The Microwave Mac And Cheese Brand We Always Have On Hand

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Mac and cheese is one of those classic childhood foods that can easily grow up at the same rate you do. Maybe when you were young, you begged your mom for a box of Kraft mac and cheese for dinner, but now in your later years, you've developed a homemade recipe for a simple mac and cheese with a crunchy topping. When we're feeling a bit nostalgic, or we just don't feel like dirtying another dish, microwavable mac and cheese is the way to go, similar to the convenience of making microwavable ramen.

We ranked 11 microwavable mac and cheese cups from worst to best and determined that the Velveeta Original Shells and Cheese still hits as hard as it did when we were kids. This little cup packed a big punch of cheesy flavor with an ooey, gooey sauce packet, as opposed to a powder packet. The cheese sauce gave the pasta a distinctly savory, richly cheesy, and incredibly creamy flavor, easily allowing it to shine above its competition. The shells themselves cooked perfectly in the microwave, pliable and soft in every bite, while that liquid cheese sauce perfectly filled every nook and cranny of the pasta. There were a lot of great contenders on our list, but none matched the heavenly, cheese-filled magic of the Velveeta microwavable cups.

Velveeta Original Shells and Cheese microwavable cups debuted in 1978, but the Velveeta brand existed for over 50 years before that. In 1918, fresh off the back of World War I, a Swiss cheesemaker named Emil Frey discovered a way to repurpose a cheese factory's excess cheese waste into a sellable product. He toyed around with the formula, added whey to the ingredient list, and voila, Velveeta was born, and the Velveeta Cheese Company joined the cheese foray in 1923. Just four years later, the Velveeta Cheese Company was purchased by Kraft Foods Inc. (now known as Kraft Heinz).

Velveeta's nickname, "liquid gold," applies to all of the brand's products, from the Original Shells and Cheese microwavable cups to the Original Cheese blocks to the Queso Blanco Cheese Dip, even if the FDA doesn't consider Velveeta to be real cheese. The convenience of using microwavable cups means that you can keep things simple, or you can spice it up with some leftover chicken or chives from that windowsill coffee cup garden. Once the steaming cup is plucked from the microwave and the cheese sauce is mixed into the evenly cooked shells, you'll understand why we always have this mac and cheese brand on hand.