Mac and cheese smackdown (Mac-down? Just go with it)!

The time has come! To compare all the boxed macaroni and cheeses! Only one shall emerge victorious in these hunger games (see what I did there? eh? eh?)! 

     First, some ground rules: everything is kind of held against the standard of regular Kraft mac, because it's the American standard and whatnot. Also I didn't take calories or nutrition into account because I feel like if you're making mac and cheese health is obviously not your top priority, you just want delicious orange cheese-product. SO! Let's get to it. 

In one corner: NEW! Goldfish mac & cheese (cheddar version)

     They have other flavors of this, one of which I believe is pizza, but that's disgusting so no. We're sticking to basics here. If you want some horrifying bastardization of a classic, by all means, try the pizza flavor.

     This one wins points at least for having a cartoon on the back, so that's kind of fun. Unfortunately I think that's where the point-winning ends. 

     This picture obviously had the lens all fogged up from the steaminess of the mac, but I picked it anyway because it makes it look better than it actually was, and I'm charitable like that. This was...not great. The holes in the goldfish-shaped noodles close up once the noodles expand, so there's nothing to grab the cheese. There's a reason macaroni noodles are shaped like that: it holds cheese inside! So this ended up being a lot...noodlier tasting than I'd like. Also the cheese sauce wasn't great. If you think Kraft cheese sauce tastes artificial, try this and report back to me. Your stance will have changed. This sauce tasted like an approximation of cheese flavor, as engineered by a lonesome scientist who has never tasted cheese before and wants to punish those who have. I mean, real talk: it wasn't so bad that I didn't eat it. Amanda and I agreed that it kind of got better the more we had, sort of like tequila.

FINAL VERDICT: Doesn't compete with original Kraft mac. Is food in the technical sense that it will prolong your life slightly if you are starving to death. Thumbs down, would not eat on purpose. 

In the opposing corner: Betty Crocker Mac & Cheese (original)

     No cartoons on the back of this one (boo, hiss), but they do tell you all about how they do box tops for education, so...yay I guess? I dunno, I feel weird about the box tops program because I think it's kind of messed up that they'll only give money to schools if you send them a portion of their mangled packaging, like when a kidnapper sends the cops one of their hostage's pinky fingers to prove they've got them. Like, how about you just give schools money because obviously you have some to spare since you volunteered for this program anyway, then put on the back of your box "We're not a bunch of greedy bastards, we gave money to support education without having to have it extorted from us through old-school mob tactics" and then I'll buy it because hey, there's an attitude I can get behind. But whatever. 

I kind of want to make this my wallpaper? I dunno, I have food feelings.

     This one tasted pretty much exactly like Kraft. The amounts of butter and milk are the same, even. It had a little less of that day-glo orange Kraft has that makes you feel like if you ate enough of it you'd probably get radiation-induced superpowers, so that's either a pro or a con depending on your worldview. It brought me back to my childhood spent eating noodles that Jennie had flung at the wall (if they stick they're done) and having contests to see who could swallow the biggest bite without chewing (she was a great babysitter; I still have to consciously force myself to chew sometimes). 

FINAL VERDICT: Pretty good. If Kraft does something stupid and horrible and you have to boycott them, this is a totally passable substitution. I hope that doesn't happen though because they'd actually be kind of impossible to boycott; Kraft owns EVERYTHING. They're the Google of the supermarket. One thumb up, would eat if someone else made it and I didn't have something else in mind already. 

In...another corner? How many corners are supposed to be occupied in this analogy? Oh well: Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (Thick and Creamy)

    I didn't actually get around to making this because after the last two trials I was kind of mac'd out and felt like I should eat something for dinner in which none of the first five ingredients were "color." Color is not a food. Color is light interacting with your eyeballs. It has no nutritional value. You cannot eat color. 

     That said, I've had the Thick and Creamy Kraft dozens of times before and it is easily the best boxed mac you can buy. It's exactly what it says on the box: thicker and creamier than the original. The noodles are bigger and you don't end up with that three tablespoons of weird orange water at the bottom of the pot. It's probably even worse for you than the original somehow (I don't really know how, you don't add more milk or butter than the original, and the cheese is still just a packet of astronaut food, but it tastes more caloric somehow). It's also more satisfying to eat because of the bigger noodles, I think. 

FINAL VERDICT: Ultimate comfort food, a win for being super delicious but still really fast and easy. Two thumbs up, elicits "MAN YOU KNOW I WANT SOME MAC AND CHEESE" response when asked to partake. 

BONUS ROUND, let's mix all the metaphors! 

     If you want the best mac and cheese around, you'll have to put in a little more work. This recipe is the best, best, best macaroni, this is it. I make it for cookouts and special dinners because people ask for it all the time. It's got all the goodness and creaminess and cheesiness of boxed mac, with the added texture and flavor of gooey melted cheese on top. It's also a lot more substantial -- sometimes with boxed macaroni you eat a bowl of it and then go "That...was not filling." This stuff will fill you up. If you're a lover of mac & cheese, you absolutely have to try this recipe sometime. You'll thank me later! 

Pasta Invention Time!

     By now you know I love to cook from any number of delicious-sounding/looking recipes I find, but I also like to occasionally dabble in Iron Chef-ing, aka grabbing a bunch of ingredients and seeing what I can come up with. Today's recipe comes from just that (also, due to the spontaneity of it, the pictures for this post are kind of lacking in quality. Yep, cell phone pics. Sorry!). I had picked up these noodles at Target with no particular plan in mind; I just spotted them and thought "Oh yes. I want to eat those." So let's see what I came up with for them! 

 

     First thing's first: I boiled the noodles. Seems obvious, but hey, I don't want to be the one that accidentally convinces you to eat uncooked noodles. Then I started cooking up some bacon.

 

     I had originally thought I'd just use the bacon grease to get a bacon-y roux going (fun fact: basically any recipe that starts with a roux is gonna be delicious) and use the bacon in some other recipe, but then I ate a nice crispy piece and thought "Wait a minute, idiot, bacon is delicious. Put it in the pasta!" So I chopped it up and set it aside. Back to the sauce! 

     As I mentioned, I wanted to go with a roux here. If you're not familiar, basically a roux is just a mix of fat and flour that gets you a nice thick base for sauces. It's usually made with butter, but this is America and I had bacon. So I whisked some flour into the bacon grease until it...looked like it does in the picture. Look, I'll be honest: this is one of those things that you learn from trial and error. There is no set amount of flour or anything, you just add some until it looks good. Same with the milk I added next. I just poured a bunch in while stirring until it looked about right. So that's the downside: some cooking things you just have to screw up a few times to learn how to do them. The bright side is that once you learn how to cook things that have no real recipe, people who don't know how to cook will watch you do it and look at you like a god. So that's fun. Anyway, once the sauce was looking smooth I threw in a big ol' pile of grated Asiago cheese and let it melt.

     Then I poured the sauce over the noodles and added most of the chopped bacon. I also stirred in a little dried ground mustard (trust me, it adds just a leeeetle kick to cheesy dishes) and some red pepper flakes for a dash of heat. Now, I could have stopped there, but you know what they say: if it's worth doing, it's worth doing in a manner so decadent and amazing you almost feel a little ashamed to admit to the internet that you did it (that's how that saying goes, right?). So I spread the gooey deliciousness out in a casserole pan...

     ...and whipped up a topping of, what else? MORE CHEESE. I used some mozzarella, some cheddar, and some Parmesan (what's that bring our cheese count up to? Four?). Then I toasted up three slices of bread and crushed them to smithereens for some fine bread crumbs (fine as in texture, I meant, but I guess fine as in fiiiiine could also apply, depending on how into bread crumbs you are) and added that to the mix. 

     Then I just sprinkled that mixture over the top of the noodles (along with the bacon I didn't stir right into the noodles) and popped them into the oven for a few minutes to get a melty, crispy, amazing crust on the top.

     Awww yiss. This is happiness in a pan. Obviously it's not diet food, but if you came here expecting that then I don't even know what kind of wrong internet turn you took, but you're in the wrong part of town, buddy. You don't belong here. Go back and take a right turn at Google Street over to Pinterest Lane, you might find some health food there.