Our love for sriracha sauce is no secret. This is one of the reasons we recommend Evol’s Sriracha Chicken Big Burrito so often (another reason is that it’s just really, really good). So when we stumbled upon So Right’s Sriracha Chicken Mac and Cheese at our local grocery store, we didn’t have to even think about it before tossing it into the cart. We really hoped this would live up to our expectations once we cooked it up.
We have to be honest here, So Right brand food freak us out a bit, since they’re packaged in cardboard. Sure, it’s probably healthier than plastic, which many other frozen foods are packaged in, and we drink milk out of cardboard cartons all the time. Still, it feels weird to us to eat food straight out of a cardboard box. Now, that’s our hangup, not yours, so feel free to ignore it completely or to make fun of us for being weird.
The cooking instructions say to heat this in the microwave for three and a half minutes, remove and stir, then cook for another minute. During the stir step, we were a bit concerned that the sauce was going to be way too soupy — it was almost as thin as a broth. But after heating it for the remaining minute, then letting it cool, the sauce thickens up to a pretty acceptable level.
When we pulled this meal out of the freezer, we sort of expected a cheese sauce with some chunks of chicken that were covered in a sriracha. That’s not what this is. Instead, this is a macaroni dish with sriracha mixed into the cheese sauce, and chicken mixed in with the noodles. So everything it mixed together from the start.
The chicken isn’t great. It’s a white meat with no breading or anything. Some of the best chicken macaroni dishes feature breaded chicken, which makes the absence of breading here feel unusual to us. This chicken also has a strange texture, and it’s a bit too tough. It’s just not a high-quality meat, and picking it out actually improves this dish.
Some people might find the combination of cheddar cheese sauce and sriracha to be off-putting, but it’s something we’ve tried before and we love it. Since sriracha is a sweeter hot sauce, it really enhances the sharp flavor of the cheddar for a great-tasting combo.
With this particular meal, though, it doesn’t work quite as well. The cheddar has that fake, plasticy taste that low-quality cheddar cheese sauces tend to have, which diminishes the appeal of combining it with sriracha.
This is also a bit spicy, due to the sriracha content. No, it won’t burn your mouth or send you running for a cool glass of milk, but spice-ophobes probably want to stay away from this.
So Right’s Sriracha Chicken Mac and Cheese doesn’t reach its true potential. In fact, it’s pretty mediocre. With some better quality chicken — with some breading on it — and some decent cheddar sauce, this could have been amazing. As it is, though, we don’t think we’ll be returning to it anytime soon. For a better-tasting alternative, check out Devour’s Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese.
To learn more about the nutrition or ingredients in this frozen mac and cheese dish, check out our package scans below.
