One of our favorite things is stumbling upon a new macaroni meal at our local grocery store. So when our most recent shopping trip resulted in us discovering the Stouffer’s Baked White Mac & Cheese, we were pretty dang excited about it. Stouffer’s tends to make a pretty mean batch of macaroni, and we can only imagine what their take on a decadent white-sauce mac and cheese would be like.
We should point out that the package claims this is a new recipe, but we don’t recall there being an old recipe (the closest thing we could find in our backlog was the White Cheddar Mac & Cheese). So we never got to try the previous version of this dish — in fact, we didn’t even know it existed.
Now, one thing we mention frequently is that Stouffer’s frozen foods tend to have long cook times, even in the microwave. We’re happy to report that this is an exception. With just five minutes of nuke time in total, this has a pretty average cook time. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out our package scans at the bottom of this review.)
One thing we should point out right away is that this meal contains a generous amount of bread crumbs. If you use the microwave cooking method like we did, those crumbs will end up a little soggy. We imagine that they’d be a little more crisp if you decide to go all out and cook this in the oven.
That said, what’s here is pretty tasty, regardless of how soggy or crispy those bread crumbs turn out. The reason for this is that Stouffer’s uses an excellent blend of American and sharp cheddar cheese for a creamy sauce that has an oh-so-slightly bitter bite to it.
The noodles here are closer to a rigatoni noodle than the classic elbow shape of traditional mac and cheese. We think Stouffer’s wanted to make this seem a bit more grown-up, which is probably why they chose a noodle shape that doesn’t bring back childhood memories of scarfing down Kraft macaroni by the spoonful. It ends up being a good choice, because the ribbed texture of these noodles works really well here, and the insides of the noodles are large enough to hold a decent amount of that tasty sauce.
The bread crumbs, as we mentioned earlier, are plentiful, and they add to the flavor profile as well as giving this some extra texture. It sort of rounds out the flavor, giving a little bit of a breading flavor that counteracts the subtle bitterness of the cheese. It all comes together exceptionally well.
This isn’t exactly for dieters, with 500 calories in the included single serving. The sodium level, however, is lower than we expected, at 720 mg. Note that this isn’t a small amount of sodium, but it’s less than we’d expect in a frozen meal that’s this loaded with calories. We would have expected over 1,000 mg, if we’re being honest (of course we’re being honest; we’re Freezer Meal Frenzy!)
The Stouffer’s Baked White Mac & Cheese gets an enthusiastic thumb’s up from us. While we can’t compare this to the previous recipe, we think this one is just fine by us. In fact, we’d love to see this in a family-sized package, which would force us to use the oven and see how those bread crumbs would turn out with just a bit of crispiness to them.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen mac and cheese, check out our package scans below.
