Canning Macaroni & Cheese

If you don’t like mac & cheese, I’m sorry. We love it here. And there’s somedays we are so busy with the farm or unexpected things that I don’t have time to cook.

I have made this both with a homemade cheese sauce as well as just buying the #10 can of cheese sauce and using it; both turn out well although I think we like the horrible ingredient canned cheese sauce one better. The homemade cheese sauce tends to err on the gritty side after canning which isn’t a pleasant texture. Low tox, not no tox, I say. Either type of cheese sauce still needs to be mixed 50/50 with milk or chicken broth to give some liquid for the pasta to cook in! This means for every 1 cup of cheese sauce you have you will mix it with 1 cup of milk or broth

When you’re an ingredient household like myself, somedays it’s really hard to scrounge a dinner together because almost everything has to be made from scratch. Even the 20-30 minutes you’d need to make mac and cheese. The chemical laden convenience foods don’t exist here. So, I started looking for a solution. Freezer meals? Ok, that could work, but still requires forethought to thawing the food or putting it in the crockpot. But, then I had a freezer stop working and lost EVERYTHING. It was devastating. We also had a derecho that knocked power out for 4 days. The stress over the freezers was ridiculous.

I remedied the freezer situation by putting alarms and thermometers in them, but it still didn’t help my leeriness to depend on them entirely to store my hard work. I’ve always canned just about everything, but then I was introduced to rebel canning and canning meals-in-jars. A whole new world!

I have to say, this recipe I am writing is rebel canning. It is not approved by the USDA nor has it been tested by the NCHFP. Dairy and pasta are both considered no-no’s, but thankfully, my kitchen, my rules. I am sharing this recipe for informational purposes only. I cannot control what happens in your kitchen or your methods of food preservation. I am also not responsible for any mishaps that may occur.