

Those preservatives keep the pieces from melting evenly, and you'll end up with gritty, lumpy mac & cheese.ĭry, crumbly cheeses like feta or cotija are not ideal. Packaged shredded cheese have added preservatives to keep the pieces from sticking together and to keep the cheese in stores longer. The best way to ruin your mac is to dump a bunch of pre-shredded cheese in there. The higher quality, the better for this one! The Worst Types of Cheese Best for sprinkling atop your mac before it hits the oven (or again when serving), Parmesan also adds a much desired salty and nutty flavor that's unbeatable. We could never make a list of the best cheeses and leave out Parmesan.

It's a nice change of pace, an unexpected twist in the world of mac. The flavor sticks around, even after all the milk and cream get added. You can even go crazy and make brie mac & cheese right inside your wheel of brie!Įxtra tangy and extra creamy-we just love goat cheese. The creaminess is excellent for coating your noodles, and it creates the most decadent mac and cheese. We use brie in our mac when we are feeling extra fancy.

It works exceptionally well in a slow-cooker mac & cheese! It melts down easily and helps keep the sauce smooth with just the right amount of salt and tang. We're no strangers to cream cheese here in the Delish test kitchen, so it wasn't a huge surprise when we confirmed that it's perfect in mac & cheese. Its saltiness helps cut through all the heavy fats, and the nutty flavor is so special. Gouda is a seriously underrated cheese when it comes to cooking! It melts beautifully and gives your mac a sophisticated taste without being too pretentious (or turning off picky eaters).ĭespite it being a hard cheese, Gruyère still melts nicely. Sharp cheddar is ideal because its flavor is strongest, but the most important to thing to remember is to always buy cheddar in a block and grate your own! Pre-shredded simply doesn't work, which we will explain more in a bit. It's also got the classic taste you're looking for and expecting with mac and cheese. With a fairly low melting point, cheddar keeps things smooth. The king of all cheeses when it comes to coating your noodles. After what felt like an endless amount of testing for our quest to find *the* perfect recipe, we discovered which cheeses work best.and which ones to avoid at all costs. It seems obvious, but not all cheeses melt easily. The main qualification you should look for in a cheese for this dish: It needs to melt well. The type you choose is extremely important for the taste and texture of the sauce.

What a terrible waste of a wonderful concept! The number-one mistake when making mac at home, aside from a cooking error like over-boiling the noodles, is using the wrong kind of cheese to start with. If there's one thing we hate, it's a bad batch of mac and cheese.
