Cheeseburger Mac Recipe with Home Canned Ingredients
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This homemade cheeseburger mac and cheese is a super easy and great recipe to put together for busy weeknights, uses home canned food right off your pantry shelves, and is flavorful and kid approved in this household. Whenever I’m in a pinch, I really love a classic hamburger helper to throw together a quick pasta dish with short cooking time. But I super hate the excessive ingredients the store brands add. So I make my homemade hamburger helper sans the unnecessary poison ingredients that has quickly become a family favorite, especially because it uses quite a few jars I have tucked away as my pantry staples. Have you ever looked at a box of hamburger helper cheeseburger macaroni?! Yeah, they’re “cheap” but in the long run, eating highly processed foods is expensive to your health.
Here’s some ingredients I found in the cheeseburger macaroni box I find highly unnecessary:
- modified whey
- sugar
- vegetable oil (mix of canola, soy bean, and sunflower oils)
- maltodextrin
- colorants (yellow 5 & 6, yellow lakes 5 & 6)
- monoglycerides
- gums
- natural flavor
- sodium phosphate
- silicon dioxide
This isn’t fear mongering and shouldn’t be take as such. This is just me asking why we have to put all this crap into our food to make it hyper palatable and creamy and flavorful. It gets us addicted to it so real, homemade food doesn’t taste good anymore. Plus, there’s sugar in it, which is extremely unnecessary. If you live on highly processed food, your body will crave that highly processed food, and the flavor of homemade wholesome food without all these additives will not taste good. It’s a brain re-training to giving up the boxed stuff and going with a homemade version with real ingredients. I encourage you to try today, if for anything, your health and well being.
Let’s make some homemade hamburger helper!
Equipment You Might Want:
- 5 quart dutch oven
- cheese grater
Ingredient List:
- 1 pound of ground beef (1 pint canned)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
- 8 ounces elbow macaroni (uncooked)
- 1 pint home canned diced bell peppers, drained
- 1 pint home canned diced tomatoes
- 1 pint home canned beef stock
- 1/2 cup home canned ketchup
- 1 Tablespoon mustard (bonus points for homemade)
- 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- salt & black pepper to taste
- 1 Tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
Step 1: Brown the Beef
To a preheated dutch oven or large skillet with a little bit of tallow or olive oil, add chopped onion and ground beef, raw or canned. Break beef apart in pieces and brown.
Once the beef is browned, add in garlic, oregano, and basil. Cook until fragrant which takes a couple of minutes.
​Step 2: Cook the Pasta
To the ground beef mixture, add in drained diced bell peppers, undrained diced tomatoes, beef bone broth, ketchup, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a boil.
Once boiling, add the uncooked macaroni. Reduce to a gentle boil and cook until the macaroni is al dente and most of the liquid has been absorbed; a little liquid remaining is fine because the cheese we add in a bit will thicken it right up. This took me about 8 minutes.
When pasta is cooked through, remove from heat and add shredded cheese. Let sit a few minutes covered and then stir the melted cheese in . Taste and adjust seasoning. Top with fresh chopped parsley and serve immediately.
Step 3: Storage
Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a few days. You can also freeze this in a freezer-safe container and re-heat later in a dutch oven with a healthy splash of milk. It reheats really nicely!
Notes:
If you don’t want to use ground beef, ground turkey or ground chicken makes a good substitute.
When using canned ground beef, I still prefer to dump it and brown it as it helps get rid of the “canned flavor” and makes the texture more palatable. If you don’t mind canned ground meat straight out of the jar, you can skip this step, but you’re still cooking the onions and garlic, so it’s really not an extra step.
There’s something about cheese and beef and pasta that is a real comfort food for me. I hope you enjoy this one-pot meal and snag the recipe card below or pin it for later so you have a quick meal for the whole family at your fingertips using things you have probably canned at home if you’re an avid preserver like me!
If you don’t have macaroni, mini penne, farfalle, or whatever pasta you like will work. Just weigh out 8 ounces and you may need to adjust the cook time and watch the liquid level as it cooks.
Equipment
- 5 quart dutch oven
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef 1 pint canned or thawed
- 1 onion chopped
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
- 8 ounces elbow macaroni uncooked
- 1 pint home canned diced bell peppers drained
- 1 pint home canned diced tomatoes
- 1 pint home canned beef stock
- 1/2 cup home canned ketchup
- 1 Tablespoon mustard
- 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- salt & black pepper to taste
- 1 Tablespoon fresh parsley chopped
Instructions
- To a preheated dutch oven or large skillet with a little bit of tallow or olive oil, add chopped onion and ground beef, raw or canned. Â Break beef apart in pieces and brown.
- Once the beef is browned, add in garlic, oregano, and basil. Â Cook until fragrant which takes a couple of minutes.
- To the ground beef mixture, add in drained diced bell peppers, undrained diced tomatoes, beef bone broth, ketchup, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce. Â Bring to a boil.
- Once boiling, add the uncooked macaroni. Â Reduce to a gentle boil and cook until the macaroni is al dente and most of the liquid has been absorbed; a little liquid remaining is fine because the cheese we add in a bit will thicken it right up. Â This took me about 8 minutes.
- When pasta is cooked through, remove from heat and add shredded cheese. Â Let sit a few minutes covered and then stir the melted cheese in.
- Taste and adjust seasoning. Â Top with fresh chopped parsley and serve immediately.
- Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a few days. Â You can also freeze this in a freezer-safe container and re-heat later in a dutch oven with a healthy splash of milk. Â It reheats really nicely!
