i know i’m not the only one who loves mac and cheese. i ate it growing up. a lot.

my kids love it too. and truth be told…they’ll only eat homemade. true story. so while there are times when i don’t mind spending more time in the kitchen making a nice creamy cheese sauce, most times i prefer something that pretty much cooks itself. which is why i love this crock pot version of macaroni and cheese. it’s really simple: throw everything in the crock pot. cook on low for 2 hours. eat.

and there’s nothing fancy involved here (is there ever anything really fancy about macaroni and cheese??). just straight up macaroni, cheese, evaporated milk, butter, salt, pepper, and dry mustard.

because there’s no time or effort put into making a cheese sauce that’s smooth and creamy and then adding it to the macaroni it’s probably going to turn out a little differently than if you had gone to all that effort. the cheese sauce has to make itself in the crock pot and do all the work now. you can see in the pictures that there are still little bits of cheese that haven’t melted into the “sauce”. and that’s okay. the flavor and everything else is still cooked into the pasta, and i like to think it makes it a little more rustic-looking and “home made”. and besides, it still tastes heavenly, and gooey, and cheesy.

i remember i used to frequently make this in the morning and then go out for a nice long walk with my kids and play at the playground. lunch would be ready when we got home and were starting to get really hungry. the food was already made. the clean up was already done. plus, we were going to eat homemade mac and cheese. in my opinion, that’s a perfect day.