The BEST Seafood Mac and Cheese

Okay, folks, I'm going to start this one off by saying happy holidays to everybody. You know, this is my Sunday premiere, so what it do, folks? Now, listen, after looking at that thumbnail, you know we're making a seafood mac, right? Now, listen, when it comes to seafood mac, it's really you guys can make any type of mac and cheese you would like. You know what I mean? I'm going to show you how I make it, and then we're just going to introduce the seafood to it also, right? So, listen, I'm not finna like just over-talk nothing, try to make it seem like it's something other than what it is, so let's get it. All right, so this is real simple, folks. I've made this in the past. You guys seen it. Listen, we're getting ready to make a roux, right? So I'm going to go ahead and just put my butter in right there, and we're going to let that melt. Soon as that finish melting, and I want to melt it slow, so I'm not going to turn it up high or nothing like that. I just want this to melt, right? Then we're going to let it, you'll see. If you know how to make a roux, if you don't, you will know. It's almost like making gumbo, folks. I'm going to bring my noodles, right? This is my pasta water. Now, I usually like to save myself, I'm going to say about a cup, right? It's okay if you catch some of the pasta in the inside, right? Now, I'm getting ready to turn and just put this in here like this. I'm going into my calendar. We did these al dente. Now, you guys follow the instructions that's on your package, you know what I mean, to do yours al dente, but I'm going to stop. Usually, I stop the cooking process, right? So, I stopped a couple of minutes early. I don't want to rinse them or nothing like that. We're just going to let them drain just like that. We got some pasta water. Now, we're going to go back to this roux. Okay, now look, once your butter has melted, you want to add about a half a cup of flour, right? So, I'm going to just put this around like this. This is big enough for me to add it, right? Now, what I'm doing is I'm just cooking some of that flour out of here, you know what I mean? I'll let it go for about two minutes, you know what I mean? Then after that, I'm getting ready to increase the heat. Okay, so look, I want you guys to pay attention to the way it looks now. You just saw it and what I did off camera was I just added a heaping tablespoon of bacon grease, right? So, let me grab that so I can show you guys. Now, you don't have to have this. I forgot to tell you guys, you don't have to have this, right? If you don't, you want to go ahead and use butter. I would just suggest you putting in, you know what I mean, a little bit more butter until you get this type of consistency, right? This is what you want. I can tell you now though, this smells nice, folks. Now, I'm going to go ahead and make my adjustment down here on this fire and we just want to run like a medium flame. When we say making a roux, we want to cook this to a color, right? So, we're going to cook this until we get like a, just a little bit more, more of a little bit of a tan color. We kind of like there now, but I'm going to let it go ahead and just get just a little bit more. We got a little heat under the bottom. This is good right here. I don't want it to get too much darker. So, now I'm going to come in, right? Remember, when you're making a roux, it's going to really be about, you know, your elbow and just constantly moving this around, right? We want to get everything dissolved, right? So, I'm going to go ahead and just keep moving this around and we're just going to go ahead and cook this down a little bit. Okay, folks. Now, I want you to look at this right here. Now, remember how you had a lot of, you thought it was too much milk, you know, for those of you guys that are new. Now, I done already turned off my fire because I got a lot of heat in here, right? This is a big, you know, sauce pan, you know what I mean? So, it'll hold a lot of heat, right? It's a whole lot of metal. Now, this is what we're going to do. I'm going to go ahead and bring my spices and just add this in just like that, right? And we're going to work this in. Don't forget, the full ingredient list is now, you know, it's now downloadable, printable and all of that, right? So, just go to my website, SmokingTheGrillerWithAB.com and that's W-I-T-A-B.com, you know, for the full printable, you know, recipe. So, once you got it, you know, blended as best you can get it, it's almost like you need to put an emulsifier in here, right? Or I could have like sprinkled it in with my hand, but that right there is a whole lot of flavor, right? But we ain't even did nothing yet. Now, we're getting ready to add this cheese, right? So, I'm going to start with just a little bit here, just like that. This is where we're going to get our color and taste from, right? So, just watch. Remember, I already removed it from the fire, right? So, now we just bring this around like this and it'll just melt, you know, on its own. You can see this is a nice creamy sauce, right? I got the texture I like, I've been tasting it, right? And this right here is real nice, folks. You don't have to go out and spend that money, you know what I mean? And get none of that nacho cheese, this right here will get you in the game. We just season it up, right? But now you guys know how to do it, right? So, now look, I'm going to be using Creole kick, right? What I want to do is I just want to give this a little bit of flavor. I like the Creole seasoning. For those of you guys that, you know, want to use your own, you can, you know what I mean? But I like to just put this on here like this, right? Because I'm going to cut these down into bite-sized pieces. So, now I'm getting ready to use some of my A seasoning. You know, I like to profile on this right here. This right here, give it a little bit of that ooey, right? And then I'm going to go ahead and just hit it with a little bit of that black pepper, you know what I mean? Now I'm getting ready to add my crab meat to it, right? Now, just in case it has anything, I like to just go ahead and go to my sink and drain. In actuality, sometimes when you make like seafood, anything, you'd like to put all of the, you know, the juices in there also, right? But I'm going to take them here and I'm not going to break them up. We're going to do a lot of folding, but that way you can know that you have some crab, right? All right, you see that right there? Those are some nice pieces right there, right? Now I'm going to come with my shrimp, right? Everything but my lobster. Now when it comes to my lobster, we want to make these into bite-sized pieces. Now we drop that lobster in there, but don't worry. Now we're getting ready to bring, you know what I mean? We got to have that, that mat, right? So let's get it to break up a little bit. You guys can see it right now, how it's coming. Look at that right there, folks. Okay, so one of the things that I did not do, listen, you want to go to bake because we got to preheat, right? We're going to go to 350, right? And we're going to get that up to temp. Now when that's up to temp, listen, we're going to go ahead and get our casserole dish. And what we're going to do is we're going to layer, spray it, add a little roll, sprinkle a little cheese, repeat, repeat until it's done. If it thickens up on you or it look like it's not coating properly, don't forget we got that pasta water, right? That's that starchy water. So we can just add some of that to it, right? You don't want to add too much, but just look how it works, folks. It's going to need a little bit more though, right? Okay, so after, you know, spraying these dishes, now I'm just going to go ahead and layer these. Now this is an oven safe dish, you know what I mean? And then I'm going to have another one, but I like to just present it in this one right here, right? So just get it like this, let it spray a little bit. Now we'll come with a little bit, you know, like a layer of cheese, right? You don't need a whole lot. It's up to you guys, however you want to do it. You can do it whichever way, right? For me, I don't want to put like just like a whole lot, right? And you can put as many layers on here as you would like. Now don't forget, we only going in for about 20, 25 minutes, right? Just enough to put a little color on there, right? Then once you're done, just stick them in the oven. We're going to put them in there uncovered, right? For about 20 minutes. This is what you'll end up with, looking just like that. Now this actually belongs to somebody. They coming over here to come pick it up. But if you want to see how it comes out, I'll just go ahead and just get it like this. And you see that right there? This is right here. You know that cheese, let me see. You can see right here, we got some of that, you know, shrimp on top. Oh yeah. I'm going to go ahead and sprinkle some more on here. I see a little lobster, but this is it right here. Now, with that being said, you guys, listen, try this. Let me know what you guys think, you know, down in the comment section below. You guys can go over to my website, get a full printable, you know, you know, recipe. With that being said, listen, I'm going to go ahead and just cover this, sprinkle a little parsley on it and get out of here. You know what? I'm out. Peace.