Are you wondering what the best kind of cheese for making macaroni and cheese is? Well then you are in the right place! We analyzed 28 of the most popular macaroni and cheese recipes on the internet to determine what types of cheese are best for making macaroni and cheese. We then distilled the results of this research into a few simple plots that are displayed in this article.
In addition to looking at the individual types of cheese that are most commonly used in macaroni and cheese, we also looked at what combinations of cheeses are most popular. We first looked at the number of different types of cheese that are used in the average macaroni and cheese recipe. After that, we looked at what combinations of different types of cheese are most popular.
What kinds of cheese can you use for macaroni and cheese?
What kinds of cheese can you use to make macaroni and cheese? When it comes to making macaroni and cheese, there are a lot of options out there! Here are some of the most popular types of cheese that are used for making macaroni and cheese. Each of these types of cheese appeared in at least one of the macaroni and cheese recipes that we analyzed.
- Cheddar cheese
- Swiss cheese
- Gruyere cheese
- Fontina cheese
- Parmesan cheese
- Jack cheese
- American cheese
- Mozzarella cheese
What is the best cheese for macaroni and cheese?
What is the best cheese to use for macaroni and cheese? Now that we have gone over what types of cheese can be used in macaroni and cheese, we talk about what cheeses are most frequently used in macaroni and cheese recipes.
Cheddar cheese was by far the most popular cheese that was mentioned in the macaroni and cheese recipes we analyzed. In fact, cheddar cheese was mentioned in 27 out of the 28 macaroni and cheese recipes. Not all recipes specified what type of cheddar cheese should be used, but sharp cheddar cheese was most popular among the recipes that did specify a specific type of cheddar cheese. The next most popular type of cheddar cheese mentioned was medium cheddar cheese. Mild cheddar cheese was not mentioned in any of the macaroni and cheese recipes.
After cheddar cheese, the next most popular type of cheese that was mentioned was jack cheese. Jack cheese was mentioned in 6 out of the 28 recipes. Not all recipes specified what type of jack cheese should be used, but colby jack cheese was most popular among the recipes that specified a type of jack cheese. Gruyere cheese and parmesan cheese came in third and fourth place, respectively.
How many types of cheese to use in macaroni and cheese
After we looked at individual types of cheese that are used in macaroni and cheese recipes, we looked at the average number of cheeses that were used in mac and cheese recipes. We were interested in determining whether most recipes used one type of cheese or combined a few different types of cheese for mac and cheese.
We found that most recipes used only one kind of cheese for macaroni and cheese. To be precise, we found that about 60% of recipes used only one type of cheese and 40% of recipes used multiple different types of cheese for macaroni and cheese. Among the recipes that used multiple types of cheese, it was most common to use two different types of cheese for macaroni and cheese.
What are the best cheese combinations for macaroni and cheese?
What are the best cheese combinations for macaroni and cheese? We found that the top popular cheese combination that was used in these recipes was cheddar cheese and jack cheese. Specifically, sharp cheddar cheese and colby jack cheese were commonly used together. Jack cheese tends to be more mild and creamy than cheddar cheese, so this is a great combination of cheese for people who prefer their macaroni and cheese to have a smooth, creamy flavor.
The second combination that appeared most frequently in these recipes was cheddar cheese and gruyere cheese. Cheddar cheese and gruyere cheese are both sharp cheese with strong flavors, so this is a great cheese combination for people who prefer their macaroni and cheese to have a strong, in your face flavor profile.
Research methodology
Selecting recipes
How did we select which recipes would be included in our analysis? We chose the macaroni and cheese recipes we would use in this analysis by conducting a simple google search. Specifically, we searched the term ‘macaroni and cheese’ then looked at all of the articles that appeared in the first 5 pages of the search results.
We used the following criteria to filter down to a smaller set of recipe articles.
- Must include a written recipe. We excluded any page that did not contain a written recipe for macaroni and cheese from this analysis. This included articles with high level tips for making macaroni and cheese as well as videos that did not have a written recipe attached to them.
- Must include only one recipe. We also excluded compilation articles and pages that contained multiple different recipes for macaroni and cheese. We found that these types of articles tend to contain multiple unusual variations on macaroni and cheese rather than basic macaroni and cheese recipes. We wanted to stick to basic macaroni and cheese recipes that would serve as a good base that could be extended later.
- Must not be an advertisement. Recipes that were created to advertise one specific ingredient were also excluded from our analysis.
- Must have properly formatted recipe schema and be crawl-able. Additionally, we excluded recipes that did not have proper recipe schema. This exclusion was made so that we could more easily parse the code on the recipe articles to extract the ingredients programmatically. In total, there were 3 macaroni and cheese recipes that were excluded from our analysis because the pages did not contain properly formatted recipe schema. 2 additional recipes were excluded from the analysis because they were not crawlable.
