I have this Alton Brown recipe for baked macaroni and cheese in the oven right now. This went over very well the last few times I made it.

In the past, I have added storebought, pre-cooked, real bacon bits to spice up the dish. Today, while I was boiling macaroni and making the sauce, I was also frying bacon over a medium heat. My bacon finished up just after the macaroni, so I strained out my pasta and set my cooked bacon aside. I poured the bacon grease into the bottom of my casserole dish and bounced some pasta into it, stirred it up good and thought, “There is still flavor in that skillet.” So, I poured my pasta into the casserole through the skillet. I poured the pasta into the skillet and bounced it around to coat it, then poured that into the casserole.

By the time all the pasta was in there, it was shiny with bacon grease. If that doesn’t sound good to you, you’ve never been to Georgia. (Now I’m missing Home.)

Then, I broke up my bacon into confetti sized pieces and stirred that into the pasta before folding in the sauce and cheese as the recipe directs. Remember that I’m only cooking with a few pieces of ware, so I am having to be a little creative with my timing and my use. I had my pasta cooking in my casserole, had my bacon frying in my skillet, and my sauce going in my only saucepan, so I had to do my transfers differently than the recipe calls for doing.

I’m excited for this to come out of the oven.