Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Cheese Lovers Won't Love The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner


The Good: Easy to prepare, Fair ingredients
The Bad: Not overly nutritious, Flavor is way too mild, Expensive
The Basics: Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is less impressive than one might expect for a premium macaroni and cheese product.


Every now and then, I try to stretch myself with my food reviews. In addition to doing the occasional restaurant review, I realized that it had been a long time since I reviewed a dinner kit or a side dish that required some measure of preparation. So, today, I figured it was time to break that streak and I broke out the box of Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner that I've had kicking around for a few weeks. The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is, sadly, a underwhelming on the flavor front which makes it a tough sell to those who love real cheese flavors.

Basics

The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is a premium macaroni and cheese dinner kit that is trading on the popularity of Cracker Barrel restaurants (reviewed here!) and Cracker Barrel cheeses. Licensing the Cracker Barrel name to a home meal product is part of a current trend enjoyed by multiple restaurants, like Taco Bell and Panera Bread, which get derivations of their products into supermarkets for home consumption.

The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is a 11.9 oz. boxed macaroni and cheese product which bears a comparatively steep price tag. We found ours on clearance locally for $2.00/box, but that is still at least double the price of cheap mac and cheese dinner kits and the clearance price is about par for similar premium macaroni and cheese dinner kits (like Velveeta). The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is a box of pasta with a sauce packet and a separate packet of bacon bits.

When it is prepared, the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is a yellow, saucy dish with little red bits in it that looks like a pretty standard macaroni and cheese.

Ease Of Preparation

One of the nice things about premium macaroni and cheese dinner kits like the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is that they are remarkably easy to prepare and do not require additional ingredients. The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner requires only water to prepare.

Preparation of the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is simple. Fill a pot with water, heat it to boiling, then pour in the pasta from the box. When the pasta is cooked to one's desired softness, strain the water out. Then, simply open the cheese sauce packet, squeeze the cheese sauce onto the pasta and stir up until the pasta is fully coated. One may either add the bacon bits and stir them in as well or garnish the macaroni and cheese with it by sprinkling them on top of the prepared dish. This is ridiculously easy to make!

Taste

When prepared, the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner smells only faintly cheesy. The sharp cheddar aroma is comparatively minimal - compared to fresh macaroni and cheese that uses fresh, shredded cheddar cheese as a base in a cheese sauce. The bacon bits in the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner do not manifest in the scent at all.

Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner has a creamy, salty flavor that is not as sharp as those who love real cheddar cheese would expect. The bacon bits add an erratic flavor element to the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese; some are merely a squishy texture added into the softer pasta, others are salty and meaty and delightful, as one might hope. The pasta is simple, the sauce is not overly cheesy and for the price, one might want something truly more flavorful.

The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner leaves no aftertaste in the mouth after it is consumed, which only highlights the mild, fairly indistinct flavor of the dish.

Nutrition

After a few years of eating healthy foods, the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner seems alarmingly unhealthy to me. Each box of Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner makes three and a half one-cup servings of mac and cheese. In each serving, there are 310 calories, one hundred of which come from fat! The eleven grams of fat represent 17% of the RDA of fat, with the 5 grams of saturated fat making a whopping 25% of the RDA of saturated fat per serving. There are 30 mg of cholesterol (10% of the RDA) and a stifling 860 mg of Sodium (36% of the RDA!!!!) per serving of Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese. 13% of one's RDA of carbohydrates may be found in the 40 grams of carbs in each serving. While there are 14 grams of protein in each serving, the only other significant nutritional elements in the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner are Calcium (20% RDA), Iron (8% RDA), and Vitamin A (only 4% RDA).

The ingredients in the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner are not overly wonderful for those who are health conscious. Made primarily of wheat flour, niacin, and ferrous sulfate for the pasta and cheddar cheese for the cheese sauce, the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner turns into a list of preservatives and chemicals near the bottom of the list. There are obvious allergy warnings for wheat and milk and the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is not vegan compliant, kosher or gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-Up

The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is a dry food product and so long as the box does not get moist in any way, the macaroni remains fresh. The Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner only remains fresh for a few months.

Cleaning up the Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese is fairly easy. The cheese sauce may be wiped off any non-pourous surface it gets on and it washes out of any bowls or off any pots one uses for preparation. If the cheese sauce gets onto any fabric, it must be cleaned off quickly. Consult a fabric guide to get cheese out of the specific fabric you get it on.

Overall

Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese Dinner is a let down for the price. The bacon does not pop, the flavor is not sharp and rich enough to impress those who loves real cheddar cheese and the lack of nutrition it provides is a real disincentive. The result is an easy-to-prepare food that is easy for consumers to pass by; it is not bad, but it is not flavorful and good in the way one might hope for the price.

For other side dishes or sauces, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Prego Bacon & Provolone Italian Sauce
Idahoan Baby Reds Instant Mashed Potatoes
Jif Mocha Cappuccino Flavored Hazelnut Spread

3/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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