Shells And Cheese With Beef And Corn
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1/2 of a medium size onion
1 lb hamburger
garlic salt
can of corn
3 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 C milk
4 cups shredded/grated cheese
1 Cup Panko bread crumbs
bag of pasta shells*
While chopping the onion let the coconut oil heat up in a large pan. Cook the chopped onion in the oil. After the onion is cooked, break the hamburger up into the pan. Sprinkle with garlic salt. (continued below)
While the meat is cooking, you can make the sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour a little at a time. Keeping all the lumps out and incorporating the flour into the melted butter. – (Don’t forget about the meat cooking!) – Pour in the milk a little at a time stirring constantly and working out the lumps. Add the salt. Add some cheese, stirring and letting it melt as you go. Continue to add about two cups of shredded cheese.
Cook the hamburger until almost done. (If needed drain the grease from the meat.) Drain the corn and stir it into the meat. Sprinkle with garlic salt. Since the corn is already cooked it doesn’t necessarily need to cook with the meat because it will cook in the oven.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that boil the water for the pasta. *I didn’t use an entire bag because it had been opened. I think there was about 3/4th of a bag of small shells. Cook the pasta. Drain the pasta.
Butter a 9X13 baking dish. Preheat the oven to 450° F.
Spread a very thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the buttered dish. Then mix the pasta, a little over half of the cheese sauce, and the meat and corn mixture together. Spread half of the new mixture (cheese sauce and meat-corn) into the dish. Sprinkle with cheese. Then spread the remaining mixture on top of the cheese layer. Then top with the rest of the cheese sauce, spreading out evenly.* Then top with the rest of the shredded cheese and the bread crumbs.
Bake about 25 to 30 minutes. If you want the bread crumbs brown broil it for about 5 minutes (or until they are browned).
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*I am sure mixing all the shells, meat-corn, and cheese sauce together and then putting it in the baking dish would work. I was just trying to make is a little more like sauce ON the shells. It all seeped down and was yummy.
This is very rich and very filling. And pretty good. My husband loved it. I always seem to like pasta dishes better the next day. It is as if the flavors all meld and seep into the pasta. So I really enjoyed our leftovers that we ate for a few days.
And, sadly, I didn’t make this with plans to post about it, so I only have the one picture of the finished product. But I will be making it again. I had a friend that says she uses cream corn . . . that might be interesting.
I don’t even know why I put corn in it. I was thinking of two separate things to make at points during the day and when I went to cook, they got combined someohow.
How do you make macaroni and cheese? Do you put meat in yours? Vegetables?
