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Comment by difosfor | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody outside of the US eat this? I've never run across this anywhere else.

Absolutely!

First off, its practically the national dish of Canada, the boxed Kraft version ("Kraft Dinner") is the is the most popular grocery item in Canada - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Dinner

Germans have pretty much the exact same thing in Kasespatzle (spätzle with cheese).

Depending how you want to define "mac and cheese," the original Italian preparation of fettuccine alfredo is pretty damn close, the only ingredients are pasta, butter, and cheese.

Calling Käsespätzle “pretty much the same” as KD borders on heresy.

Indeed, this is a very poor comparison.

Käsespätzle is nothing like "macaroni cheese". Same basic ingredients, but a completely different dish.

Käsespätzle is like if a Bavarian chef was asked to make "macaroni and cheese" but didn't really know what the actual ingredients were and just tried to wing it with what they had on hand.

Käsespätzle predates Krafts' sickening concoction, so just: no. Its more like some food scientist at Kraft decided to try to recreate something they dimly remember their ancestors cooking for them when they were a child, and having at hand an order from their boss to do something with the dried and hydrolysed whey left over from some other industrial process.

Macaroni and cheese predates the Kraft corporation by hundreds of years. I'm referring to the traditional noodles with cheesy béchamel sauce.

We have a couple dozen boxes of KD in the pantry. Toss in a half bag of frozen peas and a tin of tuna and you have lunch for all three of us secluded together.

We always pick up a case of 16 when it drops below $10.

Australia has the exact blue Kraft boxes in all supermarkets. Even back home in the Netherlands, macaroni and cheese is both in my children's "my first cookbook" style books, as well as various variations in my fashionable "comfort food" books. Also I somewhat collect old-ish cookbooks, and it's a staple in German and Belgian cookbooks from the 1950 onwards.

I'm Dutch and have never seen this in a supermarket, nor has anyone ever served it to me, nor was is in any cookbook I ever read. Are you sure?

Macaroni & cheese used to be pretty popular in NL when I grew up and my sisters kids love it now. I have always (and still do) hated macaroni (although I love most other pasta) which made it all the more annoying when they made it at friends’ birthday parties when I was a kid.

Me neither. The basic standard pasta dish in the eighties and nineties in the Netherlands was macaroni or spaghetti with bolognese sauce topped with lots of grated Gouda cheese.

These days there is much more variety, and judging from the popularity of the many varieties of pasta and cheeses such as Pecorino and Parmesan in the supermarkets, many Dutch household have discovered the joys of cooking proper Italian pasta dishes. Plenty of folk here do use store-bought packages for the sauce of course, but these tend to focus on adding flavour to the meat and vegetables (tomato) that serve as the bulk of the sauce (like bolognese).

Frankly, the classic US mac-and-cheese dish looks disgusting. I can only imagine how it must look to someone with an Italian heritage.

The blue box not, but macaroni with ham & cheese is in every Albert Heijn, it's one of the ready made dishes that has been available as long as I can remember. Most 'warm at home' traiteur style shops, or butcher shops nowadays, sell it as part of their rotation. If you google ah recepten or big Dutch recipe sites, you'll find dozens of variations.

The 'Margriet' cookbook (to just take one example that represents mainstream Dutch cooking) has had a recipe since the first edition.

UK here. 'Macaroni cheese' was one of my mum's staple meals 50 years ago. I still make essentially her recipe when I need some quick comfort food. With a really powerful UK-style Cheddar; it's too bland with anything less than a strength 4 cheese.

Recipe: Cook macaroni, or other short pasta

Meanwhile...

Melt butter

Stir in flour to get soft paste

Stir in milk and grated cheese

Stir until sauce cooked

Combine pasta and cheese sauce

Grill or oven bake for five to ten minutes

I’m assuming “grill” means something different than cooking this over some charcoal?

American English "broil"; see https://www.lexico.com/definition/grill#grill__12 .

Yes, as per the definition in richardfontana's comment. Some ovens in the UK have separate upper and lower compartments, and the smaller one can be switched between an oven and grill function, in which case the heat radiates from the top. This is also used for making toast.

Sure, if you don't have a toaster....

Gas grills make good-tasting toast and they're less problemmatic to do cheese toasties in than a toaster... .

In the US, this is usually called the "broil" setting. The gas ovens usually have the lower compartment for broiling but electric ovens just use the top heating element in the main compartment.

That's a bechamel-based baked casserole.

Substitute cauliflower for the macaroni, sprinkle breadcrumbs on top, and you get the classic British disk 'caulifower cheese'. A whole nother comfort food.

Yes. For another variation, lightly roast the cauli instead of boiling it, before combining it with the cheese sauce.

They sell one brand of standard kraft-like box of it in some stores here in Norway. I buy it from time to time - I absolutely love cheap plain macaroni and cheese. One of the Norwegian companies have been selling a bag of it as well. While I didn't necessarily appreciate it, I'm guessing some people do.

Sidenote: The mac and cheese here all boasts how it is an American food. The box (that is like Kraft) has flags and stuff on it. Of course, they'll also sell an "American" ketchup next to a couple shelves of Heinz.

Don't get me started on buying "American" ketchup.

When I was 10 and overseas and could only find 'American ketchup' aka spilva (think red tomato sauce and sugar), I and my family by happenstance bought three bottles of Heinz ketchup from a Chili's Picca in downtown Riga, after stopping there to eat dinner in defeat, having shopped for real ketchup all day and come up empty.

I suspect by now that there are several grocery stores in Riga with Heinz brand ketchup, but at the time, there were none that we could find.

Yeah, it's very common in the UK, although one of the great tragedies of the spread of veganism is that tasty vegetarian cheese dishes are becoming harder to come by in restaurants.

One thing I seem to observe in the US is macaroni cheese being used as a side-dish, and I think in many cases in the UK that would be replaced with cauliflower cheese, which seems like a complete waste of a good cheese sauce to me, but each to their own.

There are plenty of gooey cheese and noddle dishes around the world. Check it:

https://www.thedailymeal.com/travel/14-ways-people-make-mac-...

As much as I enjoy eating and cooking US Mac and cheese, I love me some Käsespäzle. Oh so good. After we are allowed to travel again, I’m off the Germany for more.

> I love me some Käsespäzle. Oh so good. After we are allowed to travel again, I’m off the Germany for more.

While you're there, as I'm guessing you ate this in the South, have some extra cheesy Flammkuchen with a nice local Riesling. German cuisine is super utilitarian for the most part, with very little variation from the meat and 2 veg routines but Baden-Wuttenberg's amazing Agriculture and Vineyards make it stand out.

I'm partial to Baden-Wuttenberg (best Bretzel in the world) since that's where my family is from, but I won't deny that the Alsace has some amazing cuisine too. I consider their Flammkuchen to be the best, both the savory and sweet varieties.

Bavaria has great stuff too. Obazda or Kaiserschmarrn for example.

My first taste of it was in Berlin at Markthalle Neun. The furthest south I’ve been is Schmalkalden, a tiny little town no one has ever heard of (at least in my experience). Bayern is planned for 2021.

Relative to a lot of pasta, the Spätzle for Käsespätzle are not that difficult to make yourself! The "official way" of shaping them involves a specialized tool, but you can also just use a knive to "swipe" portions of a board into boiling water, which is just a little slower.

You can also force the dough/batter through the holes of a box grater. Can be a bit of a mess, but the end result is basically the same as the specialized tool.

I think they'd end up a bit thin for my taste, but true, that should also work just fine.

I have that special tool, but keep making a horrible mess. I think my batter is too thick.

We call it kraft dinner in canada

KD, never Kraft Dinner

I always assumed the whole "KD" thing was just a marketing rebrand to make it cool again to a new generation of kids in the '00s

Plus, I don't think they are allowed to call it "cheese" in Canada?

Yes on occasion, but I got a taste for it when I lived in the US for half a year, so...

You can find it in the "American" part of the international foods section of big grocery stores here, along with pancake mix, root beer and Skittles :P

It's starting to be eaten in the UK, but really it's just a bastardised version of Carbonara, so people prefer to eat that.

"Macaroni cheese" (no "&" or "and") has been a thing in the UK for a really long time, at least since my mother was a student (1980s) but probably earlier

The comparison to carbonara keeps coming up, but I don't really get it. Cheese is a component of carbonara, but it's as much about cured pork and egg. And the cheese is a salty and acidic sheep's milk cheese, nothing like varieties typically used in mac & cheese.

Edit: also long vs. short noodles. There's really no commonalities between the two besides the inclusion of noodles and cheese, which applies to probably hundreds of dishes.

Years ago, my wife ordered it in a restaurant in Luzerne. They served it in a little metal bucket. She said it was very good.

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