The classic unctuous cheesy pasta dish, livened up with emerald green peas and nuggets of crisp, salty bacon.
Macaroni cheese with peas is one of our go-to dinner dishes. It's always popular with the family and it's so nice and easy to make, it's popular with the chef as well. Rather than making a traditional white sauce to bake the pasta in, this easy version just uses a pot of crème fraîche to make the creamy sauce, enhanced with a hit of mustard and some lovely cheddar cheese. The original recipe here is from 1946 issue of Women's Weekly - though we've given it a few updates to keep it modern.
This recipe is part of our cheap family meals collection – under £1 a head
Ingredients
- 175g (6oz) macaroni
- 90g (3oz) frozen peas
- 70g pack diced pancetta
- 200ml tub crème fraîche
- ½ tsp ready-made mustard, or a pinch of mustard powder
- 90g (3oz) mature Cheddar, grated
- Salt and ground black pepper
WEIGHT CONVERTER
Method
- Add the pasta to a pan of boiling, salted water and cook for 10 mins, adding the peas for the last couple of mins of cooking.
- Meanwhile, dry-fry the pancetta, or bacon, for about 5 mins until crispy.
- Drain the macaroni with the peas, return it to the pan and stir in the crème fraîche, mustard, pancetta, or bacon, grated cheese and seasoning. Warm through for a min. Serve with a green salad, and chutney, if you like.
Top tips for making macaroni cheese with peas
The original recipe here used scraps of leftover corned beef instead of pancetta. Corned beef was cheap and widely available, pancetta was probably almost unheard-of. If you want to go for a cheaper option you could use cooking bacon - the scrappy bits sold in packs in supermarkets. Once chopped and fried, it tastes just as lovely as regular bacon, and almost as nice as pancetta.
Jessica Dady is Food Editor at GoodtoKnow and has over 12 years of experience as a digital editor, specialising in all things food, recipes, and SEO. From the must-buy seasonal food hampers and advent calendars for Christmas to the family-friendly air fryers that’ll make dinner time a breeze, Jessica loves trying and testing various food products to find the best of the best for the busy parents among us. Over the years of working with GoodtoKnow, Jessica has had the privilege of working alongside Future’s Test Kitchen to create exclusive videos - as well as writing, testing, and shooting her own recipes. When she’s not embracing the great outdoors with her family at the weekends, Jessica enjoys baking up a storm in the kitchen with her favourite bakes being chocolate chip cookies, cupcakes, and a tray of gooey chocolate brownies.
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