This is a lazy evening comfort food. It's cheap, filling, easy, and delicious. You can "upgrade" it — make the mac & cheese from scratch, say, swap out the spam for pancetta, etc — ­but this is the canonical recipe.

The correct boxed mac & cheese to make this with is PC brand White Cheddar. You can use Kraft Dinner but it's twice as expensive and less than half as tasty, so I don't recommend it. As for the spam, I'm partial to Mala Sichuan Peppercorn Spam, but really, any spam should work fine.

You can omit the grated cheddar if you don't have any to hand, but I find it adds a nice hit of extra cheesiness at the end.

It scales up well; if scaling down, you have to decide whether to have something twice as meaty as intended or have a leftover half-tin of spam.

Mac & Cheese with Broccoli and Spam

Ingredients

• 1 tin spam
• 1 tbsp bacon grease, or oil or butter if you don't have any lying around
• 2 boxes grocery store mac & cheese mix
• 1 large head broccoli, cut into florets
• ½ C (or more) freshly grated cheddar
• black pepper to taste

Directions

1. Detin spam and dice into small cubes.
2. Heat the grease (or oil) in a large, deep skillet or dutch oven over medium heat.
3. Add the spam and cook, turning occasionally, until browned and crispy.
4. While spam is cooking, boil pasta according to package. With ~1 minute left on the timer, add the broccoli florets. Ideally, time things so that the pasta is finishing up at the same time the spam does; if unsure, err on the side of the spam finishing early rather than the pasta.
5. Drain the pasta & broccoli; add to the skillet with the spam. Add the sauce mix and other necessary ingredients (typically butter + milk). Stir together with the spam until the sauce forms.
6. Add the cheese and continue mixing until the cheese melts. Season with generous amounts of black pepper.