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This Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese is so good, everyone will be asking you for the recipe!
Throughout the winter months, Jack and I help operate the concessions stand at our daughter’s swim meets – and this Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese is always a crowd favorite. It’s always the first dish to sell out every weekend!
Fellow swim parents, April and Russ (who were so nice to share their recipe with us), have been making this easy, creamy, and very cheesy Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese to sell at concessions for a few years now. It’s simple to make and just has the perfect mix of gooey pasta and cheese.
This Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese is so good, even when other parents bring a second batch of a different kind of mac and cheese, everyone scrambles to get some of this recipe before it sells out! And more recently, we made it ourselves a couple of weekends ago for family and friends – and everyone asked us for the recipe.
How do you make the best Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese?
First, select the right kind of pasta. We suggest a sturdy pasta such as elbows or spirals including cavatappi (which means corkscrew in Italian), cellentani, gemelli, or lumache. Once cooked, all of these pasta shapes will hold up nicely to a thick sauce – and the tubes and curly edges also help the sauce stick to the pasta.
Second, cook the pasta just until al dente – which means that it is cooked to be “firm to the bite.” The pasta will cook more as it heats in the slow cooker with the sauce, so you want to make sure that the pasta isn’t soft and overcooked before mixing it with the cheese. Drain and rinse under cool water.
Then – make your cheese sauce by combining a pound each of shredded Colby Jack, Monterey Jack, and Velveeta cheeses, plus a stick of butter, a pint of heavy cream, and seasonings including salt, white pepper, dry mustard powder, ground nutmeg, Worcestershire sauce, plus a few shakes of hot sauce – right in the slow cooker.
Let the cheese mixture melt on low heat* in the slow cooker for about 90 minutes – then stir in the cooked pasta. Heat for another 30 to 60 minutes until the pasta is warmed through and the sauce is hot and bubbly. (Feel free to reduce to warm if you see the edges begin to brown.)
*If you want to speed things up, you can melt the cheese mixture in a saucepan, then add it to the slow cooker with the cooked pasta. Heat on low for about an hour before serving or lower the temp to warm.
Either way you make this delicious Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese – you’re going to love it!
You may like these other Mac & Cheese recipes:
- Air Fryer Mac & Cheese
- Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese
- Lobster Mac and Cheese
- Mac and Cheese Cupcakes
- Keto ‘Mac’ and Cheese with Sausage
We love seeing what you made! Tag us on Instagram at @afamilyfeast or hashtag #afamilyfeast so we can see your creations!
Slow Cooker Mac & Cheese
Ingredients
1 pound cavatappi/cellantani, or your favorite pasta
1 pound Colby Jack cheese
1 pound Monterey Jack cheese
1 pound Velveeta cheese
1/4 pound butter (one stick)
1 pint heavy cream (16 ounces)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon dry mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Few shakes of hot sauce
Instructions
Cook pasta in salted water to two minutes shy of cooked. The pasta should be chewy. Drain and rinse under cold water and hold until later in this recipe.
Place all other ingredients in a slow cooker and heat for 90 minutes on low.*
Run cooked pasta under hot tap water, drain and add to the slow cooker and stir.
Cover and heat for 30 to 60 more minutes until the pasta is cooked and the cheese is melty before serving.
If cooking for a longer length of time, turn slow cooker to warm so it doesn’t brown on edges.
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Notes
*If you want to speed things up, you can melt the cheese mixture in a saucepan, then add it to the slow cooker with the cooked pasta. Heat on low for about an hour before serving or lower the temp to warm.
Easy, delicious, and always well received at parties. I have nearly 100 mac and cheese recipes pinned but I can’t bring myself to try any others because this one is so good!
Thanks Shaelyn!
I swear I already reviewed this. If there is an approval process and my other review is in the queue, please disregard this one.
This was a huge hit. Made it for Thanksgiving and will be making it again tomorrow because I’ve been craving it ever since.
Thank you for posting!
Hi Wendy – Yes you did – and it’s showing in the comment section (it displays oldest to newest). 🙂 Thanks again – so glad you enjoyed it!
Made this for Thanksgiving and it was DELICIOUS! I’ll definitely make it again. Thank you for posting.
You’re welcome Wendy! Glad you enjoyed the recipe!
Made this to Take to carry -and it must ha ve been good because I never got to taste it. It was gone,!! Everyone commented how good it was.
Thanks Patricia!