Pepper Jack Cheesy Mac

Around my house, we love our mac and cheese. Usually we make it really simple by using Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Mac and Cheese from the box.

Sometimes, we take our time and make a more hands-on version.

We're always open to new ways of making one of our favorite meals, so when I saw a recipe for Pepper Jack Cheesy Mac in our local community newspaper, I just had to put it in my "recipes to make" folder. There is no attribution with this recipe in the newspaper, but I did find the exact recipe at VeryBestBaking.com.

To make this gluten-free, all I had to do was use gluten-free elbow macaroni. I'm a big fan of the brand Hodgson Mill. Hodgson Mill's gluten-free pasta is very good and usually inexpensive. Also, make sure your tortilla chips are gluten-free. Most of them are. We used Tostitos.

I also didn't use pepper jack cheese. I couldn't find shredded pepper jack, nor could I find a block of pepper jack to shred myself. So I picked up a bag of shredded Mexican blend cheese.

This was soooo cheesy. I loved it! It was a tad spicy thanks to the red pepper flakes and black pepper. I think next time I will cut down on the black pepper. A little of that goes a long way. I would also use red or blue tortilla chips just to give this a little more color.

Technically, this was published as a superbowl/football party recipe, but we didn't make it for that. It's perfectly good for non-sports nights, too.