Testosteroni Macaroni

A quick “editor’s note” if you will — while I’m sure that not everyone might like my writing, I take exception to the way the blog post is written. Maybe it is because I’m a guy and I cook (and do other “domestic” type things) but I feel it’s a bit over the top. But I’m not hear to talk about blog posts, just the food.

Quick suggestion, read the blog post to get a sense for the recipe and then read my comments. It may help you understand what I’m talking about as the blog post wasn’t super detailed in the instructions. That’s fine but not everyone can follow that.

Testosteroni Macaroni

This recipe was another one that was making the rounds on Facebook, or at least with some of the people I know. It was interesting enough for me to to “bookmark” it for later consideration which turned out to be last night. I had thought, or rather hoped, that this would be a something I’d throw together quick, pop in the oven and be done. But alas, not quite the case despite my best effort at multi tasking this took me 55 minutes to get ready to put into the oven. Not quite how I expected to spend my afternoon.

A few things that may have delayed me –

I chose to bake my bacon, as I always do. That may have taken longer than just frying it.

I had to wait until the bacon was done before cooking the other meats as it said to cook the other meats in the bacon grease. About this…once the bacon was done and I poured the grease off into the frying pan there was A LOT of grease. Way too much to try and cook two pounds of meat in. So, I poured most of it off. I then cooked the meats separately, one after the other. If I would have used a large pot instead of a skillet I may have been able to do both at the same time. Also, I don’t know that it was crucial to use bacon grease in cooking the meats. It would speed things up if you didn’t wait for the bacon to be done, regardless of how you cooked it.

I only have two large burners on my stove. A third would have sped things up despite cooking the pasta while the bacon was cooking (in the oven mind you) and setting it aside, a third large burner would have given me greater flexibility.

The rest was pretty straightforward. In measuring out the pasta I only had about 3 1/2 cups of macaroni which I stuck with. I thought about adding a different kind to make another 1/2 cup but I did want to mix. I’ve done that before and while it’s turned out ok, it is a little odd. I think the lower amount of pasta was a blessing anyway as it all just fit into the pan I used. Speaking of the pan, I used my standard 9×13 glass pan. Another 1/2 cup of pasta would have probably fit but it may have been busting out of the pan.

For the cheese sauce I did choose to use a beer rather than milk. The beer I chose was Batch 19 Prohibition Style Lager. Not because it was my favorite, but more so as it was the last one of those in the fridge and it seemed like a good use for it. Plus, I can’t really bring myself to use my favorite beer in something like this. Not that I’m opposed to using beer while cooking. One of the best macaroni and cheese dishes I’ve ever made was a beer macaroni and cheese. Once done, and everything folded in, it wasn’t very cheesy. If you want a really cheesy dish you’ll need to increase the mixture, maybe even double it. I did not, partly because I didn’t have time. Partly because I didn’t think it mattered that much.

For spices, I did put a few shakes of salt, pepper and nutmeg in. All probably about an 1/8th of a teaspoon. The nutmeg flavor carried through to the end but was subtle. A pretty good addition (as recommended by the original post but I skipped the cayenne). For the topping I used 1 cup (un-smashed) of each of the pretzels and chips, which of course led to less than two total cups of topping. I couldn’t figure out on the original post if that is what they did or not. It worked out. A little more would have better covered the dish. Might play that by ear and use more as needed. I did put both in the same plastic bag and let my kids beat on it with a meat tenderizer mallet. That worked for several reason but mainly it assured a good blend of the chips and pretzels.

The cheese on top, followed by the chips and pretzels formed a nice crust. I was pleased that it was not overpowering in chip or pretzel flavor. I was concerned that it might dry out but it’s not unlike using bread crumbs so I left it alone.

Overall, this was a good dish, the lack of cheesy-ness not withstanding. I was impressed after it was done at how it stayed together and you could “cut out” pieces (see picture). A lot of the Mac and cheese I’ve made doesn’t hold up like that. Bit that might be a personal preference. A nice, creamy Mac and cheese is always nice.