Noodles & Co. Copycat Recipe: Wisconsin Mac & Cheese - Housewife Eclectic (2025)

FAQs

What type of cheese do noodles and companies use? ›

Nobody does Mac and Cheese better than Noodles & Company. Our world-famous Wisconsin Mac and Cheese is a classic, yummy blend of cheddar and jack cheeses, cream and elbow macaroni mixed together to create an ooey-gooey, cheesy celebration of tastes.

(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Noodles & Company is making its best-selling dish cheddar than ever and now serving guests even more ooey-gooey goodness by enhancing its World-Famous Mac menu with 50% more cheese sauce in every bowl.

Noodles & Company Wisconsin Mac & Cheese, Regular (1 serving) contains 119g total carbs, 114g net carbs, 38g fat, 42g protein, and 980 calories.

By definition, classic macaroni and cheese should be made with, well, macaroni, a style broadly defined as any short, cylindrical extruded pasta. This includes tubes like ziti, penne, rigatoni and, yes, elbows, as well as corkscrew shapes like fusilli.

Order the $10 Mac & Cheese Meal Deal and receive a regular bowl of Wisconsin Mac & Cheese, an ice-cold Coca-Cola Freestyle® drink and a Rice Crispy treat.

Differences in Ingredients

Flour – smooth, soft, and a lighter shade, noodles may be crafted using a finer kind of flour or a variety of different flours. Pasta on the other hand uses a heavier denser kind of flour to give it that weight. Salt – salt is essential when it comes to noodles.

Avoid long noodles like spaghetti or fettuccine, whose smooth surfaces don't hold cheese sauce all that well, and opt instead for short, ridged shapes like radiatore or shells. My favorite pasta shapes for mac and cheese are in the graphic below!

Consumers can say goodbye to the (already somewhat abandoned) "aroni" – as the product will now be officially named "Kraft Mac & Cheese." "The change from 'macaroni and cheese' to 'mac & cheese,' is meant to reflect the way fans organically talk about the brand," Kraft Heinz wrote in a press release.

Are mac and cheese healthy, yes or no? Unfortunately, traditional mac and cheese tends to be unhealthy because it contains high amounts of saturated fats and sodium from butter, cheese, and milk. Additionally, it is calorie-dense and not ideal for those trying to lose weight.

Can you use different pasta for mac and cheese? ›

Look for pastas with nooks and crannies

The site recommends avoiding long, thin pastas like spaghetti, angel hair, linguine, and fettuccine, which aren't the right type to grab and hold onto the rich cheese sauce. Instead, you'll want to look for pasta shapes featuring "nooks and crannies," the outlet writes.

Use less thickener

You want equal amounts of butter and flour by weight. This is key. Throw in too much flour, and sure the sauce might get thick, but it also might taste floury and be lumpy. Even if you get the roux right, use too much or reduce your sauce down too far, and the macaroni and cheese will turn out dry.

Popular choices include an Alpine cheese like Fontina, Swiss, or Gruyère that are good for melting; aged ones for fine grating like Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano; a smoked cheese like Provola affumicata; or a creamy spreader like Robiola.

The best known is pecorino romano, which is a hard, salty cheese, and one of the country's oldest too. It is most commonly used grated over pasta, soup and salad as a slightly sharper tasting alternative to Parmesan. If it's a table cheese you're after, pecorino toscano and pecorino sardo are more suitable options.

Cheese wheel pasta (a.k.a. pasta alla ruota) is a style of pasta that is made tableside by mixing freshly cooked spaghetti, linguini, or any other type of pasta in a hollowed cheese wheel, most commonly parmigiano reggiano.

Melting cheese in ramen makes for an extremely simple and delicious spin on typical ramen noodles that can be easily made in the college environment.