10 Delicious Twists on Mac and Cheese to Upgrade the Classic
Nobody loves a cheeseboard more than me. In fact, forget the board — maybe nobody loves cheese more than me. Stick it in a sandwich with pickle, melt it on a burger, pour it over nachos or, best of all, stir it into a comforting bowl of pasta.
My all-time favourite? The old classic: mac and cheese.
It’s creamy, indulgent and, let’s be honest, one of the ultimate comfort foods. But when someone in my house — not mentioning names — makes this dish at least once a week, a few variations are essential if we’re going to keep the love affair alive.
And mac and cheese is particularly good at reinvention. Start with a creamy cheese sauce and pasta and you can take it in almost any direction: smoky bacon, fiery jalapeños, buttery lobster, earthy truffle or enough cheese to make the original look positively restrained.
So, if plain mac and cheese isn’t quite cutting it anymore, here are 10 mac and cheese variations worth trying.
How to Make a Great Mac and Cheese Base
Before we start messing around with it, the base needs to be good.
I prefer mac and cheese unapologetically creamy. There’s nothing worse than digging through a gorgeous golden crust only to discover dry pasta underneath.
Cook your macaroni just shy of al dente because it will continue cooking in the oven. Make your cheese sauce slightly looser than you think it needs to be for the same reason — the pasta will absorb some of that liquid while it bakes.
Mature cheddar is my starting point because it brings plenty of flavour, but adding a second cheese can completely change the finished dish. Gruyère gives nuttiness, mozzarella brings the glorious cheese pull, Parmesan adds salty depth and a little blue cheese can transform the whole thing.
Once you’ve got that creamy base sorted, this is where the fun starts.
1. Mac and Cheese with Crispy Bacon
Let’s start with an easy win.
Bacon and cheese are a match made in heaven, and mac and cheese gives you an excellent excuse to combine the two.
Fry lardons or chopped streaky bacon until properly crisp before stirring most of them through your cheese sauce. Keep a handful back and scatter them over the top before baking so you still get those lovely crispy pieces against the creamy pasta.
The smokiness cuts beautifully through all that richness.
Crave tip: Replace some of your regular cheddar with smoked cheddar and add plenty of freshly ground black pepper. A little chopped spring onion over the finished dish is good here too.
2. Lobster Mac and Cheese
If regular mac and cheese is comfort food, lobster mac and cheese is its ridiculously glamorous cousin.
Sweet pieces of lobster folded through a silky cheese sauce make this feel much more special, while still delivering everything we love about the original.
I’d keep the pieces of lobster fairly generous rather than shredding them into oblivion — if you’re putting lobster in your mac and cheese, you should actually be able to find it.
It works beautifully served in individual dishes as a dinner-party starter, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with putting a giant bubbling dish in the middle of the table either.
Crave tip: Try Gruyère with mature cheddar and finish with buttery breadcrumbs and Parmesan. Don’t go overboard with lots of strongly flavoured cheeses or you’ll lose the sweetness of the lobster.
3. Spicy Jalapeño Mac and Cheese
This might be one of my favourites because creamy cheese and chilli are just so good together.
Stir chopped fresh jalapeños through the sauce for clean heat or use pickled jalapeños if you want that extra vinegary tang. I like the latter because the acidity cuts through the richness beautifully.
Add smoked paprika and a little cayenne if you want to turn things up further.
Then forget ordinary breadcrumbs.
Crave tip: Crush tortilla chips over the top before baking and scatter over some extra sliced jalapeños. You’ve essentially created the love child of mac and cheese and nachos, and I’m very much here for it.
4. Three-Cheese Mac and Cheese
Sometimes the twist doesn’t need meat, chilli or truffle.
Sometimes the answer is simply more cheese.
The trick with three-cheese mac isn’t choosing three cheeses that all do the same job. You want each one to bring something different.
My combination would be mature cheddar for flavour, mozzarella for stretch and Parmesan for that salty, savoury finish.
Together they create a thick, glossy sauce that clings to every piece of macaroni.
Crave tip: Treat the combination as a formula rather than a strict recipe. Swap mozzarella for Gruyère if you prefer nuttiness, use Red Leicester for sweetness and colour, or add a small amount of blue cheese if you like something punchier.
And if you appreciate a properly cheesy crust, the same principle is what makes a great cauliflower cheese.
5. Truffle Mac and Cheese
Truffle mac and cheese isn’t subtle. Nor should it be.
A little truffle brings that unmistakable earthy aroma to the creamy sauce and instantly takes the dish from midweek comfort food into something much more luxurious.
But a little is the important part.
Truffle oil can completely dominate a dish if you’re heavy-handed with it. Add a small amount to the finished sauce, taste it and then decide whether it actually needs more.
If you’ve somehow got fresh truffle knocking about the kitchen, even better.
Crave tip: Keep the cheese relatively simple. Mature cheddar and Gruyère work beautifully, with Parmesan over the top. You want the truffle to be noticeable rather than fighting its way through six different cheeses.
6. Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese
This is mac and cheese with absolutely no interest in behaving itself.
Shredded cooked chicken turns the dish into a substantial dinner, while Buffalo-style hot sauce gives the creamy cheese sauce a tangy chilli kick.
Stir the chicken through the macaroni and sauce, add hot sauce to taste and bake until bubbling and golden.
You could stop there.
I wouldn’t.
Crave tip: Crumble a little blue cheese over the top and finish with sliced spring onions. The combination of spicy sauce, chicken, cheddar and blue cheese gives you all the flavours of Buffalo wings wrapped up in a bowl of pasta.
7. Garlic Mushroom and Thyme Mac and Cheese
For a meat-free variation, buttery mushrooms work brilliantly.
The important thing is to cook them properly first. Don’t throw raw mushrooms into the sauce and hope for the best — they’ll release water and dilute all that lovely cheesiness.
Instead, fry sliced mushrooms in butter until deeply golden, adding garlic and fresh thyme towards the end. Then fold them through your finished mac and cheese.
They bring an earthy savouriness that makes the whole dish taste richer without needing any meat.
Crave tip: Add Parmesan to your breadcrumb topping and scatter a few extra buttery mushrooms over the top before serving.
8. Caramelised Onion and Gruyère Mac and Cheese
This is somewhere between mac and cheese and French onion soup, which is frankly an excellent place to find yourself.
Slowly cook sliced onions in butter until they’re soft, sticky and deeply caramelised. Don’t rush them. We’re looking for sweet, golden onions rather than quickly fried ones.
Fold them through a Gruyère-heavy cheese sauce before adding your pasta.
The sweetness of the onions against the nutty, slightly salty Gruyère is glorious.
Crave tip: Add a little Dijon mustard to the cheese sauce. It won’t make the dish taste mustardy; it’ll simply sharpen everything up and stop the richness becoming overwhelming.
9. Chorizo and Roasted Red Pepper Mac and Cheese
If bacon mac and cheese is smoky, this takes things several steps further.
Fry diced chorizo until its paprika-spiked oils begin to run, then remove the crispy pieces and use a little of that gorgeous oil in your sauce.
Add chopped roasted red peppers and fold the chorizo through just before baking.
You’ve got smoky, salty, sweet and creamy all happening at once.
Crave tip: Add smoked paprika to your breadcrumbs and finish with a little chopped parsley. If you like things spicy, a pinch of chilli flakes works beautifully too.
10. Roasted Broccoli and Extra Mature Cheddar Mac and Cheese
I suppose we’d better get a vegetable in here somewhere.
But we’re not boiling broccoli until it’s grey and hiding it apologetically underneath the cheese.
Roast small broccoli florets with olive oil, salt and black pepper until they’re tender with slightly charred, crispy edges. Then fold them through a really punchy extra-mature-cheddar mac and cheese.
Those roasted edges bring far more flavour than boiled broccoli and stand up well against the rich sauce.
There’s also precedent for broccoli working particularly well with macaroni and strong cheese: Crave has previously featured a green mac and cheese combining broccoli, basil and sharp cheddar or Gruyère.
Crave tip: Add a little wholegrain mustard to the sauce and plenty of Parmesan to the topping. Yes, we’ve added broccoli. No, we’re not pretending this is now health food.
What Is the Best Cheese for Mac and Cheese?
For me, mature cheddar is still the best starting point. It melts well, has enough flavour to survive being mixed with pasta and sauce, and you can buy a decent block virtually anywhere.
But combining cheeses usually produces a better result.
Try:
- Mature cheddar for a strong classic flavour.
- Gruyère for nuttiness and excellent melting.
- Mozzarella for stretch and gooeyness.
- Parmesan for saltiness and a golden crust.
- Red Leicester for colour and slightly sweeter flavour.
- Blue cheese in smaller quantities for a much stronger, tangier finish.
Whatever you choose, grate it yourself if you can. Pre-grated cheese is convenient, but freshly grated cheese generally melts more smoothly into a sauce.
How Do You Stop Mac and Cheese Drying Out?
The biggest mistake is making the sauce the perfect consistency before the dish goes into the oven.
It needs to look slightly too saucy.
The pasta will continue to absorb liquid as it bakes, so a mac and cheese that goes into the oven looking perfectly thick can emerge much drier than you wanted.
Undercook your pasta slightly, keep the cheese sauce loose and don’t leave it baking indefinitely in pursuit of an increasingly brown top.
If the top needs more colour, a quick blast under the grill is preferable to another 20 minutes drying out in the oven.
Can You Make Mac and Cheese Ahead?
Yes. Assemble it in advance, cover and refrigerate, then bake when you’re ready.
I’d make the sauce a little looser again if you’re doing this because the pasta will continue absorbing moisture while it sits.
You can also prepare many of the additions ahead of time. Fry the bacon or chorizo, roast your broccoli, caramelise the onions or cook the mushrooms, then keep them refrigerated until you’re ready to assemble everything.
Which Mac and Cheese Variation Will You Try First?
Mac and cheese might be a classic, but that’s precisely why it’s so much fun to mess around with.
Keep the creamy pasta and bubbling cheese sauce we all love, then take it wherever the contents of the fridge — or your mood — happen to lead.
For me, crispy bacon is difficult to beat on an ordinary weeknight, lobster turns it into something properly decadent, jalapeños bring the heat and truffle makes the whole thing feel outrageously luxurious.
And then there’s three-cheese mac and cheese, for those occasions when the answer to “How much cheese?” is simply “Yes.”
So next time you’re reaching for the cheese grater, maybe forget the cheeseboard altogether.
There’s pasta to be made.
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Words – Joanne Brook-Smith