This mac and cheese recipe has a bit of a kick to it. The combination with smoky, spicy peppers offers a bit of variety from everyday boxed mac and cheese.  It is fun served with your favorite grilled chicken or pork or on its own.  Chipotle peppers have gained popularity in the last few years.  A lot of us know them by the restaurant title of gourmet, made to order burritos.  These peppers are actually smoked jalapenos that are dried and have a wrinkled dark brown skin.  They can be found dried, pickled or canned in adobo sauce which is what I use in this recipe.  Adobo sauce from Mexico is made of ground chiles, herbs and vinegar.  It takes on the spicy, smoked flavor of the chipotle peppers once it is canned.  I rarely use a whole can at once.  I freeze the remaining in 1 chile portions with a bit of adobo in a snack sized plastic bag and then place the smaller bags in a container or freezer bag.  It is easy to just take out what I need.  I have found reasonably priced canned chipotles at Super Wal-Mart for about $0.85 for a 7 ounce can which has about 10-12 chiles per can.  So, you get a lot of flavor for a few pennies.  Feel free to double the chipotles in this recipe if you would like to.  I thought it was a nice amount of heat but go for it if you need more.

1   6 – 7.25 ounce package macaroni and cheese dinner, prepared according to package directions
2/3   cup additonal milk
1    cup or 4 oz. shredded cheddar cheese *
1/4   teaspoon each garlic powder and onion powder
1    tablespoon chipotle chile with adobo sauce,  finely chopped

Once the mac and cheese is prepared according to package directions, stir in the remaining ingredients.  Heat through until cheese is melted and sauce is creamy.  Makes about 4 cups or 2-3 servings.  Enjoy!

*Shredded cheese can be expensive if it’s not on sale.  There are a couple of options here.  One, I buy it when it is on sale and freeze it.  For cooked, one dish meals like this, it works great.  The other option is to use the sliced cheese that you may have available, chop it up and while it may take a bit longer to heat through and melt, you can simply use what you already have on hand in the fridge.