In this week's podcast, we talked about smoking mac and cheese. As promised, here is the recipe with a visual tour of the process of smoking a batch for yourself. It is a very easy recipe, and the result were great. This was a crock pot recipe that we are redeeming by finishing in the smoker. If you decide to try your hand at making this in the crock pot, cook on the low setting for 2.5 hours. Its better when smoked though, just so you know. 

First off, the ingredients and process:

• 1/2 stick of butter 
• 1 can condensed cheddar cheese soup 
• 2 cups half and half 
• 4 cups cheddar cheese (grated) (feel free to mix up the cheese suggestion to suit your taste)
• 12oz of your favorite noodle (we use small shells)
• Hickory wood (or your wood of choice for smoke)

Your first step is to boil your noodle of choice. As noted, we prefer small shells, but almost anything will work.

As your noodles are cooking, I'd suggest getting your smoker up to temperature before you put the mac and cheese in. I don't always take my unit up to temp before putting meat in, but in this instance, getting things warmed up was more important to me. For this recipe I used my Masterbuilt XL smoker at 250º, and hickory. Also, because the mac and cheese will only be in the smoker for 1.5 hours, get some good smoke going.

Once the noodles are done, pile in the glorious ingredients.

Now, stir.

Once everything looks evenly mixed, pour it into a half chafing dish. I prefer the disposable ones. You can also use a non-disposable pan, but the smoke might cause you grief. I've noticed that anything I've put into the smoker is really difficult to clean, so I tend to use either items shunned from the kitchen to live the life all kitchenware dreams up - as an outdoor cooking tool, or the aluminum disposable dishes.

Now, into the preheated and smoking smokily smoker:

Smoke at 250º for 1.5 hours.

I pulled our batch out when the cheese looked melted, and some of the pasta tips were starting to brown:

In the house, it looked like this:

If it were left in much longer, the top layer may have been too hard to eat. The top pasta on dishes like this tend to get chewy, or worse, crunchy, when overcooked. This happens when cooked in the crock pot too, but mostly along the edges of the top layer. At 1.5 hours, we didn't have that problem, and all layers were delicious, with the top layer being just a bit firmer. Also worth noting, the top layer was where the smoker flavor was. It wasn't overwhelming at all, and added a very nice degree of interest to the dish.

Hope you enjoy it if you make it!