Bacon Mac and Cheese Recipe

This recipe is family-friendly, and while the recipe calls for sharp cheddar you can use a mild cheddar cheese for especially sensitive eaters.

You’ll find some recipe variations included below for more sophisticated palates, too. (Another kid-pleasing favorite my family loves is bacon-wrapped little smokies brushed with honey barbecue sauce.)

Preparing this stovetop mac and cheese with bacon couldn’t be easier! Here’s how the recipe comes together:

1. Cook the bacon, drain and crumble.
2. Grate the cheddar cheese.
3. Start cooking the macaroni in salted boiling water.
4. While the pasta is cooking, make the creamy, cheesy sauce.
5. Combine the sauce, macaroni and half the bacon.
6. Serve topped with the rest of the crumbled bacon and enjoy!

Look for a smaller pasta in shapes that hold the sauce well for this recipe, such as:

• Classic elbow macaroni
• Shell pasta
• Penne (regular or mini)
• Corkscrew pasta
• Bowtie pasta
• Ditalini, the short version of macaroni

For this batch, I used Barilla Elbows No. 41, a medium-sized macaroni with a little curl and extra texture. Here’s how it looks cooked:

This recipe makes a family-friendly mild sauce. You can mix things up by using extra-sharp cheddar cheese or a sophisticated cheese like grated smoked gouda.

For added zing, you can sprinkle 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (or more or less to suit your tastebuds) in the sauce. Or you can sprinkle the finished dish with red pepper flakes or smoked paprika.

Chopped green onions or chopped chives are a nice addition (if you live in a household with people who are not afraid of green things).

Begin by cooking 8 strips of chopped, thick-cut bacon in a skillet over medium-high heat. Drain on paper towels, and when it’s cool, crumble it in small pieces like this:

Shall we just stop right now and eat all the bacon?! I’m sooo tempted.

You’ll also want to grate the cheese. I prefer to grate it freshly from a block of cheese, as the pre-shredded cheese that comes in bags at the store has non-clumping additives that prevent the shreds from melting together as well as fresh cheese.

The recipe calls for sharp cheddar cheese, but you can feel free to use your favorite melty cheese.

Start your macaroni cooking in a big pot of salted boiling water over high heat. While the pasta is cooking, you’ll make the sauce, which is a variation of a basic Bechamel sauce (also known as “white sauce”). This simple, versatile sauce is made with butter, flour, milk and half and half.

Once it’s thick and bubbly, slowly add grated cheddar cheese by the handful.

Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the cheese is all melted and incorporated. Oh, yum!

Combine the sauce with the hot, cooked pasta.

Stir in half the crumbled bacon.

Divide among 4 individual serving dishes and sprinkle with the remaining crumbled bacon.

Enjoy!

Here’s the full recipe, which is adapted from the bacon cookbook 101 Things To Do With Bacon written by BENSA’s founder Eliza Cross.

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Enjoy!

~Your friends at BENSA

This recipe was originally published on June 18, 2013. It was completely updated with new photos and text on March 20, 2021.