Green Chile Mac and Cheese (with Chicken)

By dublinburro

Ingredients

• 1 pound elbow macaroni
• 1 pound pepper jack cheese
• 1 large chicken breast, grilled or pan seared
• 2 poblano peppers (if you can find Hatch green chiles, use those)
• 1 Cup black beans (I used canned)
• 1 Cup sweet corn, frozen works best
• 3 Cups Milk
• 1 small onion, diced
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 4 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 Cup panko breadcrumbs
• Salt and Pepper

Details

Adapted from macheesmo.com

Preparation

Step 1

Roasting the peppers

If you’re in a pinch, you could use the canned roasted peppers that they sell for this, but if you have a grill or a gas stove, you can just roast your own. It just takes a few minutes and is a cool party trick.

Crank your heat up to high on your gas stove or grill and lay the peppers right on the flames. Turn them every minute or so until they are almost completely charred. You’re looking for like a 90% char coverage.

When they are done, add them to a bowl and cover them with some plastic wrap.

The plastic wrap will help them steam and make them easier to peel. Let them sit for about 10 minutes. After that they should be cool enough to handle and also the skins should peel right off.
To Wash or Not To Wash

When you’re roasting peppers, it’s kind of a messy job to peel them. You’ll be tempted to run the peppers under water to rinse off all the extra skin. I do not recommend this. It’ll make your peppers cleaner, but it’ll also wash off a ton of great flavor that’s on the outside of the peppers. They been steeping in their own delicious pepper juices for 10 minutes and to wash all that off is crazy talk.

So just do your best to get off most the skin and then remove the seeds, dice them up, and add them to a bowl.

Other ingredients

The original mac and cheese dish had some grilled chicken that was folded in to the mac and cheese. It wasn’t an excessive amount of chicken. Just a few pieces here and there.

I seasoned a few chicken breasts with olive oil, salt and pepper, and some dried chili flakes. Then I just seared them for about 5 minutes per side in a cast iron skillet and then finished them off in a 350 degree oven until they were cooked through, another 15 minutes or so.

You could just as easily grill these or, heck, just leave them out.

I only used one of these for the actual mac and cheese.

The other thing that made this recipe was some toasted breadcrumbs that they added on top of the mac and cheese right before serving it. Since it’s not a baked dish, it needs some crunchy texture.

I added about a cup of panko to a dry skillet and toasted it until it turned a nice tan color, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle this on the dish right before serving it.

Making the cheese sauce

The important part of this dish is obviously the cheese sauce. I made a pretty standard version, but added some onion to my roux and also used pepper jack cheese to give it a bit of a kick.

Start by adding your diced onion to the butter in a good sized pot. Stir the onion and butter over medium heat until the onion is translucent and soft, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Then add in the flour and continue to cook for another few minutes.

At this point you’ll have a standard roux with some onion mixed in.

Slowly whisk in your milk to the roux in 1 cup batches. It should thicken up pretty nicely. After three cups it might be a bit runny, but continue to simmer it over medium low heat and it’ll thicken up. When it gets to the consistency of a light gravy, start stirring in your cheese.

It’s a lot of cheese, but it’ll fit.

Once all your cheese is melted, stir in your green chiles also!

Finishing the dish

Cook the macaroni according to the package and when it’s done, drain it and add it back to the pot. Then stir in the green chile cheese sauce!

It might look a bit runny, but it’ll thicken up as we add more stuff and it cooks together a bit.

Stir in the chicken, corn, and black beans. Continue to stir it over low heat and season it with salt and pepper. It’ll need a good pinch of both.

You can serve it right out of the pot!