Hoosier Hill Farm Big Daddy Mac Mix, 0.5kg

Great Product. Very Happy with the flavour

I was looking for a way to make Mac and cheese still taste the same for my kid, but use my own noodles. This delivered perfectly. My kid - who can tell the difference in taste between the microwave Kraft Mac & cheese and the stovetop Kraft Mac & cheese, approves of this cheese mix. The taste is perfect. I’m sure you can use it for lots of other dishes, but I really just wanted to make mac & cheese. I read a lot of reviews before purchasing, and I think the people who complain about grittiness just aren’t mixing it enough. The instructions clearly say to mix the power with your milk/butter, and then add that to your drained noodles. It mixes easily for me - but I also use a mini-frother to easily mix it into the liquid.

After seeing all those videos on Facebook re: bugs in KD noodles, I decided to try this mix instead of buying maggots from Kraft. The container is smaller than I expected and it calls for 1/3 cup powder for each cup of dry noodles so I was thinking "well this isn't going to last long". Tonight I made 2 cups of macaroni with this sauce mix. It was delicious! So much better than Kraft Dinner. My four year old ate his bowl full in record time. I was super impressed. It's worth the money and I will definitely buy this again. I cooked the noodles then drained them. Added the butter. Stirred. Mixed the cheese powder with milk then added it to the buttery macaroni. Stirred. Added pepper and a bit of garlic powder on top. It was awesome. 5 stars for sure. No bugs in sight!

For a while now I've been using Hoosier Hill's cheddar cheese powder if I want to make a cheese sauce for whatever noodles I want (usually ramen). It's not really designed for the purpose, though, and doesn't quite produce the classic Kraft flavor profile I'm looking for, although it's darn good. Last year Kraft introduced a shaker of their own signature orange powder, and it was amazing, but it was also short-lived. So I thought I'd finally give this a try. This review is based on the strength of one use, but suffice it to say I'm thrilled with it. I made two packages of ramen without the flavor packet (that's way too much ramen for one person by the way—learn from my delicious mistake!), and I scaled down the recipe on the Big Daddy box to 3/4: so that's 1/4 cup powder, 3 tbsp. butter, and 1/4 cup of milk. I did save a little of the water, but not a lot. This was perfect for covering two packs of ramen, so for one pack, just use 2 tbsp. powder, 1 1/2 tbsp. butter, and 2 tbsp. of milk. This had a very classic blue-box flavor for me, even more than I'm used to getting from Kraft anymore. In a way it reminded me of that certain indefinable something my grandmother's mac & cheese had. She was making the same blue box, but hers was somehow better despite having all the same ingredients. It tasted just right and was scrumptious, and didn't have a big clumping problem like I get with the cheddar powder. However, I expect the lack of clumping was because this was a fresh package and that will change in the future; if so, sifting works just fine. So I'm excited to use this on other pastas as well whenever the mood strikes me to have that great blue-box experience but with a different noodle. And ramen cooks really fast, so I'm sure I'll still use it mostly for that. Update: I've used this quite a few more times now and I have discovered it can clump a bit if you try mixing it the same way you would a normal Kraft mac & cheese box. The powder seems to do better when you're mixing it into a warm liquid. If you mix the sauce in the same pot as the pasta, I suggest scooping pasta to the side, putting the cheese powder down, adding the butter and milk, and letting it hang out a minute or two while the milk warms up a little. Also I've discovered this doesn't work well for large pasta, unless you do something to thicken it; it's really best with small noodles. I still love the flavor and it hasn't clumped up yet in the container like the cheddar powder normally does. Update 2: Three years later, I've reordered this product multiple times. This is a staple in my pantry. I use it for ramen & cheese a lot, but sometimes I'll also add it to other cheese sauces to pump up the flavor and add extra emulsification power. It's also great on potato chips: throw some chips in a plastic zip bag with a bit of this powder, and shake it up for cheesy chips. This is more versatile than the plain cheddar cheese powder, I always make sure to have plenty on hand.

Strong cheese flavor. Taste clean and not heavy on after taste.