Easy Macaroni and Cheese

I once looked up the recipe for macaroni & cheese and diligently did everything it said. Made a cheese sauce which I dutifully stirred until it thickened, added nutmeg, no onion, and so on. And it was the dullest macaroni & cheese I've ever eaten. You might as well make Kraft Dinner, which is better, and a lot easier too. So I called Mom and got her recipe, which I remembered was a lot better than what I'd just made, and here it is. It's also a lot easier and doesn't get so many pots dirty.

Preheat oven to 400°

  • 1 lb. COOKED macaroni or some other sturdy, short pasta (I like the interesting curly ones, or the ones that look like little radiators)
  • 1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes
  • 1 onion, diced pretty small
  • all the cheese you have in the house, GRATED (1/2 lb.? 2-3 cups? something like that) - cheddar is canonical, and is what we usually have around, but mozzarella seems to work too and the children are more enthusiastic about it
  • (bacon)
    •

    If you haven't cooked the pasta yet, stop preheating the oven while you cook it. Use the time to grate all that cheese. Once the pasta's draining in the colander, preheat the oven to 400F. Dump the cooked pasta into an oven-safe casserole big enough to fit. Throw in the chopped up onion, Pour in the can of diced tomatoes, juice and all. Sprinkle the grated cheese in, reserving enough to sprinkle over the top at the end. Mix everything together until it looks, well, mixed. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top. Whether you cover the casserole is up to you; if you put a top on it the cheese on top won't go all crusty. Some people drape some uncooked bacon over top, or mixed bits of cooked bacon in as well, and seem to like it, but I've never tried that.

    Put it in the oven for at least 30 min, and preferably around an hour.

    Gourmet Variation

    It's granting this too much dignity to call it "Gourmet". But if you happen to have leftover chopped-tomato spaghetti sauce lying around one day (about 4 c. chopped fresh tomatoes, 1/2 c. chopped fresh basil, salt, pepper, and a garlic clove), use that instead of the can of diced tomatoes. It comes out really well!