Semi-Homemade Chili Mac

Semi-homemade chili mac is sooo easy to make – almost as easy as the red box. Plus you can make it as low-sodium as you’d like.

This recipe is a riff on something my mom served pretty often, though she called it “goulash.” But I’ve had authentic Hungarian goulash and it’s nothing like this. Maybe it’s a Midwestern thing – though it seems other parts of the Midwest define goulash differently too.

Anyway, we never, ever had Hamburger Helper at our house when I was a kid. And (shocking admission) to this day I still haven’t tried it. Mostly because I have my own semi-homemade recipes like this one and Annie’s beef stroganoff, for example, that we really enjoy. Why mess with a good thing?

How This Recipe Came About

Mom was a pretty good cook, but for things like this, she almost never used a recipe. She’d just eyeball the ingredients, using a couple of pounds of burger, a quart of her home-canned tomatoes, and a couple of cans of mild chili beans.  (Quantities are larger than this recipe because she was serving seven of us, after all.) Then she’d add in elbow macaroni until it looked right, plus some water.

I know quite a few people who, like my mom, are what I call “creative cooks.” By that I mean they’ll start with a basic idea, then add a dash of this, a little of that, but they never write down what they’ve done. I’m not that kind of cook – when I come up with something we both really like, I want to be able to re-create it again… and again… and again. And nowadays I might only make my semi-homemade chili mac recipe three or four times a year. I needed to write it down so I’d be able to repeat it (without drama) after not making it for a while.

Over the years I’ve refined my recipe a bit and added other ingredients to up the taste profile and round out the flavors. I call it ‘semi-homemade because I use mild chili beans in sauce as part of the base, then build the flavors from there. While you can also find hot chili beans in sauce, I like to have a little more control over just how hot the finished dish will be. And, wow – with the hot chili beans, all I can taste is the fiery hotness of them. Sometimes if a dish is overwhelmingly hot, that’s all you can taste…

How to Make This Chili Mac Recipe

Start by heating a 12-inch skillet or larger pan over medium heat. Crumble in the ground beef and begin frying it, then add the chopped onion. I don’t typically add the garlic at this point, but you can if you wish. (Cooking the garlic a little less tends to make the garlic flavor a bit more pronounced.) Once the onions are translucent and no pink remains the beef, drain the mixture if you wish. I use a colander, but it’s up to you.

Add the beef mixture back to the skillet and add the tomatoes, chili beans, and water, followed by the elbow macaroni. Then add the garlic, herbs, and spices, and stir well to combine. Lid the mixture, bring it to a boil, and reduce heat to simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring at least once to ensure even cooking.

You shouldn’t need to add more water, but if the mixture starts to look too dry, add about a quarter cup at a time as needed. Note that the macaroni is cooked waaayyyy past the al dente stage. This is the way my mom always cooked it. Actually, every home-cooked version of chili mac I’ve ever tried has been this way. Maybe it’s a Midwestern thing, maybe it’s because many cooks use home-canned tomatoes like me – but it’s the way I prefer it too. (Plus, I think it helps the flavors develop and marry…) Enjoy!

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