Bacon Macaroni and Cheese

Macaroni and Cheese is good, add bacon to it and it's even better.

We were hungry and this is what came of it.

Here is what we used for our ingredients.

1 Package of bacon
Noodles - We used 1-16 ounce box of medium shells
Cheddar cheese
Velveta or some sort of melting cheese
Pepper Jack Cheese
Chicken Breast
Bread Crumbs (we used Seasoned French,but you can use regular as well)
Parmesan Cheese
Optional: we used milk during the stirring stage when it started to get too hard to stir.

Materials
We used a dutch oven to cook all of the ingredients (bacon and chicken) and when we mixed everything together.  You can cook your ingredients in pans, or however you prefer, but at the end you will want an oven safe dish for baking.

The recipe seems to make about six servings.

COOK THE BACON.  This is the best part of the process and though we cooked up a whole pack it didn't all end up in the recipe as it was snacked upon during cooking.  We used a dutch oven and cooked much of it until it was crispy, but only partially cooked the rest.  Whatever is partially cooked should be separated from the fully cooked.

At some point, turn the oven on to 415 degrees, but some of the preparing may take some time so you can wait until you have a few things done.  Also, while doing the rest of this, put a pot on to boil and cook the noodles according to the package, but cut off a few minutes as they will cook later in the oven.

Set the bacon to the side and cut up the chicken into cubes of the same size.  Cook them through and set aside.
Prepare your cheeses.  Shred as much cheddar as you want to use in the dish.  We used about two cups.  Crumble the pepper jack into small chucks and just cut up the Velveta so that it melts faster when mixed in.  There was about a cup of each the pepper jack and Velveta.  (Add more Velveta if you want it creamier.)  

Once the noodles are cooked, the chicken is cooked, the bacon is ready and all the cheeses are prepared you can move onto the next step.

Our dutch oven was already warm from cooking the bacon and chicken in it.  You may need to heat up the casserole dish before mixing together all of your ingredients to make sure your cheeses melt together.  Start by putting the noodles in your dutch oven or oven safe dish and add the shredded cheddar.  Next add in the velveta and start stirring it all together. 

Add the chicken and continue stirring.  Then add the partially cooked bacon.  We ended up adding in about 3/4 of the bacon we cooked up.  Add the pepper jack in las.  We wanted it to melt in chucks in the finished dish so that is why it was not added in with the other cheeses.

If it gets too difficult to stir during any point during the mixing, just add a little milk to loosen it up.

Before sticking it in the oven we topped it off with the bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

Now, stick it in the oven and let it bake.  We put it in for around 10 minutes, but cooking time will vary depending on the dish you use to cook it in and how much cheese you have in it.  We took it out when the cheese on the side of the dutch oven was starting to get brown.  As long as the chicken is thouroghly cooked, the baking time will just depend on preference.

Sprinkle on the crunchy bacon that you haven't used yet and you are ready to eat.  Our parmesan cheese didn't melt, so depending on what type of parmesan you use, it may or may not melt so don't use that as your determiner of if it is done.

It tastes amazing and the bacon just makes the dish what it is.  You will love it once you try it!

Enjoy!