Ham macaroni and cheese

This is a dish I make quite frequently, but tonight I made a few changes that turned out way better than I expected. Usually I begin to make the cheese sauce by making a roux. I add a tablespoon of butter, 1/4 cup of flour and stir it around for a minute, then I add 3 cups of skim milk and cook for 10 minutes until bubbly and thickened. But, I started to melt the butter in the pan and realized that with all the baking I have done recently, that I didn’t have any flour of any kind in my house. I thought of corn starch, but I didn’t have that either. As I was looking in my pantry, I saw potato flakes. Hmmmm… I wonder if that would work? So, I added 1/4 cup of potato flakes to the melted butter and it started to thicken up, I added the skim milk and it made a nice sauce. Then, for whatever reason I thought, “What if I put in a can of cream of celery soup to make it even creamier?” So that’s what I did! Next, I added salt, pepper, a few squirts of spicy brown mustard, and 4 oz. of cheddar cheese. In a separate pan I cooked 3 cups of uncooked elbow macaroni. I added the cooked macaroni to the sauce, added about 4 oz. of diced ham cubes and bake it at 350 for about 20 minutes.

This whole dish contains 1834 calories, 68 grams of fat and 4.5 fiber.If you eat 1/6th of this dish, you would be at 305 calories, 11 grams fat and .75 fiber.  The most fat was from the cheese, but adding the cream of celery soup gave it a really creamy consistency and another layer of taste, but it wasn’t overpowering.

With some pineapple chunks, it was a very comforting homemade style dinner.  I will definitely be making this version again.  Click here for the two other mac and cheese recipes I have posted about macaroni and cheese.

   
So to recap here are the ingredients again:
3 oz. uncooked macaroni
1 tb. butter
1/4 cup flour (or potato flakes!)
3 cups skim milk
4 ounces cheddar cheese
a few squirts of spicy brown mustard
4 oz. ham cubes
salt and pepper
1 can of cream of celery soup