How to - Smoked Mac and Cheese

What's up guys ?

It's Suzie Bullock from Hey girl , hey dot com .

And we all know that one of the best barbecue side dishes is mac and cheese .

But to take it to the next level , I'm going to show you how I make smoked mac and cheese .

Let's do it .

We are starting out by melting a half a cup of butter in a 12 inch cast iron skillet .

Put that over medium heat , get the butter melted nice all the way through and stir in four tablespoons of flour .

You want to use a whisk for this part so that you don't have any flour clumps and you kind of a nice smooth paste , stir in a tablespoon of mustard powder .

This will give your mac and cheese a nice punch and then whisk in two cups of half and half as you bring that up to a boil , you'll actually start to see that .

It thickens the cream in the sauce , which is lovely .

Add in four ounces of cream cheese and continue whisking .

You don't want to see any clumps of cream cheese , keep stirring until it's nice and smooth and everything is broken down .

This is where you turn off the heat and then stir in three cups of shredded medium cheddar cheese and a cup and a half of go cheese .

This will give you that nice luscious like stringy cheese pole .

And when you go to take a bite , now that our cheese sauce is done , we're gonna pour in a pound of elbow macaroni noodles that have been cooked al dente .

We don't want to cook them until they're super duper soft because this is gonna go in the smoker and they're actually gonna cook a little bit more .

So make sure they still have a little bite when you dump them in , gently , mix that into the cheese sauce and you're actually gonna smoke it right in the cast iron skillet .

So you don't even have to dirty another dish .

We're gonna make a topping .

This part is optional if you like a little crunch on the top of your mac and cheese .

This step is for you , take one cup of panco bread crumbs .

Those are actually a little bit bigger than traditional bread crumbs and a lot crunchier stir in a quarter cup of melted butter .

And I like to add a two tablespoons of a barbecue rub .

We're using my signature sweet rub , which is available on my website .

You can check that out , Sprinkle that literally all over the top of your mac and cheese and then it's heading outside to the smoker .

We've got the smoker preheated 225 degrees .

And we're going to leave it in there for an hour .

This will take on smoke really quickly .

So you don't need to leave it in for too long .

And we don't want it to absorb too much of the liquid that's in the sauce for the wood that I'm using .

I'm actually using a cherry wood , but most woods are actually really versatile and fantastic on smoked mac and cheese .

The stronger ones would be something like a hickory or a mesquite will give you a really strong smoke flavor .

I like the milder flavors of fruit woods like apple or cherry .

Those are fantastic ones to use with mac and cheese .

Our mac and cheese is off the smoker .

It's got a beautiful golden brown crust , golden brown .

That's a color , golden brown .

It's got this golden buttery crust on the top , super tender noodles and all of the cheese a girl could ever hope for .

Mm .

Yeah .

That's awesome .

I hope you guys give this one a try .

If you do leave a comment and share a picture , we'd love to see what you're making at your backyard barbecue .

See you next time .