First of all, we need to announce the winner from our giveaway! The winner is #1334, Kelly! Congrats, girl!
So as many of you noticed last week, we’re working with Kraft over the next month to bring you a whole slew of new (primarily dinner) recipes. Here’s the deal; our blog is a little sliver of our lives, but it comes from a genuine place. On Our Best Bites, you can find fancy food snobbery, you can find down-home goodness, you can find hints and tricks that have made our lives in the kitchen easier, you can find guilty pleasures, and you can find doctored-up recipes. And truthfully, honestly, they’re all things that we eat and cook and love and use. In the collaboration we’re working on, we’re doing 4 recipes featuring Kraft’s new macaroni and cheese flavors. This is the second, we’ve got two more two come. But we also have 6 brand-new from-scratch dinner recipes as part of this project that we haven’t even gotten to yet. We know that dinner is important, and we also know that it can be stressful, so we want to offer a wide variety of recipes to make dinner your kind of happy.
So football season is right around the corner! I’m not a big watcher of football (unless Friday Night Lights counts, then I’m football’s most rabid fan. Go Lions!), but I do love the food and parties. And for tailgating and game-day parties, you have to have buffalo wings and I’m pretty sure you have to have macaroni salad as well.
This macaroni salad is a twist on buffalo wings and macaroni salad. I started with Buffalo Cheddar Kraft Macaroni and cheese and then bulked things up with rotisserie chicken breast and crumbles of tangy blue cheese. Blue cheese can be hit or miss–sometimes it’s delicious and sometimes, even within the same brand, it can be overwhelmingly strong and musty-tasting. So if you find your heart racing and your palms sweating in the blue cheese department of the grocery store, I’m right there with you. Grocery store panic is no joke. But if you’re nervous about blue cheese, you can always use feta, which is a much milder, more consistent cheese.
Cook the pasta al dente, disregarding the preparation instructions, but be sure to reserve the flavoring packet.
To fill the salad out, you’ll need celery, cucumbers, shredded carrots, green onions, and a red bell pepper.
Chop those up,
and add the pasta, shredded or chopped chicken, and blue cheese.
Toss to combine.
In a small mixing bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of plain Greek yogurt or sour cream (if you want, you can use 3/4 cup plain Greek yogurt or sour cream and 3/4 cup mayonnaise), the seasoning packets for the macaroni and cheese, 2 teaspoons of red wine vinegar, and a clove of minced garlic.
Add that to the pasta/veggie/chicken mixture and toss to coat evenly. If possible, refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.
Makes 10-12 side-dish servings, 8-10 main dish servings.
Buffalo Chicken Macaroni Salad
Recipe by Our Best BitesÂ
Ingredients:
2 packages Buffalo Cheddar Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (ignore the instructions and reserve the seasoning packets)
1-1 1/2 cups chopped grilled or rotisserie chicken
4-6 ounces crumbled blue cheese (you can use feta if blue cheese gives you the skeevies)
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cucumber, peeled, quartered, and sliced
1 cup carrot shreds
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 1/2 cups plain Greek yogurt or sour cream (you can substitute half of this with mayonnaise)
1 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
Instructions:
Cook the macaroni according to the package directions al dente. Set aside the seasoning packets. Drain the macaroni and rinse under cold water until the pasta is cool.
In a large bowl, combine the celery, cucumber, carrot shreds, green onions, chicken, blue cheese, and chopped bell pepper. Toss with the cooled macaroni. In a large measuring cup, whisk together the Greek yogurt or sour cream, the seasoning packets from the macaroni and cheese, the minced garlic, and red wine vinegar. Add the Greek yogurt mixture and toss to coat. If possible, refrigerate for at least an hour before serving. Makes 8-10 servings.
If you’re in a dinner rut, check out the Our Best Bites channel for dinner inspiration!
 Brought to you by Kraft Macaroni & Cheese
