Fried macaroni and cheese: not a great idea

Yesterday, for some reason, I decided to make fried macaroni and cheese.

I had some leftover mac and cheese from a buffy-a-thon with Zoe Sunday night (recipe here; I added a pinch of cayenne to this batch). I love homemade mac and cheese but it doesn't reheat particularly well and apparently I thought that the way to treat a dish that becomes unpleasantly oily upon reheating was to actually reheat the food in oil. It's like a double negative, right?

Sometimes I can't believe that I've managed to keep myself alive this long. I mean, I read sentences like that and just have visions of myself, like, petting an angry bear on the nose and saying "nice doggie."

I absolutely drew the line at deep frying because A: gross and B: scary, so that eliminated most the recipes I found online right off the bat. I used this as my technique guideline. I totally missed the part about dredging in flour though, so consider that step optional. I sent the link to Liz and told her that's what I was making for dinner and she wrote back that if she ever wanted to break up with her boyfriend but didn't feel like telling him, she would just make that exact thing for dinner and he would leave an Otto-shaped hole in the door in his haste to get home to his barley.

Here's the set-up:

Cubed mac and cheese, beaten egg, bread crumbs.

In progress:

It was kind of fun to see it work the way it was supposed to, I have to say. Applying heat makes food brown!

Dinner:

That's more than one serving, obviously. I made more than I wanted because I'm new to this frying thing and wanted to be prepared in case I ruined some.

A close up:

I have to say, after all that, they were just okay. Nothing special. They weren't particularly greasy and had a nice, crunchy coating. But they didn't really taste like mac and cheese anymore; they just tasted like fried. And since I'm not used to eating fried food, I felt kind of sick for hours afterward. The novelty value was reasonably high though, so that's something.

Comments

[Nancy]

Ha Ha! My mom used to give me fried left-over mac and cheese for lunch when I was too young to protest. The only thing that enabled me to choke it down was a liberal coating of ketchup. To this day, I can't stand the taste of ketchup or leftover pasta....

[Co-worker Liz]

Spicy marinara sauce as dipping sauce might help. Or not! Otto'd eat that and the broccoli.

[Ashley]

Oh wow, that is intense! Looks delicious. I've been thinking about learning to fry foods, so this is just the motivation I need!

I'm glad to see that you balanced the meal with that big bowl of broccoli. :)

[Martha]

I think my cholesterol spiked just reading this post.