Chicken Cheesey Macaroni

Ingredients for a quickie

Okay, so you're in a hurry...I mean a really BIG hurry and ya gotta put something on the table - but there's no boxed Mac N Cheese to be found...not in the pantry, or the cupboard or even the emergency/camping stash! 
So now what?
That's where I found myself earlier tonight.
There was a chicken-looking left over thing that needed something-something to make it plate worthy. Thought I had it all figured out earlier but....I'd committed the deadly sin of assuming there's be some sort of boxed side dish that would pull a poor excuse for a dinner together. 
There wasn't.  Not surprising. I'd gotten away from depending on a lot of pre-packaged food through the years, with the exceptions of camping and/or emergencies that is.

Grating cheese

So with another quick tour of the pantry I came up with the following ingredients:
1 1/2 cups macaroni noodles, Nida brand powdered whole milk, Swanson's Chicken Broth. 
I had a couple bits of garlic and a good selection of spices in the racks.
The fridge contributed 3 Tablespoons of butter, some tomatoes for slicing on the side and of course the chicken.
Suddenly there lay before me the makings of a good meal.

Okay, so to begin I boiled the noodles then drained them.  Using the same pan, I heated up the chicken with  a dash of the broth then removed it from the pan and set it aside.

Cheese melt down

Next I grated the cheese and made up the milk according to package directions using chicken broth instead of water.  3 Tablespoons of butter and the milk mixture landed in the pan used for cooking the chicken and macaroni.  Then I added the grated cheese and stirred, stirred, stirred as the cheese melted.  The sauce thickened more and more until at last, about 4 minutes later, it seemed thick enough to add the macaroni....and so I did.

Melting

The trick is to use a kind of folding-in stir rather than a liquid stir if you want the noodles to stay whole.  This also insures a more even coating of cheese per noodle.

I added the chicken chunks and some left over peas to my bowl, but you don't have to.  Jack likes his chicken served separately....hey, what ever flies yer kite!

Mac n Cheese with Chicken n Peas

Anyway, this little recipe is one for the Just In Case files.  Feel free to share, contribute recipes, send comments!   Enjoy!