Velveeta Shells & Cheese is a classic comfort food (and one of the best boxed mac and cheese brands), and one of its virtues is its pleasant blandness. It’s creamy and it’s salty, and that’s pretty much all it needs to be to satisfy the masses. That said, I suspect a lot of people DIY their Velveeta Shells & Cheese, spicing it up with things like taco seasoning, hot sauce, and ranch dressing. If you’re one of those people, Velveeta made something you’re going to like: new Velveeta Buffalo mac and cheese and Velveeta pizza mac and cheese. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t holding out much hope that these new offerings would taste good to anyone over the age of 12, but I was wrong. I enlisted our lovely intern, Madison Ramirez, to cook up these two new Velveeta flaves and my adult palate was pretty damn pleased.
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Pizza-flavored packaged foods can be very good or very gross. This boxed mac and cheese kind of nails it, in a perfectly artificial way.
Pros: If you were concerned (I was) that this mac and cheese would punch you in the face with pizza flavor like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle on speed, I’m pleased to report that the pizza flavor in the cheese sauce is pretty mild—and I think that’s a good thing. There’s a dash of oregano and just a little bit of tomatoey tang to complement the creaminess of the delicious (if plasticky) Velveeta cheese. The subtlety of the flavor kept me coming back for bite after bite.
Cons: If you really wanted to be punched in the face by a Ninja Turtle, you’re probably going to be disappointed.
I expected this Velveeta Buffalo mac and cheese to taste like Velveeta Shells & Cheese with a big ol’ glug of Buffalo sauce in the mix. That’s not what you get—but that’s okay.
Pros: Rather than leaning hard into the vinegary twang of Buffalo sauce, Velveeta Buffalo mac and cheese is all about the buttery, garlicky aspects of Buffalo wings. It smells like butter and garlic, and the flavor finishes with a buttery roundness and some genuine heat. Honestly, if the cheese sauce wasn’t aggressively orange, I might not even place that it was meant to be Buffalo flavored. I can’t believe I’m typing this, but it’s a more sophisticated take on Buffalo than I would have expected from Velveeta.
Cons: If you want big, tangy Buffalo sauce flavor, you won’t love this. But in that case…just add some Buffalo sauce to your shells and cheese, right?
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!
Gwynedd Stuart
Danny Palumbo
Matt Crowley
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!