American cheese * is real cheese. It’s “American Cheese Food” ** (which contains as little as 51% cheese) and “American Cheese Product” *** (50% or less cheese) that you have to watch out for.
Huh? When did you not need to add beef to Hamburger Helper?
Or are you talking about adding more than the box requires? (Personally, I’ve never thought of it as something that could feed four people alone, but that’s just me.)
As for mac and cheese recipes… I discount any that include onions. Who the hell wants crunchy mac and cheese? (Yeah, yeah, bread crumb toppings, you know what I mean.)
Heh, I hear ya. Also useful is the random insertion of exciting names such as Pirate, Dinosaur, Spaceman, etc. So chicken pie can be renamed, say Pirate’s Pie, and it becomes interesting and edible for kids who would not otherwise eat it.
I didn’t have to do this with Mac & Cheese though, as it’s not a universal staple food here - and the packet version is not especially prevalent. I always make it from scratch anyway, as I can use different cheeses as I fancy.
More than the requested 1 Lb. of Beef. (Comon, folks, we’re not supposed to be the ignorant ones, gimmie a little credit!) You add things to stretch a meal to more people…ususally, it’s pasta, or rice, or potatoes…with Hamburger Helper, I’m adding meat to stretch it. Which seems odd.
ETA:
Maybe that says something about American portion sizes? Or that your assuming two adults and two 7 year old kids eat the same portion sizes?
The trick for the noodles is to undercook them slightly (and salt the boiling water!) before baking. They finish in the oven and come out perfect. We use a good extra-sharp cheddar for ours and it’s never been bland. It isn’t the atomic orange you get from Kraft (and I sometimes miss), but it’s tasty.
It helps if you keep the noodles slightly undercooked before baking, then when they absorb the moisture while baking, they will end up al dente instead of mushy.
I too am of the notion that macaroni and cheese (the home baked kind) and Mac-N-Cheese (from a box) are completely different dishes. They each have their place. Personally I cannot stand the boxed stuff, which is odd because I used to like it a lot, but my kids are just the opposite.
I’d also like to point out to those who get food-snobby about macaroni and cheese, that unless they are making their own pasta, cheese, and bread (for the bread crumbs if using them) the home-baked version is no more “from scratch” than the boxed version. Sure you know what is in it, and possibly you are using better quality ingredients, but combining a bunch of processed food is not that different from starting from a box.
I can be a food-snob with the best of them, and often turn my nose up or make snide comments about things I dislike or look down upon, but you gotta realize what you are snubbing. 
Yeah, like a bowl of hot, soft Cheetos! Nom nom nom. 
The only KD I liked was the ‘white cheddar’ version. They’ve since changed the recipe (at least in Canada) at the same time they changed the box design. It’s terrible, I can’t even eat it anymore. I did send a letter of protest to Kraft but did not hear back. Damn I miss my KD 
Oh yes, and this is another issue I have with homemade Mac-n-Cheese. I order it at restaurants once in a while because I know that somebody must be able to make it well, but it’s always disappointing.
Try the Alton recipe I linked to above. It’s made on the stove top like Kraft. There is no white sauce/bechamel. Just lots of butter, milk, and cheese. Like I said, I recommend subbing out some (or even all) of the cheddar with Velveeta or similar easy melting cheese product. It’s like a creamier, richer version of the boxed stuff. I, too, am not a fan of baked mac and cheese.
I’ve recently become a huge fan of Paula Deen’s The Lady’s Cheesy Mac; it’s a little bland so I recommend adding some additional salt & peper from what it calls for, but otherwise it’s yummy. I’ve made it with Cheddar (as in the original recipe) and with a combination of feta & mozzarella, which is also good.
And yes, undercook your pasta and it comes out MUCH better in the final product.
It’s even better if you DON’T stir the bejesus out of it and you end up with cheeze-powder macaroni.
I don’t get why people are comparing it to real macaroni and cheese. Two different dishes.
And while I’m a foodie, part of that is appreciating all kinds of food. Including stuff like this.
Homemade mac & cheese is great too, but sometimes you just want hyper-cheezey-powdered mac noodles.
Two boxes of whatever variety you have on-hand, add only half (or even a third) the amount of butter/margarine suggested, skip the milk entirely, and add a can of Campbell’s cheddar cheese soup. magical chimes Nom!
This is the only way my kids eat Top Ramen. Boil the noodles, drain, sprinkle on half a packet of flavor.
The first time I made it as a kid, I didn’t realize you were supposed to drain the noodles. Macaroni and cheese soup. Not recommended.
Does “Cheese Food” sound to anybody else like something you should feed to cheese, or is it just me?
There’s research confirming this. Giving foods more exciting names really does work to get kids to eat more of them. Works on adults, too (though with a different list of words)- just ask the restaurant industry.
Would “Martian” work as an exciting food name? My 3.5-year-old niece is into Martians right now, so I think it would on her. It would have worked on me. Just about any red or green food could work with that name (since Mars is red, and everybody knows Martians are green).
Well, since we’re talking about mac-and-cheese, you’re talking about the whole campaign of changing the colors of food so kids will eat it. You know, like green and purple ketchup.
No, no. We keep the color of the mac & cheese the same, but maybe add some red or green bits. Peas would be a classic, of course. I’ve seen some recipes for mac & cheese with bits of bell pepper that look interesting, too.
Well, it may be just me. I regularly underestimate how much food I see on a plate. (Oddly enough, I’m still a little underweight.)
As an aside, I tried the Alton Brown stovetop recipe. It’s good, but I hated how it wasted half a can of evaporated milk.
I got around that by making 4x the recipe, but you can also use cream or half-and-half for the evaporated milk just as well.