recipe: grilled mac and cheese with french fried onions

When my parents gave Tony and me our grill for Christmas, they mentioned that you can grill pretty much anything that you can bake in the oven. That could come in handy when it's 95 degrees this summer, and turning on the oven isn't an option. Just imagine -- chocolate chip cookies and enchiladas in July! Or apple pie and homemade pizza in August!

The weather hasn't been hot enough here yet to necessitate major grilling experiments, although Tony and I have had started dabbling with different recipes. We've made grilled pizza a few times, but I think I'm still searching for the best grilled pizza recipe. And over the weekend, we tried grilled mac and cheese, which turned out to be fantastic. This recipe is ready for prime time.

The recipe is going to look verrrrry familiar if you remember the baked macaroni and cheese recipe I posted last fall. One key difference: Tony requested I put French's French fried onions on his. He says it took the dish to a whole new level.

Also, you can see that we grilled the mac and cheese in two separate pans. I've been pretty sensitive to dairy lately, so I couldn't use real cheese in mine. So instead of using one 9-inch square casserole dish, we used two 8-by-4-inch loaf pans. I put real cheese in Tony's pan and Daiya soy "cheese" in mine.

That said, I'll give you the recipe assuming you're using just one baking dish, using real cheese in the whole thing and spreading onions over the entire casserole.

Macaroni and Cheese

Adapted from James Beard's American Cookery

• 2 cups macaroni (or medium shells)
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 1/2 cups milk (or soy milk)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 splashes of Tabasco
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese (or mozzarella, which is what we had in the fridge)
• generous amount of breadcrumbs
• four handfuls French fried onions

Butter a 2-quart baking dish. (We used disposable foil dishes for easy cleanup.)

Boil noodles for the minimum cooking time. My box called for 10-12 minutes, and I boiled for 10 minutes. Drain.

For the white sauce, melt butter in a saucepan. Add flour and cook for a few minutes. Meanwhile, in a separate saucepan, heat milk to the boiling point. Add milk to the butter-flour mixture. Add salt and Tabasco. Sauce will start to thicken. Cook on medium-low, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes.

In the prepared baking dish, add half of the macaroni, spread half of the white sauce, and add half of the cheese. Then add the rest of the macaroni, the rest of the white sauce, and then the rest of the cheese. Top with a generous amount of breadcrumbs. You can make your own breadcrumbs, but I used store-bought Italian-seasoned crumbs. Crush four handfuls of French fried onions in your hands and spread over top of casserole.

Pre-heat grill to 350-400 degrees (medium-low). Grill for 25 minutes or until breadcrumbs are crispy brown.