Nice!!! He's starting young, too!!! Good for both of you...he's taken an interest in cooking and will be ready to take on bigger cooking projects, probably sooner than you think. Good to see...doesn't happen often enough...:thumb1:
My second oldest boy took interest and is on his own now, using my Smoke Vault 24 and my stainless gas grill, but he didn't start that young. He has used a charcoal offset, but went through the issues I did with mine...lotsa fuel and extensive tending, so he doesn't use it any more.
No-boil mac & cheese is one of our favorite sides since I started smoking it a few months back for special occasions...it ranks among the top 5 requests around here. I use bacon in mine too...can't wrong with bacon...crisp it up and render out the fat, drain and sprinkle it on. The tinkerer in me is trying to figure out a way to use a butter/flour rue prepared on the stove-top, cooled, then blended with cold milk and added to the no-boil recipe with a reduction in cheese to make it not quite so rich (that's my only complaint with the no-boil method, to date). Hmm, maybe add the milk to the rue and get it started thickening, then pour it in over the raw mac and cold cheese and pop itno a hot cooker right away. I'm not sure if it is even feasible, as the rue may settle out into a paste on the bottom and foul-up the whole dish, although, if slightly thickened, it should remain unchanged...at least that's what I suspect the result will be. I just need to figure out the proper ratios so the mac will have liquid to absorb as it cooks, but not be too runny when the cheese melts and it's all finished.
I may do a trial run with the rue next weekend on a small batch and see how it comes together, still using whole cheeses, of course. If anyone has tried this with an epic fail, please feel free to let me know your process and maybe we can put our heads together and come up with a solution. Yeah, I gotta do this...the date is set. I'll be thinking about this for the next several days, but I'll post the outcome on Thursday, if nothing blows up on me before then.
Case, you just got my experimental side kick-started on yet another project...thanks for that...always on the lookout for a project to make my meals better. And, thanks for sharing your dish and experience with your Sous Chef!!!
Eric
