients:

Berlin wall of ingredients

1. Let's start by talkin' bout the cheese. We collected like five types of cheese - including cream cheese, parmesean cheese, Mozzarella, pizza cheese, and most importantly Mature british white cheddar. They don't have orange cheddar cheese in this country, and if you find some, it's some sort of rarity and you probably shouldn't touch it.

2. Secondly, the noodz. We used these shell noodles right here. Got little crabs living in them. No wait, they don't, that's gross.

boil em mash em stick em in a stew

3. Onions. Garlics. Chiles. HOT, SPICY chiles. 

Hotter than your boyfriend's face

4. Malk.

5. Bacon, duh!

5. Walkers, which are the British equivalent to Lays potato chips. We sprinkled chips on top of the mac and cheese after it came out of the oven, making the cheesy dish essentially nachos a little more snacky. Walkers  taste a bit more oily than American Lays do. I feel like American people would probably taste more oily than British people, so this whole thing evens itself out.

6. BUTTAHR

7. Whiskey.

Whiskey sounds like a weird ingredient, doesn't it? Well surprisingly, it adds an INCREDIBLE smoky, bourbony essence. It's one of the best flavors i've ever tasted in my life. That distinctive, almost metallic smokiness lurking behind the cheesy, meaty pasta absolutely MAKES it.It wasn't like adding any ordinary food flavor, it was like adding fire, or a special essence. IT WAS LIFE

But don't add too much of it. Be careful with it. Only a splash is necessary for a whole pan of mac and cheese, or else it will be overpowering. And only pour it into your sauce if it's creamy with milk and cheese. NEVER pour alcohol into straight up oil or grease, or you might end up sharing your pasta with the firemen.

if you're underage, please stop trying to cook with whiskey right now

I overuse this joke

We officially began this mac by cooking THE BACON, The most important part of our life bacon mac and cheese.

gettin streaky

The British refer to the above type of bacon as "streaky bacon." That's because the British are weird. British bacon strips aren't streaky, they're typically shaped like lamb chops, or big hammers.

We then used the bacon's grease to create a roux, which is literally the foundation of mac and cheese. Roux is a DESPICABLE concoction of butter, flour, malk milk and other glorious fatty flavors. It's the SAOUCE, as Epic MealTime® would exclaim. The bacon fat and garlic in it our roux started packing serious flavor.

But then, this roux ended up looking like actual poop. The chunks of flour mixed in with bacon fat and gravy just wasn't attractive. We decided we had added too much flour and not enough swag. 

So, we threw away the first roux, and with the remnants of it we made a second roux - which had more milk, less bacon fat, but still bacon flavor. We added another huge slab of melted butter and lots of garlic. Then went in the cream cheese. And everything got pretty cheesy from there.

The cream cheese is what actually converted the innocent roux into a cheese sauce abomination. We added, after cream cheese, a whole block of grated British cheddar cheese. And then we added any cheese in the house that we wanted to spare our housemate Joshe from eating by himself, since he will absolutely eat any and ALL of the cheese. Anywhere. Always. That's just what happens when you're a cheese fiend.

Then we stirred in a pile of chopped bacon that was the size of a puppy.

I elect this sauce as my king

Boom! We poured them nudes noods noodles and the sauce together into a 13 by 9 by 4 metal pan, and topped it with crushed Walkers and loads of cheese, to complete it. Baked that for like 20 minutes. It made our whole house smell like heaven fell on it. Looks like our kitchen is Wicked Witch of the Best.

NOM

This was the smokiest, cheesiest, gamiest, naughtiest mac and cheese i've ever had.

If you're gonna improvise with the cheese flavours, pick some smoky ones like mozzarella or cheddar. Smoked gouda would taste AMAZING alongside whiskey in this dish. They're both smoky and taste kinda... lumberjacky. Like you feel tough when you're eating it.

Our bros TRULY enjoyed this mac!

Best. Dish. Ever. Can't wait for Thanksgiving ;)