Give Mac And Cheese A Crunchy Twist With A Certain Leftover

While mac and cheese may be a classic comfort food, it is important to remember that one person's comfort is another person's snoozefest. The one thing I cannot stand about typical stovetop mac and cheese is its texture; all you get is a mouthful of squishy noodles in an equally squishy sauce. I generally prefer something that won't make my teeth fall asleep when I eat it, so, as far as I'm concerned, macaroni and cheese is all the better for add-ins like Buffalo chicken, bacon, tuna, or chopped chiles. (Don't worry, I draw the line at the TikTok-spawned horror of mac and raisins.) Mac and cheese is also much, much better when it's finished with a crunchy topping like crumbled cornbread.

In fact, adding cornbread serves a dual purpose. Not only does it add extra flavor and some much needed texture to your mac and cheese, but it's also a great way to use leftover cornbread. As most people know, fresh-baked cornbread sadly tends to get dry and stale pretty quickly, and this little hack provides a nice means of using it up. Reducing food waste and improving mac and cheese? Now, that's a cooking trick I can get behind.

The best way I've found to prepare cornbread to use as a mac and cheese topping is to go the crouton route. Despite the fact that cornbread practically crumbles itself, I like to chop it into roughly 1-inch chunks. I put these into a low oven (about 200 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit) until they are dry enough that they're practically little rocks. I let them cool and then smash the corn rocks up using a food processor or a hammer, wine bottle, or whatever other reasonably hard object I have lying around the kitchen. If you prefer, you could also leave them in larger pieces for a cornbread dressing topping. (It's not just a Thanksgiving side, you know.)

Once the cornbread is broken into crumbs, I sprinkle these on top of the mac and cheese, then put the pan back in the oven for just a few minutes. (The crumbs should brown but not burn.) Sometimes, I like to save some of the large cornbread croutons and use these to garnish a side salad. Adding cornbread to both dishes ties the whole meal together in a corny (but delicious) kind of way.