Review: Wicked Kitchen Vegan BBQ King Mac & Cheeze

September 20, 2023

Challenge: Find a Store Bought Vegan Alternative to Mac and Cheese.

In this house, we love mac and cheese. It’s comfort food, readily available off the shelf. Boil some water, throw in the noodles, mix in the sauce.

Easy. Done. Delicious.

This love of mac and cheese became a huge challenge when Matthew found out he had to remove dairy from his diet. To make matters worse, he figured this out in his mid 20’s. This meant he was able to experience dairy in all its creamy, rich glory. When you’re working against these odds, finding a substitute was always going to be a challenge.

These Mac and Cheese Reviews are our journey to finding the best store bought, vegan, dairy-free easy meal.

Wicked Kitchen Vegan BBQ King Mac & Cheeze

Wicked Kitchen describes their BBQ Mac and Cheeze as,

“Creamy, savory, and smoky, this kickin’ BBQ-style cheesy macaroni brings the joy of a summer cookout to your table any time of year. Try it as a side dish, main dish, lunch, dinner, or snack! Completely delicious and made with the highest-quality ingredients, you’ll never guess that this mac ‘n cheeze is completely dairy-free!”

Sounds pretty good right?

That is why, during our weekend grocery run, we grabbed it off the shelf for a Sunday comfort lunch.

Cooking the Mac and Cheeze

Making the mac and cheese is fairly simple:

Boil a pot of water.

2. Add the noodles. Cook for 6-10 minutes to get the desired noodle texture that you want. We like a slightly firmer noodle.

3. Once the noodles are cooked, drain the water.

4. In your pot, add in plant based butter, milk and the “cheeze” sauce packet.

5. Stir until well combined and sauce-like.

6. Add back in your noodles and stir.

Taste Verdict: 1/5

This vegan alternative to macaroni and cheese lacked a signature cheesiness. The texture was akin to sticky rubber.

The flavor was not smoky, or BBQ-y, or even cheesy.

It tasted like protein powder. No joke.

Just because we can’t have dairy or are vegan, doesn’t mean we don’t know when something tastes bad.

I can hardly contain my disappointment, this was probably one of the worst store bought meals I’ve ever had.

Wicked Kitchen, I’m not sure who your target demographic is here, but it’s not people with tastebuds.

2 responses to “Review: Wicked Kitchen Vegan BBQ King Mac & Cheeze”

Ann Osborn

September 29, 2023 at 6:39 pm

Hey Matthew and Julia, I have found Upton’s Naturals Ch’eesy Mac pretty good. It comes with almost ready to go out of the box pasta noodles, then a packet of gooey “cheez.” I get it at Whole Foods. I usually only get it for the pre-made noodles that come in handy for backpacking, or camping. I like the ingredients (I try to avoid stuff with soy protein isolate). It’s pricey, but if I cook at home, I add extra veggies n stuff to the dish to stretch it out, and maybe add more nootch (nutritional yeast), and smoked paprika. My daughter has made a vegan mac/cheez with sweet potato as a base for the sauce. I’m not into labor intense, and am not so desiring about looking for mac/cheeze recipes, so I haven’t done that. It was good when she fixed it, tho! There’s a lot of vegan crap out there! We live and learn!

Reply
1. Matthew Wolfe
  
  September 30, 2023 at 11:34 am
  
  Heya Ann!
  
  We’ll try that one out! We’ll go foraging at Whole Foods for it.
  
  So far, Daiya is our favorite store-bought vegan Mac and Cheese, we usually just buy the cheese sauce and use our own noodles to stretch the package out a little further.
  
  We (Matthew) loves making things harder than they need to be, so he’d be super interested in making our own cheese sauce, you’ll have to pass us the recipe!
  
  Reply