Buffalo Chicken Macaroni & Cheese

Ingredients

• 2 whole Chicken Breasts
• 1 bottle (12 Oz. Bottle) Buffalo Sauce (I Prefer Anchor Bar - They Invented It!)
• 1 pound Elbow Macaroni
• 1 cup Sour Cream
• 8 ounces, weight Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese
• 8 ounces, weight Monterey Jack Cheese
• 8 ounces, weight Blue Cheese
• 3 Tablespoons Butter
• 3 Tablespoons All-purpose Flour
• 3 cups Milk
• 1 cup Breadcrumbs

Preparation Instructions

Notes:
You can vary the cheese amount depending on how it’s packaged at your store. It’s not exact! Also, I use 1% milk because it’s already plenty rich with all the cheese.
Marinate the chicken in the sauce ahead of time. I didn’t include marinating time in the prep time!

Prep ahead of time:
Cut chicken breasts into very small pieces. Toss in a bowl with enough buffalo sauce to coat plus a little extra, and let sit for at least an hour. Stir it every now and then. The chicken will start to look like it’s just slightly cooked; that’s the acid denaturing the proteins. It’s normal.

Cooking:
Simmer the whole bowlful in a pan, sauce and all, on medium heat until the chicken is cooked. Drain the cooked sauce/chicken liquid from the chicken and toss the chicken bits with a little more buffalo sauce. Set this aside to cool some while you do the sauce and pasta.

Shred the extra sharp cheddar, Monterey jack and crumble the blue cheese into a big mixing bowl. Set aside about a half cup of the cheeses in a separate bowl to make the topping later. Stir the rest in the big bowl together with sour cream and some black pepper to taste.

Heat the oven to 350F. Start a pot of boiling salted water for the pasta.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium-high heat and when melted, whisk in the flour. Keep whisking while it cooks and bubbles for about 2 minutes. (This is called a roux.) Whisk the milk into this mixture and stir often.

When the mixture is starting to get hot, put the pasta in the boiling pot to cook for about 8 minutes. During this time, keep whisking the milk sauce until it’s thickened. (At this point, you’ve now made a bechamel sauce!)

Mix the sauce into the cheese and sour cream in the big bowl and stir well to get the cheese mostly mixed into the sauce. Stir in the pasta. Fold in the chicken. Pour into a 13×9 casserole pan.

Using a fork, mix the breadcrumbs, the small bowl of cheese and a drizzle of buffalo sauce, adding more sauce as needed until it has a crumbly texture. Sprinkle this topping over the macaroni and cheese.

Bake for about a half hour or until the sauce is bubbling around the edges and the topping is starting to get browned.

Makes 6-8 servings, depending on how hungry your family is!