Pro Chefs Blind Taste Test Every Frozen Mac & Cheese

[Narrator] We've gathered three mac and cheese experts

to blind taste test every brand of frozen mac and cheese

we could get our hands on

to see which ones meet their standards.

Stouffer's.

The noodles are thick, starchy-feeling.

It looks swollen, it looks gummy.

The sauce is having a little bit of trouble

adhering to the pasta.

The color seems artificial.

When we're looking at a great frozen mac and cheese,

we're looking for three core things.

First one and most importantly

is gonna be the texture of the sauce.

We want something that is velvety and smooth.

I love the big cheese flavor.

I want big, bold umami.

You should have at least three types of cheese

in a really good macaroni and cheese.

The last thing that we're looking for

is the texture, shape, and cook of the pasta.

[Adam] A little bit al dente, a little bit toothsome.

Bar none, this is where a lot of people go wrong.

It's frozen, and so you're freezing it

and then you're thawing it.

You want it to kind of be soft enough

where you don't have that tough kind of cut.

And not a gummy, mushy texture.

Sauce, kind of gummy.

Hasn't been really emulsified very well.

The cheese sauce came right off of the pasta.

The cheese had a bit of a chalky taste.

Smells a lot like Kraft mac and cheese smell

that you would remember from when you were a kid.

Which is like a cooked pasta meets wet cardboard.

It's also very, very seasoned,

but tastes nothing like cheese.

The quality of the pasta gives me cheap.

Kind of mushy.

It's bloomed a little bit too much.

Basically, the wheat has hydrated completely

and so now it just starts to expand and expand.

With a frozen mac and cheese,

what happens is that there's excess water

because it freezes.

When you're cooking by microwave, you're creating steam.

There's no Maillard reaction.

Pretty underwhelming in terms of the flavor,

the texture of the pasta, and also the texture of the sauce.

I'm guessing this is like big box, supermarket,

inexpensive ingredients.

Stouffer's brand macaroni and cheese.

As I guessed, it's cheap.

Stouffer's is a readily accessible product

found in almost every freezer.

We all ate it as a kid.

Pretty basic ingredients actually.

[Adam] Cooked macaroni, skimmed milk,

water, cheddar cheese.

Not a lot of additives,

which I'm a little bit surprised by.

A little bit of xanthan gum,

which would help with the unfreezing process.

To prevent the sauce from breaking when it's heated.

[Jack] They have cheddar cheese

and cheddar club cheese in it.

Cheddar club cheese.

I'm a cheese expert. I've never heard of that cheese.

Stouffer's, get your life together.

I'm just not the biggest fan of your mac and cheese.

From here, I think we're just gonna be able to go up.

[Narrator] Kraft Deluxe, Homestyle.

Immediately off the bat, I can smell the cheese.

Looks very creamy.

They have nice big holes,

so there's plenty of pockets to get the cheese sauce in.

The noodles, I can also see ridges in them.

And those ridges make the sauce cling to the pasta.

The sauce on this is not creamy.

A little bit on the mushy side.

The cheese just really isn't coming through.

Barely a cheese flavor,

more like a flavor that is trying to mimic cheese.

It is chalky.

[Adam] The noodle again looks plump.

The pasta's tough, not al dente.

Again, looks a bit gummy.

We're still in what we'll call

like the big box supermarket category.

I think this is Kraft.

Kraft Mac and Cheese, Deluxe.

Original cheddar home-style rich and creamy.

This is like a step up from their original brand.

Topped with real cheddar cheese.

No artificial flavors, preservatives, or dyes. Really?

I just hoped there'd be a little bit more cheese flavor

and also just a little more seasoning in general.

They include the ridges on the pasta

to give it the more home-style taste

and for the cheese sauce to stick to the pasta.

Great job, Kraft, for giving us a better noodle,

but in terms of actual cheese sauce and big cheese flavor,

still not feeling it.

Sorry, Kraft.

[Narrator] Amy's.

Off the bat, I'm, like, excited. Cheese sauce looks good.

[Jack] A nice yellowish orange color.

It's extremely creamy, which means there is a softer,

maybe pasteurized cheese.

In terms of an emulsion,

this is by far the best we've seen thus far.

So by far the most cheesy flavor we've had thus far.

I don't taste any, like, real seasoning in it.

This needs salt. It needs pepper.

Texture, fantastic.

Doesn't taste artificial.

Whoever made this one cares about their customer.

Yes, Amy's.

[Jack] Amy does a really great job.

Off the bat, organic macaroni.

[Jack] They use organic whole durum wheat

as well as regular durum wheat.

It's, like, healthy. White cheddar cheese.

It's fine melting cheese, but not the best melting cheese.

[Adam] Organic sweet rice flour.

They basically use the sweet rice flour

as their starch thickener.

Actually potentially even adds to the flavor

because it's sweet rice.

They hit a home run with trying

to put better ingredients into this product.

I want to keep eating it. Good job, Amy's.

[Narrator] Beecher's World's Best Mac and Cheese.

I can tell off the bat, we got real cheese in here.

We also got a good noodle. We got a penne noodle.

Typically you would find that more in pasta dishes,

but it has holes, ridges,

lots of cavities for the cheese sauce to go into,

so we have no problem with that.

I hate penne macaroni and cheese.

It's not baked ziti.

We have real cheese.

One of the byproducts of real cheese though

is broken cheese.

Cheese is made up of protein, fat, water,

and it's held together by calcium.

Too much heat, it breaks, the water evaporates,

the fat turns to oil,

and you're left with chunks of protein.

Really is a lot of separation.

The emulsification is breaking.

But I'm actually okay with it because I like the flavor.

There's some nuance to it, there's some seasoning.

Lactic, tangy, there's a umami vibe to it.

It's a sauce that makes you want to go for another bite.

Possibly the best pasta texture so far.

I can't even guess who would do that

to the macaroni and cheese,

because that is just disrespectful.

The best mac and cheese I've eaten so far.

Beecher's, World's Best Mac and Cheese.

I don't think I'm gonna call it the world's best,

but I will say it's good.

Beecher's is known for making their own cheeses.

I think they're using cheddar cheese

because that's the cheese they make,

but they're using Jack cheese

because they know that you need a cheese

that will hold when being cooked.

Jack cheese melts really great.

Jack cheese is very, very strong cheese.

They put a lot of thought into the flavor,

and you can absolutely tell.

I don't like it.

[Narrator] Trader Joe's Joe's Diner Mac and Cheese.

I'm seeing white cheese and I'm seeing orange cheese.

[Jack] We do have some cheese pull.

You want to make sure that you put one soft cheese

mixed with a cheddar cheese in order to get that pull.

This one tastes a little bit more higher in quality.

This is mushy peas pretending to be mac and cheese.

Yeah, it's just a pretty sad-looking bowl right now.

Way more home-style than any other of the ones

that I had thus far.

Curdled sauce.

The pasta is mushy. There is no big cheese flavor.

It feels like food for people without teeth.

Joe's Diner Mac and Cheese.

Trader Joe's.

I didn't even know they even did that.

Advertising cheddar, Swiss, Havarti, and Gouda.

Cheddar cheese is gonna bring you

like a tangy, bright, buttery note.

Havarti cheese is gonna give you texture.

It's gonna give you a creaminess.

It's gonna give you a lactic cooked milk note.

Gouda cheese can come off

as like sweet, fruity, nutty, umami,

and Swiss cheese also will give you that umami,

lactic, cooked milk, like sour cream note.

This was like a grown-up macaroni and cheese.

This is not for the kids. Great job, Trader Joe.

Not that yummy.

Sorry, Joe's Diner. We're not a big fan.

[Narrator] Lean Cuisine, Vermont White Cheddar.

Okay, so it's all white cheese.

I love that, like, velvety, creamy-looking cheese sauce.

The noodles are very large in size.

They also have ridges in them.

It looked good, and then as I got my spoon in it,

it started to look like tapioca.

It's not giving me a strong cheese taste.

Very quickly my body's like, Yeah, not good for you.

Big cheese flavor, there is none.

It's just not a very good flavor, but it's very distinct.

I taste more salt than anything.

The second that you put the pasta into your mouth,

it disintegrates.

[Shaw-nae] Very mushy pasta.

So overcooked with it,

it's almost impossible to get a comfortable bite.

What we suspect is that

there's something fishy going on here.

Is this Weight Watchers?

Ooh. Lean Cuisine.

It says modified food starch. I can taste that.

I've been touting the fact

that less ingredients makes a better product,

and this is an example of less ingredients,

but the ingredients

are missing something extremely important.

Fat, you need fat.

Want the fattiness of the butter and the cheese

and the cream to come together

so that it has that really, like, beautiful consistency.

When you cut all that out,

you're losing so much with the dish.

The funny thing about like sort of diet kind of food

is they add so much salt to the food.

Salt sometimes can kill your taste buds

so that you don't have to taste anything else.

I'd rather eat salad over that.

[Narrator] Wegmans.

All right, this looks beautiful.

[Adam] It has a cheese sauce

that looks like actual cheese sauce.

They may have mixed a white and a yellow cheese together

to get it to this color.

We've got a curly noodle, which is like long and fun.

Larger in size.

Smell sweet cream.

It's like almost like sweet buttered corn.

This one is good.

It's got, like, real cheese flavor.

It had the right texture. It has the right glossiness.

The sauce was beautiful.

We got creamy. We got velvety.

We got smooth.

The pasta's cooked properly this time.

[Adam] Look at that noodle. That's a fun noodle.

They did achieve the balance

between all of the different components.

There's definitely a nutmeg in there,

some type of baking spice.

This is probably one of the better brands

of macaroni and cheese.

Everything about this was beautiful.

Whatever store it is, it cared.

Wegmans strikes again. There it is.

Wegmans is truly one of my favorite supermarkets.

They care about everything that they do.

I love this company.

Wegmans is consistently voted

one of the best places to work.

As a member of the Artisan Cheese Mafia,

I can vouch for the fact

that they have an incredible selection of cheese.

They put buttermilk it in,

and that might be why it's a little more creamy.

Lo and behold,

it starts with the processed American cheese.

There's nothing wrong with that word.

Maybe that's why it's like so smooth and so soft.

That is the smartest way

to use an emulsifier or a binding agent.

They're made with those,

and so they're the perfect addition to a mac and cheese

because they act as the emulsifier, the binding agent.

Sharp cheddar cheese, that gives it more flavor.

Modified cornstarch, smart.

At the end, adds a little bit more of the emulsifying agent,

salt, spices, and annatto extract,

but not too much annatto extract

so it gives you still that white cheddar vibe,

but it's a little bit hued.

That's great.

Yeah, this is a well-made product.

I could have eaten the whole thing,

but I got a bunch more to go.

[Narrator] Marie Callender's Vermont Cheddar.

First time we've got shells here, which is great.

It just kind of like scoops and holds the cheese.

The sauce itself is not very homogenized.

We also got breadcrumbs here.

I've never done macaroni and cheese

with breadcrumbs on top of it.

This one is definitely coming off like a more home-style,

hearty macaroni and cheese that your grandma prepared.

Cheese is a little flat.

It lacks seasoning and it lacks cheese taste.

Noodle turns out a little gummy.

Unfortunately, if you try to microwave

macaroni and cheese with breadcrumbs on it,

you're not gonna have a good time.

It's not super crispy or crunchy.

It almost comes off a little stale

and it's like super hard to chew.

I want more robustness. I want more volume.

I want the cheese to kind of bounce.

I'm actually guessing this is a medium to low quality

trying to be high quality.

I don't want to call out Marie.

I don't want to say that it's her,

but I would think a grandma made something like this.

I finally got her. Grandma.

[Jack] Marie Callender's

Vermont Cheddar Mac and Cheese Bowl.

Now I can't taste the Parmesan cheese in here

with the white cheddar,

but that may be why it's a little bit smoother in taste,

because Vermont cheddar is sharp.

I love Vermont cheddar.

There's no Vermont cheddar notes in this cheese.

It's a low-quality product

trying to look like a high-quality product.

Sorry, Marie, but we're not a fan of this one.

[Narrator] Banquet.

Back to orange.

[Shaw-nae] The cheese sauce is very creamy.

We can see it's not really sticking

to the pasta very well.

This is not good.

Cheese does not taste like cheese.

That is super artificial.

But it's seasoned very well.

And it lacks any real macaroni and cheese consistency.

This is bland as F.

It tastes like somebody poured yellow paint

over the pasta noodles.

The texture of the pasta is pretty good.

Not overcooked, but they are kind of soft.

The yellow color typically comes from annatto

and is used to mimic beta-carotene,

which is inherently in cheese,

because beta-carotene comes from grass.

Did you know eating cheese is like eating sunshine?

I think this is more likely a low-end product,

the 99 cent frozen mac and cheese.

Banquet.

Banquet is like one of the cheapest TV dinner products.

Yeah, this is really bad.

If you have to advertise it as made with real cheese,

it's probably not made with a lot of it.

All these, like, fake ingredients on here,

it's not cheese.

It's called cheese flavor.

They're really basing this entire recipe on water

and emulsifying everything into that water.

I can't take one more bite of that.

Don't eat it.

[Narrator] Kidfresh Wagon Wheels.

We have the dreaded wagon wheel pasta shape.

Definitely was supposed to appeal to the children.

Possibly the worst pasta shape

to ever be used for a mac and cheese.

We can essentially get cheese

in every single nook and cranny and crevice

of this pasta shape,

so a great pasta shape, fun for the kids.

When you reheat it,

those areas often can become very brittle and/or mushy.

The cheese sauce is a little light.

Wow, that's really bad.

I don't really taste cheese.

Lacking in umami and texture.

It's not a sauce.

That thing is like sticking to that pasta-like paste.

Pasta was a bad choice.

It tastes like butter mixed with wet cardboard.

I think it's just a fun children's mac and cheese.

Kidfresh.

Wagon Wheels Mac and Cheese,

pasta with cheddar cheese and pureed carrots.

It's most likely a way for kids to eat vegetables.

I used to sneak mushrooms

into my kids' spaghetti all the time.

That's why it tastes much sweeter,

but it also might be the reason

why the sauce is more of like that chalkier,

not creamy consistency.

When you add vegetables to a product like mac and cheese,

you're adding a new level of moisture

and a new interaction with the ingredients.

Part of why this particular sauce

doesn't really carry much texture and much velvetiness

is because it sort of leaches out some of that water.

I'm way too old to be eating Wagon Wheels.

I think these guys have done a really good job

making a mac and cheese for kids.

This isn't for me.

I love the Wagon Wheels.

[Narrator] Michelina's.

This one's yellow. It's cheap.

[Adam] A bloated elbow noodle.

The ratio of the liquid in the emulsion

is significantly higher than the ratio of the fat,

so it's a little bit looser than we would want it to be.

That's really bad.

I don't get any taste. It's very, very bland.

The flavor is like unsalted margarine.

I wish there was more cheese flavor.

There's not really any cheese pull here.

Just tastes like artificial cheese sauce

on an overcooked noodle.

Macaroni is like gummy, so the texture is just gross.

Nothing good.

I don't really even want to look at it.

Michelina.

[Adam] Macaroni and cheese,

quality ingredients since 1990.

It's considered more of like

the one of the higher grade kind of TV dinner-ish.

Made with real cheese, again, we will advertise that.

Interestingly though,

pretty low calorie per serving package.

Margarine. I freaking nailed it, dude.

And now I'm pissed off because I don't eat margarine.

It's disgusting.

Margarine is fake butter.

I noticed that the fat content was significantly lower.

It's acting like butter, but it really isn't oil.

In this case, it looks like soybean.

Margarine is basically an example

of using an inferior product to provide a certain flavor.

So they want that butter flavor,

but they don't want to use real butter,

so they'll use margarine.

For the sake of an actual cheese sauce, we want butter.

And then blue cheese flavor. Fascinating.

We're not getting any blue cheese flavor,

but I did taste a lot of seasoning.

I think a lot of that is coming

from the addition of that blue cheese flavoring.

What are we doing with this?

Michelina, see you later.

[Narrator] Devour Buffalo Style Chicken.

Yeah, I think we're back to Flavor Town, people.

[Shaw-nae] I don't know if they threw

any kind of like tomato base in here

because it's giving it a lot of color.

Sea shell as the macaroni.

I love shells personally for mac and cheese.

I think I smell like chorizo or something.

Is this meatballs?

Looks like a fried chicken.

It's spicy.

I think I just ate chicken.

They hid it in that pasta.

Cheese sauce. It's good.

It's creamy. It's coated.

Somebody's hand was super heavy on cayenne.

It's not big cheese flavor, but it's big flavor.

This is kind of just like when you're a kid

and your mom makes you some mac and cheese

and some chicken nuggets

and you just mixed them all into a bowl

and poured some hot sauce on it.

The pasta's cooked well, I will say that, al dente,

like it has a nice bite to it.

And the flavor, I will say,

because I like spice, is good.

I like it.

This is not macaroni and cheese. This is something else.

TGI Fridays.

Devour Buffalo Style Chicken Mac and Cheese.

Pasta shells in a creamy

buffalo-style cheddar cheese sauce

with breaded white meat chicken and rich blue cheese.

Very tasty, extremely unconventional.

I'm still not sure I'm ready to call this mac and cheese.

It's like a meal in one bite.

Significantly better than I think

you would think it would be.

There's actually blue cheese, not blue cheese flavor.

It also makes sense because buffalo chicken

loves a blue cheese dip.

I don't taste the blue cheese in there.

But you know what? That could be because it's so spicy.

But all of the other things that are in there

are working together.

Pretty tasty bowl of pasta and chicken.

Can't really call it mac and cheese though.

[Narrator] Vital Pursuit,

Vermont White Cheddar Mac & Broccoli Bowl.

It's a white cheese. It's creamy.

[Jack] We've got some color.

Very courageous task of making a frozen mac and cheese

with a cruciferous vegetable like broccoli,

which retains a tremendous amount of water.

The sauce is kind of creamy but grainy-looking.

Either the fat ratio is too high

or they used too many different hydrocolloids

that didn't quite smooth out during the cooking process.

It's not bad.

It has a very great, well-balanced big cheese flavor.

[Adam] The sauce is a little grainy.

There is a bitterness to this one.

Little bit more of a heavier pinch of maybe garlic powder

or something that's in there, onion powder.

Kind of tastes like chewy broccoli cheese soup.

And then the pasta was cooked pretty decently.

The texture in the mouth feels not as bad as the look.

Broccoli has crunch to it.

It's pretty impressive, actually.

Frozen vegetables can absolutely ruin a cheese sauce.

It's gonna automatically give off water,

and that's going to loosen the cheese sauce.

The noodle doesn't look super bloated,

which is impressive given the potential issue

of too much moisture in the product.

I don't know. Would this be a Cracker Barrel dish?

Is this 365?

Vital Pursuit, Vermont White Cheddar Mac & Broccoli Bowl.

Clearly it's a new product

because they put GLP-1-friendly right on the box.

Pasta made with protein.

If you're on one of the GLP-1s, you need protein,

you forget that you need protein.

This is like one of my top three.

And you are getting the vegetable component in it.

Overall, it's a pretty solid product.

I just wish that they hadn't messed up the sauce so much.

[Narrator] Strong Roots, Creamy Mac.

Beautiful gloss, beautiful shine and sheen.

[Adam] It's neither white nor orange.

Probably a diet macaroni and cheese.

Smells yummy.

It's got big flavor, but it doesn't scream cheese.

It tastes like soup.

Beef bouillon note to it.

This is a slightly cheese substitute

or a full cheese substitute.

It has a glossiness. It has a nice texture.

The pasta's cooked properly. It's seasoned well.

A lot of onion, a lot of powder.

The texture of the noodle is really, really good.

The garlic is taking over.

At this point, I can't have a conversation with anybody

when I leave here.

It looks identical to mac and cheese,

but it doesn't really taste like mac and cheese.

It doesn't scream cheese, but it is good.

I'm very curious what this is.

Did my mommy make it?

Strong Roots, Creamy Mac.

The big daddy of comfort food

with all the tastes you love, minus the dairy.

Yep, there we go.

I nailed it again. There is no cheese in here.

They got vegan cream alternative in here,

potato starch, flavoring, olive oil, coconut oil.

Healthy vegan mac and cheese

has more of the food-grade chemicals in it

than every other one.

This says creamy mac, not mac and cheese.

So right off the bat, I love this product

because they're not pretending to be something they're not.

Not trying to mimic the cheese, forgetting about that,

but just creating something that reminds you of that umami,

that richness, that soulful feeling.

I think that's where they've actually

very much succeeded here.

You could have fried chicken with the stuff

that they put in that macaroni and cheese at this point.

This is actually delicious.

[Narrator] Udi's Gluten Free.

This cheese sauce look like

grandma's cheese sauce right here.

The sauce is just starting to split.

We can probably fix that by emulsifying it back up.

I don't taste any cheese at all.

A little bit springy texture.

It's a little grainy slash kind of like pudding.

What we thought was gonna be sort of a glossy-ish emulsion

really disintegrated

and kind of almost tasted like pastiness.

Actually the first slightly undercooked pasta

I've tasted today.

The small noodle choice is a little strange,

but it does work with it

because it's letting the cheese shine

and not the pasta shine.

It's the first pasta that we've tasted

that actually hasn't over-bloomed

in the freezing and reheating process.

I don't know, there's something artificial about this.

A non-gluten pasta.

Maybe it's a vegan gluten-free.

Udi's. Okay.

It's gluten-free. That's surprising.

A gluten-free frozen pasta is very difficult.

The minute that you boil gluten-free pasta,

it immediately starts releasing starches from the pasta

and the water gets very like murky and thick.

Most likely they did use pasta water

to help thicken the cheese sauce.

Somehow they've been able to execute that.

But the cheese side of it is gross.

It does have a cheddar cheese blend

and also has Monterey Jack cheese,

but we really weren't tasting much cheese flavor in this.

Not that yummy.

[Narrator] Now let's see which brands

our experts liked the most and the least.

I really loved the Wegmans.

Their mac and cheese was absolutely delicious.

I liked the choice of pasta that they had.

I love the consistency of the macaroni and cheese.

Viscosity, velvety texture.

And it tasted very fresh,

like they cared about who they were preparing

that macaroni and cheese for.

Another favorite was the Amy's.

Really great color, really good texture,

but the cheese flavor was on point.

The Vital Pursuit macaroni and cheese was really good.

That GLP OZ one was on the money.

Maybe I'm not as much of a purist as I thought I was

because the two mac and cheeses

that actually had additional ingredients,

the one with the broccoli

and the one with the buffalo chicken,

I actually really enjoyed those.

The balance of flavor

using vegetables and pasta and cheese

are very, very hard to execute.

Special shout out to the Strong Roots Vegan Creamy Mac.

I really liked it. It had a lot of flavor.

It had really good texture.

Typically, the vegan ones fall very, very short.

They don't remind you of mac and cheese.

Strong Roots went the opposite direction,

but really focusing on the feeling of the mac and cheese,

the nostalgia, that creaminess in the mouth.

It's maybe my second favorite of the entire day.

And now for the ones I don't like.

Lean Cuisine. Get out of here with that.

Lean Cuisine needs to give it up.

The gelatinous nature of the sauce

was really off-putting to the eye.

Zero flavor. You need fat for flavor.

Disgusting.

I also didn't like the Udi's Gluten Free mac and cheese,

and while they were absolutely

able to hit the nail on the head

with the gluten-free pasta element,

I could not get over how bad that cheese sauce was.

I did not like Banquet.

It costs a $1.99, and it tastes like a $1.99.

I didn't like the Michelina's.

It feels like the Michelina's

was trying to be like Amy's, but not.

It was just boring, bland.

Frozen mac and cheese exists for a reason.

It's convenient. It's quick for people on the go.

Select the things with less ingredients.

Pick the things that you can read and understand.

You wanna make sure that you get it

and it says real milk, real cheese, real butter.

If you're buying on price,

just know that you're usually sacrificing flavor.

And if you really can, make your own cheese sauce.

Have an exciting experience with macaroni and cheese.

Make your own.