Annie’s seems to largely be known for their dry mac and cheese, though they do make some frozen food as well. We’ve actually tried their dry mac, though we’ve also been enjoying their ice cream sandwiches, and we even tasted their pizza bagels. We had a bit of trouble getting our hands on their frozen mac and cheese back when they first announced it, but it seems like it’s pretty easy to find at Target these days.
And that brings us to the Annie’s White Cheddar Shells & Peas Frozen Macaroni & Cheese, which we’re reviewing today. Yes, this is a frozen batch of mac and cheese — not a dry one. Huzzah!
Before we dig in, we’ve got to cook this up. Thankfully, that’s pretty simple, though your cook time will depend on the wattage of your microwave. There’s a chart on the back of the box that explains it all, and we’ve included that in our package scans at the bottom of this review.
We cooked ours for two minutes, then stirred it and popped it back in for two more minutes, and that seemed to do the trick.
Even though the peas seem to be the differentiator with this batch of macaroni, we were still surprised to see just how generous the pea portion actually was here. This meal is loaded up with those little green balls. And they’re decent peas. They have a nice fresh flavor, and they’re not soggy, though they are a little gravelly inside rather than being moist. The shells of the peas have a nice firmness to them, so they pop when you bite into them.
Now, the white cheddar here smells potent, but it doesn’t actually taste as strong as it smells. That’s totally fine, though, because the peas do a lot of the flavor work here and the sauce is on backup duty. The sauce also seems to have a bit of a gritty consistency, but we think that might actually come from the peas. It was really hard to get a bite of this without any peas, and even when we thought we’d succeeded, we ended up finding peas inside the pasta shells once we bit into them. The peas are really persistent here.
Shells are our favorite macaroni shape, so we’re glad to see them in this batch of mac and cheese. We do have to point out that these are smaller and flimsier than we’d have liked. Even so, they do their job, so we can’t really complain too much.
This contains 290 calories and 450 mg of sodium, which is pretty impressive for a white cheddar mac. We’ve seen white cheddar mac skyrocket over 700 calories per serving, so 290 feels super reasonable. And it’s hard to complain about 450 mg of sodium in a frozen meal (we typically expect about 700 mg). Of course, this isn’t a huge meal, and our reviewer still felt a little hungry after eating it.
The Annie’s White Cheddar Shells & Peas Frozen Macaroni & Cheese is a great option for people looking to ingest more peas. We don’t think Annie’s nailed the consistency on this, but the flavor is good enough and the calorie count is low enough that there’s still plenty to enjoy here.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions in this frozen mac and cheese, check out our package scans below.
