Cooking With Your Kids: Macaroni and Cheese with Tuna Fish

MacAndCheesePoint of order.  Yes, I skipped a night last night.  My fault.  But I’m back and blogging away, this time with

Macaroni and Cheese with Tuna Fish

Let me start off by saying that I despise this dish.  Yeah, I know, I should keep it positive, but seriously, bleck.  And I mean bleck from the bottom of my heart.

However, my son loves the stuff, which as far as I am concerned, is as good a reason as any for a paternity test.

With that aside, you might be wondering how healthy mac and cheese with tuna fish can be.  It’s a fair question.  A lot of mac and cheese comes from a box and tuna is pretty high in mercury.  Also, unbleached flour isn’t exactly fantastic for kids.  Plus, there’s a lot of cream and butter in mac and cheese and that’s not so good.  And if you are wondering all that, you have a lot of nerve.

Still, I have solutions to all of these issues.

Macaroni and Cheese with Tuna Fish Recipe

Okay, so in order the objections were:

  1. Processed food (mac and cheese in a box.) We’ll make it ourselves in about 30 min.
  2. Tuna high in mercury. Switch the fish types or only serve this dish once a week.
  3. Unbleached flour in the noodles. We’re making this ourselves, so we’ll use whole wheat noodles.
  4. High in Fat. We’ll skip the butter and use whole milk to lower the fat content.

Oh, one other thing.  I am a big believer in crunchy toppings for my mac and cheese, so we’ll use baked chips for the crunch.

Ready for the recipe?

You will need:

  • 2 cups whole milk
  • 1 tablespoon garlic powder
  • 12 ounces fun whole wheat macaroni shapes (Cars and Mickey Mouse are big around here.)
  • 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
  • (optional) 1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
  • 4 oz tuna fish
  • Bag of baked potato chips
  • (optional) Paprika as a garnish

Preheat the oven to 350.

Put the milk and garlic powder in a sauce pan over high heat and bring to a boil.

Immediately afterwords, get the well-salted pasta water boiling for the macaroni.  Drop the macaroni when the water starts to boil.  Remove when just al dente.

When the milk starts to boil, add the cheese and the optional mustard and stir to melt the cheese.  You should have a nice, thick cheese sauce.  If too thick, add a little milk or chicken stock.

In a bowl, add the macaroni, cheese sauce, and tuna fish.  Mix well, probably with your hands (sounds like a kiddo job, doesn’t it?)

Spread out the mixture into one even layer in a greased baking dish.  Top with the potato chips and bake until 20 minutes or until bubbly.  Sprinkle paprika on top.

Enjoy!

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