If you want to combine mac and cheese with pizza, there are two very different routes you can take. The first is putting mac and cheese on a pizza — this is something many pizza-makers have tried, and we have to admit, we do have a fondness for macaroni pizza. On the other hand, you can try to make a bowl of macaroni more pizza-like. Again, this is something we’ve seen plenty of frozen food makers try their hand at (our favorite so far might be the Trader Joe’s version…)
Today, we’re looking at a meal that takes the latter route, the Stouffer’s Mac-Fulls Pepperoni Pizza Mac & Cheese Bowl. We do think Stouffer’s has what it takes to create a quality meal from this formula, so our hopes are high that we’re really going to enjoy this.
But we can’t say for sure until we cook it up, so let’s do that now. This actually takes quite a bit of time in the microwave (more than six minutes), but that’s not really a surprise coming from Stouffer’s. We’ve seen some pretty hefty cook times from this brand, so we don’t go into these expecting lightning-fast meals. Then again, six minutes is actually pretty fast in the grand scheme of things. At least you don’t have to prepare anything from scratch, right?
If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, you can scroll to the bottom of this review to check out the package scans. In the meantime, we’re going to take our first bite to see what we think!
So, a lot of pizza bowls will go with a marinara sauce with some melty cheese rather than a cheese sauce. This one actually contains marinara and a cheese sauce! Who says you have to sacrifice one sauce for another? Stouffer’s certainly doesn’t!
The flavor definitely swings in favor of the marinara, but the cheese sauce does give this a really nice creamy consistency. Considering we’re the type of Midwesterners who will put ranch dressing on spaghetti, we definitely have the stomach for a creamier red sauce. Not everyone will, but we do!
This comes with a fairly generous portion of pepperoni, and it’s some pretty decent stuff. It’s chopped into cubes rather than the traditional slices, but that actually works here really well. It adds a lovely texture, on top of the great taste.
The pasta is a penne noodle that has an ever-so-slight ribbed texture. While some might expect us to lament for a shell pasta or a classic elbow, we actually think the penne is the right choice here.
If you’re looking for something diet-friendly, well this ain’t it, honey! One bowl of this stuff contains 640 calories and a whopping 1,510 mg of sodium. Yes, this is clearly a cheat day food; it’s definitely not something that should become an everyday meal.
The Stouffer’s Mac-Fulls Pepperoni Pizza Mac & Cheese Bowl is one of the best pizza bows we’ve tasted. This is definitely going to give Trader Joe’s some competition in the pepperoni pizza mac department, and we don’t really think that’s a bad thing. In fact, we’d like to imagine that this could kick off an arms race between the two brands, with both rapidly escalating the quality of their frozen meals in an attempt to outdo the other. Oh, a frozen food reviewer can dream…
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen Mac-Full, check out our package scans below.
