No one here at Freezer Meal Frenzy makes a point of avoiding gluten. Thus we can’t even imagine what it would be like to have to give up comfort foods like pizza and mac and cheese — two things we don’t know how we’d live without. Thankfully, the mad food scientists of the world have been cooking up alternatives. You can find gluten-free pizza and gluten-free mac and cheese relatively easily nowadays.
Today, we’re checking out just one option of many, the Stouffer’s Gluten Free Macaroni & Cheese. Stouffer’s makes a pretty tasty traditional mac and cheese, so we’re really curious to see how they handle a gluten-free version.
This is simple enough to cook, and it doesn’t have the overlong cook time that we’ve come to expect from Stouffer’s frozen meals. Simply pop this into the microwave for three minutes, give it a quick stir, and pop it back in for 90 additional seconds. The box also has oven instructions, but we think most people are just going to nuke this for the sake of convenience. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions for this mac and cheese, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
First off, this cheese is fantastic. It’s a sharp cheddar with a sour cream bite to it. This actually tastes a lot like the version we make from scratch at home — we love the way the tartness of the sour cream mixes with the sharpness of the cheddar. What a great combo! Of course, we do have to mention that it was also a bit more watery than we’d like — perhaps letting this cool and then reheating it would have given it the thickness we prefer?
The gluten-free part is the pasta, so that’s what we were really curious about here. This is actually made with rice and quinoa, which is an interesting choice. So how does it hold up?
Well, at first, it was difficult to notice any difference. However, as we ate more, we realized that this pasta has a rubbery consistency that real pasta doesn’t have. It breaks apart differently than normal pasta, coming apart with sort of a gravelly texture. That texture does make its way into the sauce as you eat more and more of the pasta and stir everything around a bit. And while we didn’t notice at first, this pasta does have a strange taste that starts out subtle but grows more noticeable over time. These are certainly not a perfect representation of authentic macaroni noodles.
With 480 calories and 1,080 mg of sodium, this is a bit less lean than you might hope. Then again, it’s a macaroni dish — mac and cheese isn’t exactly known for being diet food.
The Stouffer’s Gluten Free Macaroni & Cheese pairs a really tasty sauce with imperfect pasta. While we’ll take the real stuff over this any day, we’d be in a different position if we were actively avoiding gluten. In that case, we could see ourselves gravitating toward this meal.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this gluten-free mac and cheese, check out our package scans below.
As someone forced to eat gluten free I’ve tried these and you basically described it perfectly. It starts out tasting indistinguishable from decent mac and cheese but as you keep eating you start noticing more and more how…subtly wrong it is, and that wrongness grows as you eat. By the last few bites of it I had sworn off ever getting it again.
I still have yet to find a decent gluten-free alternative to breads and noodles which is exactly as devastating as you imagine it is. Finding out later you are gluten-intolerant is a horrible curse that cuts off like 95% of your entire diet, not to mention even more of frozen food or restaurant food. It’s depressing.