Put a Tiger in Your Mouth

Food brands have gotten pretty crazy, with new flavors, crossovers, cross-brands, and more all mixing things together. A decade or so ago it would have been insane to think that a brand like Cheetos would have macaroni and cheese flavors out on store shelves, but that’s just what we have at this point. Snack food mashed up with noodles, sitting there and ready to eat with only a few quick steps. Which then leads to the question: is it any good?

I haven’t bought classic, dry-packet mac and cheese in a while, but I figured for Cheetos why not try the stuff out. I grabbed the self-serve cups of the two flavors I could find locally (there are four total Cheetos mac flavors, but only two that seem to come in the self-serve cups) to give the brand a test… and then, as a control, I went and grabbed self-serve cups of the two other brands that everyone knows, Kraft and Velveeta. So we’re putting Cheetos to the test to see how their mac and cheese measures up.

Cheetos Bold & Cheesy Mac ‘n Cheese

Having never bought a cup of microwave mac and cheese before, this was a bit of a new experience for me. I know these things are old hat now, but at a price per unit measure, these cup of noodles packages aren’t worth it. The cups I bought were $1.75 each while the full boxes of the same flavors were only $1.25 right next to them. However, if these flavors sucked I didn’t want to get caught with a full box. And besides, one serving was enough to let me know if these are flavorful enough to bear the Cheetos brand.

On their own, without the control group taken into account (which we’ll get to soon), I found the Bold & Cheesy (what could be considered the “default” flavor for Cheetos mac) to be pretty good, if not exceptionally Cheetos-y. The flavor was solid, strongly cheesy, which reminded me of classic mac and cheese that I’d made way back in the day. I would agree that the flavor was bold and cheesy, as advertised, and the consistency was good. Following the instructions on the cup I ended up with a decent portion of noodles with a thick, tasty sauce that felt right. As I’d learn, this is actually the exception, not the norm.

My initial reaction was that these noodles weren’t especially good at striking the Cheetos flavor, as they were cheesy but not in that way that specifically reminded me of Cheetos. However, they were tasty on their own and as a quick snack to microwave up, I would think you could do a lot worse. Tasty, if not especially cost effective.

Cheetos Flamin Hot Mac ‘n Cheese

I also grabbed a cup of the Flamin Hot version of Cheetos mac. Like with the standard cups, my main thought was that this was a good cup of mac and cheese if not especially Cheetos-y in flavor. Cheesy, but not with that specific fake flavor that makes a Cheeto taste like a Cheeto. In that ineffable quality that makes you appreciate Cheetos, this cup was lacking it. Maybe it’s because it’s wet mac and not dry, crunchy snacks, but something was certainly missing. That made it not a great representative of the Cheetos brand, but a decent cup of more traditional mac and cheese.

The key difference here, of course, is that this cup is supposed to be boldly spicy. When you see Flamin Hot on the side of the package you expect a certain level of hotness. I didn’t really feel that here. The mac might have had a little more spice to it, by a degree, than the Bold & Cheesy variety, but it was basically just a mac with some red dye. If you added paprika and some black pepper to the Bold & Cheesy you’d functionally have the same look and flavor. It wasn’t bad, but I think anyone looking for that hit of Flamin Hot heat would walk away from this feeling a tad unsatisfied. It was a good cup of mac, but a bad Flamin Hot cup all at the same time.

Kraft Mac & Cheese

So after trying the two cups from Cheetos I realized I needed a control group. I complained that the Cheetos mac wasn’t a very good representative of the Cheetos brand, but then I realized that I didn’t actually know what standard dry packet mac tasted like anymore. The only way to correct that was to go back to the source, so I bought cups of the two leading brands and tried each of them to see how they measured up to what Cheetos was doing. And I realized, in my heart, I owed Cheetos an apology.

The first cup I sampled was Kraft Mac & Cheese and, my god, this stuff was nasty. I followed the instructions as listed on the cup, did everything as it said to do, and after what I ended up was, to be blunt, a goopy cup of cheese snot. I know, that sounds atrocious, and it kind of was. It was thick and runny, with a sauce that felt more like Nickelodeon slime than proper cheese. The noodles were well cooked, but the sauce around it (following the directions) was not good.

It made me realize that back in the day, when I’d make stuff from a box in a pot, I’d add less milk to the mixture than the box required. I always found that a splash of milk, with a fair bit of butter, worked better for cheese coating than the full amount of milk the box asked for. If you made it the way the box instructed you ended up with runny mac and cheese. That’s what I got here… except more thick and goopy. I think if I put less water into one of these cups I could probably control the consistency better.

Even then, though, I don’t know if that would fix the flavor. The consistency was bad, but what I also ended up with was mac and cheese that didn’t taste all that cheesy. It was bland and muted, as if the whole process were a copy of a copy of a copy. I was eating mac and cheese that felt more like a faint memory of what mac and cheese should be and not the real thing. All around it was an inferior cup of mac from what I expected, and considering that I made it exactly as instructed, that feels really disappointing.

But then, thinking back on the Cheetos cups, I also realized that I followed the instructions perfectly there and the stuff turned out to be quite good. Boldly cheesy, with a good consistency that didn’t feel like runny cheese snot. Apparently Cheetos did know what they were doing, and their specific goal was not to make the mistakes of Kraft. Damn, and here I was undervaluing their mac. They certainly beat Kraft, but we had one more brand to compare them too…

Velveeta Shells and Cheese

Of the four cups tried for this experiment, Velveeta Shells and Cheese was the only one that wasn’t a dry-mix mac. While the instructions for making the noodles were the same – open the cup, remove the lid, fill with water to the fill line, cook, add cheese, stir, eat – this one came with a packet of cheese sauce to add in instead of dry mix. Functionally, though, this really wasn’t much of a difference as, once you mixed it all together, it looked like just another cup of microwave mac.

Consistency wise I’d put this version somewhere between Kraft and Cheetos. While the sauce was still runnier than I’d like, it didn’t remind me so much of a sinus excretion. The flavor was still muted, like the Kraft mac, but the noodles were well cooked and the sauce felt more like sauce. If it were a head to head competition just between Kraft and Velveeta, I’d edge the win towards Velveeta… although realistically neither of these were good enough to make me want to get them again. But both lost out to Cheetos, with Velveeta’s loss being slightly less bearable. It was fine mac and cheese, and I wouldn’t have disliked it as much if I hadn’t started with the Cheetos stuff first.

Final Thoughts

None of these brands really sold me on the idea of buying cup-of-mac. The serving sizes are small and for the price they don’t really feel worth it. Why spend twice as much for less than half the amount? But in comparison to each other, the Cheetos macs were the clear winners. I’d likely get the Bold & Cheesy if I wanted dry-packet mac, and then if I wanted it spicy I’d add my own seasonings and sauces. The base flavor is great, and it’s cheesy enough to suit my tastes. As a mac and cheese product, Cheetos actually nailed it, even if I didn’t think they hit that “Cheetos” ineffable quality. Apparently I just had to compare it to the other brands to realize what I was missing.