Spicy Tuna Mac 'n' Cheese

Hi guys! This is my first post, so be gentle please! (Suggestions to make this blog better are always welcome though :) ) So tonight Mr. Hero (a.k.a. Steve; henceforth known as Mr. H) had work and as per the usual, I was trying to figure out what to do for dinner and hopefully have it ready by the time he got home. I thought about it all day; and after flip flopping between this delicious creation and some boring chicken quarters, I thought, "Why the heck not?"


Now, if there's one thing you should know about Mr. H, it's that he hates tuna. Absolutely hates it. Usually, if I have a tuna salad sandwich, he won't even kiss me. So it was a huge shock when he came home and liked the smell that was coming from the kitchen! But if there's one thing he can never live without, it's Mac 'n' Cheese, (expect loads of Mac recipes!). One more thing we can never live without is Bacon! So of course, I absolutely HAD to fry some up and pop it in there.

Now, I know your mouth is watering from that first shot, so without further ado, let's get into it! Spicy Tuna Mac 'n' Cheese is a hearty, filling dish that is sure to please even the pickiest of eaters. It's bursting with flavor, but you can make it mild enough to be kid friendly. Kids will love the bacon and corn, and you will most certainly enjoy the pan fried tuna and my secret punch of flavor... Salsa!

So the first thing you're going to want to do is fry up your bacon. If you like your bacon crispy, this will be a perfect recipe for you. If you're like me and you like your bacon jiggly and almost raw, I promise you won't hate the taste of this! You want to cook your bacon so it's a happy medium; it's a great texture to have some crunchy parts and some chewier parts, especially once you cut them up. Once you have your bacon fried up, place all your cooked strips on a napkin to drain some of the grease off. Once it's cooled off a bit, cut up the slices to size chunks you want, and put them to the side until you need them. Make sure you keep your bacon grease in the pan and just turn down the heat on the skillet, but keep the heat going.

While your bacon is cooking, it's a great idea to get a huge pot of water boiling. Since you need to cook so much macaroni, it'll take a while for the water to heat up, so starting early really saved me on time. If you wanted to make homemade Mac 'n' Cheese, that would be a great idea and I'm sure the taste would be 10x better! But, since I was short on time tonight, I took a shortcut and used the regular old boxed macaroni (nothin wrong with a shortcut now and again!). So cook your macaroni as directed if you're using the box, and make your own recipe if you'd like a more homemade taste. I promise I'll make my mom's homemade macaroni to share with you all soon!

While your water is boiling, turn your attention back to the skillet with the bacon grease. Make sure you turn the heat WAY down before you do this step! Put all of the drained tuna into the grease and stir it around a bit to make it an even layer in the pan. If you wanted to add any spices to the mix, now would be the time to season the tuna. If I had it on hand, I would have sprinkled some chili powder on it, but alas, no chili powder. Once it stops spitting and popping at you, turn the heat back up a tiny bit at a time. Make sure you're paying attention to your tuna and moving it around every minute or two so you make sure not to burn it. It will brown a bit (and it may not look so appealing :S but it tastes great, I promise!). You'll have a lot more tuna than I will, since I only had 1 can on me, but the bacon grease will definitely be enough to cover all the tuna you need to fry.

In the meantime, drain your cooked macaroni and finish making your deliciously cheesy dinner. Once your tuna is browned to your liking, take it off the heat and drain the grease; leave it in the pan while you take care of the rest of the mac. At this point, the rest is cake! It's all just adding in your ingredients to your bed of cheese which is now waiting in the wings.

The only things you need now are your bacon bits, a can of corn, and 1 cup of salsa. Add all of your meats in one by one. Once all of that is thoroughly mixed in, add your corn and salsa and you're ready to dig in! If you want an extra kick of gooey cheesiness, you can take the lactose filled route that I did and add a cup or 2 of shredded cheese. Whichever cheese you like, though I find cheddar and Colby Jack work best.

I hope you like this dish as much as Mr. H and I do! It was absolutely delicious, and if you try it, I'd love to hear what you thought about it! If you need to make any changes due to dietary restrictions, I can assure you that turkey bacon works just as well if not a teensy bit better, and any sort of spices you add to your liking will be delicious! Let me know in the comments if you liked it, if you changed anything, or even if you didn't like it. If  you didn't like it, let me know what you think I can do better and I'll do my best to update an alternative soon :)



Ingredients:
2 boxes Macaroni and Cheese
2 cans Tuna in Oil; drain (Make sure it's in oil! The stuff in water tends to stick to the pan and now brown as well)
1 can sweet corn kernels; drained
1 cup salsa of any kind
4 slices bacon or turkey bacon

1.) Cook bacon strips halfway between super crispy and chewy. Drain on napkin and set aside to cool. Once cooled, tear into bite sized pieces.
2.) Cook and prepare macaroni as directed on box, or according to your own recipe.
3.) Pan fry tuna in bacon grease until desired shade of brown; drain and set aside.
4.) Once macaroni is completely prepared, add in tuna, stir. Add in bacon, stir. Add in corn, stir. Add in salsa, stir. Add in optional shredded cheese, stir, and enjoy!