Creamy Jalapeño Popper Mac and Cheese with Crispy Bacon Topping

Okay, so listen. After reading that, I'mma say it for you. Today, I'm making a jalapeno popper mac and cheese. I want y'all to say that three times. Let's get it. Okay, before we get started, you guys see we do a little bit of prep work. You know what I mean? We got to dice down these jalapenos. Get our onions done. You got to make that bacon. Listen, when you make that bacon, don't forget, we got to save that uh that bacon fat. That's going to be the key, especially when the fall comes. Now, don't forget the full ingredient list is on my website. That's smoking grillingwithab.com and that's witab.com. Now, let's go ahead and start our oven. Let's go ahead and uh get it preheated. We want to hit bake 350° and hit start. Now, I put a little heat underneath the bottom of here, right? Cuz what we want to do is we want to melt our butter. Now, we're going to put that in there. We're going to wait till that melts. Now that we got that completely melted, now I'm getting ready to add my jalapenos and my onions. Now, I want to make sure all of it's got butter on it. I make sure I raise my fire up to a medium flame. And what you want to do is just stir these and then we going to let them work a little bit and start to, you know, soften up. Look, I'm going to give you guys a pro tip. This is really for all of my people who are like new, venturing out, you know, and starting their cooking journey. When I say soften, listen, whatever you using to stir around, you can feel when you first put it in there, it's going to have a little, you can feel every piece of diced, you know, veggie, you know, hitting it as they starting to soften. Now, you move it around, it's not so hard. Then, if you want to, you can just tap it over the top and you'll see. But you and I you can uh feel that they softening up. Now once we achieve, you know, our veggies, they nice and soft. You know what I mean? We not rendering them all the way down. I'm gonna be using my garlic press and I'm going to go ahead and put a couple of cloves in here. Right. So, we'll give this a squeeze. Look at this right here. Oh yeah. Now, notice I put it right here on the top, right? So, I don't have to worry about it burning, but it's enough butter and everything in there. Just put it in there. Now, you just want to stir this until it becomes fragrant, right? which is usually once the garlic touches anything hot, it kick back a fragrance. It just said says hello, right? So, we just move this around just like you see. Look at that. That's a lot of yumminess down in there. Now, after about a minute of, you know, keep stirring and keeping that garlic working. Now, we add the flour. Now, you guys know this is like one of my favorite parts right here cuz now, you know, makes me think about anytime I do a R, I think about, you know, gumball, right? I enjoy making it. Too bad you guys are not my neighbor cuz I be making it for y'all all the time. Right. So, I got my flour in here. We good. We want to cook that flour taste out. We want that to marry with, you know, our jalapeno poppers, onions, and garlic, and that butter, right? All right. Now, once your your mixture becomes a golden brown, you know what I mean? You going to see a little tint of green. That's from the jalapeno pepper. You know what I mean? And uh now we going to go ahead and add and don't forget I'm on a medium well I'm on a medium flame. So now I start adding look at that right there. I start adding my milk. Right? You just want to continue to stir it. Right? You want to get all of this in here. Now if you knew, you know what I mean? There's nothing wrong with staying on a medium. Right here is where I would go to a medium high just to get it to a boil and then I would quickly reduce it down to a simmer. Right? But it's nothing wrong with just keeping it at a medium. We just wait till it heats up and then we start searing our bubbles. But the main thing is you want to keep, you know, stirring this. You don't want to see no lumps. Look at that right there. That's nice. Now I'm on a medium. Right. This is good right here. You can see it'll start to try to thicken up. When I get to this point right here, this is when we want to add everything, the rest of the my ingredients as far as my W sauce, garlic powder. Right. Let me turn this down to a low. Right, let's get this going. Then my little seasoning here. Now, you know, I use my a as a salt, pepper, garlic, right? As a allpurpose. But this is where we going to get our flavor from, folks. You got to be able to do that. Now, I'm going to change from my spatula. We going to work with this whisk now. Right. Remember, I just switched everything to low. Look at this right here. You can look at the color change. That's when you start adding that seasoning to it. You know what I mean? Now, you able to see it. Right now, I'm getting ready to add some more pepper to it cuz we got to have flavor, folks. We did say mac and cheese. And you know, if you take it somewhere, everybody want to know who made the mac and cheese and who made the what? Who made the potato salad. Now, as it's starting to thicken up, look, I like to add myself a generous pinch of salt. Just one. It's all we need. Just enough to enhance the flavors that we put inside of here. And you can see them jalapenos. You know what? I could have put a couple of more in there. I'm keeping this a little bit on the reasonable side. All right, remember we still on low. Now we going to put a couple of ounces of this Philadelphia cream cheese in here. Right. So if you guys got your eight divided by four and that's what you put in there. Just a little bit more. Don't worry. It'll all work. It'll work itself out. Now you want to get that whisk and go ahead and let that incorporate itself inside of there. And then next we going to add our cheese. Right now remember I grated my own cheese. That's the best way folks. Just put a little bit in here at a time. might look like a lot, but I don't I told you I measured it out. 8 oz. Now, when you start adding all that air to it and all of that, it'll make it look like it's big cuz it's shredded. But we want to have at least 8 oz. Okay. So, you just want to keep it under the heat till everything is nice and smooth. Look, I done turned everything off. Look at this right here. This a nice creamy sauce right here. I hope you guys be able to see it. You know what I mean? But it's nice and cheesy. Now, we going to go ahead and add our pasta. Hey, I see it trying to get out of here. You know what I mean? I only needed eight ounces, you know. So, we gonna go ahead and coat it. I'mma get it all in here. And then what we going to do is we going to put this in like a And when I say we going to prepare it, we're going to put it in a uh like a ceramic dish. Anything that's oven safe, right? We want to get that in there. But look at how this is turning out, folks. You guys tell me you don't you don't want to make this. I mean, I would say something ain't right. Right now, I did use all of my cheese. I'm going to go ahead and grade some more cuz I like to put a little bit on the top, you know, when I'm done. Okay, my oven is already up. I got my oven safe dish ready. Look at this right here. Mhm. Then once you got everything incorporated, look at that right there. It already looks good, right? And I prepared this. Meaning that I went ahead and sprayed this with a non-stick spray. Those you guys is doing it old school, you know, we can always use what? Butter, folks. Right. Look at this right here. Now, we not done. Now, I know my oven is ready. It's screaming for it right now. I know that that looks good the way it is, but we not done. Now, don't forget we did that, you know, that bacon, right? So, I'm going to cut this bacon down. You guys can crumble it, you know what I mean? However you want to do it, but I'm going to take it and, you know, do mine, you know, the way I would like to do it. You guys do whatever you guys would like. Make sure you got a sharp knife if you going to do it. All right. So, we'll just run this across here like that. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get myself a bowl, which I have right here to the side. We're going to put all of this in here. Now I'm getting ready to grate some of this parmesan cuz we going to put this in there on top as like a garnish slash texture and to give it some color. Right. So once you have it all, you know, cut up the way you want to, let me go ahead. We only need about a couple tablespoon. Then we're going to add ourselves about a about a/3 cup of some panko chips. Right now you guys can get creative right here on your panko chips and you know you season you can season them yourself. you want to add something to it. But you see how I'm putting this on here like this. Look at this. Yes, sir. Then once you got them, you know, got everything pretty much, you know, incorporated together, just go ahead and sprinkle yourself some of this over the top of it. Right now, that panko going to give it a little bit of a crusty look and feel to it. You know what I mean? Make it a little bit on the crunchy side. The bacon is all good. But I want you guys to let me know just at this point right now. What would you have done to make this more, you know, I guess over the top? But you tell me. Now, this little bit that I'mma save, you know, for when it come out right now, I got some seeds here. I'm going to go ahead and just put some, you know, in here. I don't care if the seeds on here or not. Let's go ahead and put a little bit of the panko and the parm over the top. Better yet, let's do this. Now we go in the oven. All right. So, look, I just took it out. It actually when I looked at it at, you know, at 30 minutes, I decided to let it go about another 10. So, I'mma say anywhere between 30 to 40 minutes. But what I wanted to do was brown some of the edges and get a little bit of that brown. If you guys can see right there on that on the jalapenos, look at those. They dried out just right. Now, let me let it cool. Let me take some pictures and then we going to go from there. So, this is it. I transferred this over to, you know, another bowl. This is way big of a portion that, you know, somebody should be eating. But listen, I'm not gonna over talk it. I'm gonna get in here and Oh my goodness. Those bread crumbs on here, that adds a nice little, you know, texture to it. You know, you got the jalapeno taste to it. I've already sampled it and I can tell you it's great, but I'm going to go ahead and not overalk it. Cheers, y'all. Something about that bacon give it like a little smoky flavor. Oh man, this right here fire, folks. So listen, this is my latter part of my years, I didn't come on to this mac and cheese. This right here is fire. If you guys are tired of making the same old same old, and I got it, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But you want to put something out to make them say, this is it right here. Now, tell me this down in the comment section below. Let's talk about it and tell me when would you serve a jalapeno pepper, you know, mac and cheese, you know, to your guests. Now, with that being said, listen, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and tell everybody out there's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking a mystery out of cooking. And you know what I'm about to do, folks. I'm about to sit down and eat. I'm out. Peace. [Music]