First up, let's look at the Road's End Organics Mac and Chreese. This comes in a green box, and I may have seen it previously available in Australia? The macaroni is loose inside the box, and then there is a package of the powdered cheese mixture to become the sauce.
The instructions call for boiling the pasta, draining and returning to the pot, and then mixing in the cheese powder and some non-dairy milk until heated and thickened. I'm sorry to say that I didn't enjoy this. The pasta was quite woody and odd, and the sauce was just stodgy and didn't have a great cheesy taste. I would save my dollars and my baggage space for something else in the future.
The second type I brought back was Leahey Garden's macaroni and cheese. This came in a paper bag, and contained the pasta loose in the bag with a sachet of cheesy mix. For this one, you actually mix the sauce powder and milk together and heat in their own little pot to cook and thicken while you cook the macaroni, and then mix together.
Oh.... yeah... I think you can see the difference. This stuff was awesome, creamy and delicious. You could smell a little bit of a tang to the powder when you make up the sauce, and I don't quite know how to describe it, but it makes for an incredibly tasty sauce that will leave you craving more! I actually think they sell the powder for the sauce separate. So if you get the chance, try some of this stuff!
It would be great to see more products like this available in Australia! Then I can eat them and do more reviews. Until that time, I shall be popping in here every now and then and reviewing mac and cheese recipes from some of my favourite cookbooks. I'm a mac and cheese fiend. Nom nom nom.
