The Only Pasta You Need When Making Mac & Cheese, According To Tineke Younger

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Tineke (Tini) Younger — now a TikTok star — was a standout young contestant who placed 8th in the second season of Gordon Ramsay's "Next Level Chef." She later went viral on TikTok (twice) for her now-famous Thanksgiving mac and cheese tutorial. Younger's impressive evolution from television contestant to TikTok star and cookbook author (her book features recipes she makes for her husband, Antoine Wright Jr.) has caught the attention of many. One clip racked up almost 100 million views in three months, as we previously reported. So, when Younger proclaims that cavatappi is the only noodle we'll ever need to make crowd-pleasing baked mac and cheese, our only question is, "Where can we buy a box?"

In a November 2024 TikTok video, Younger showed her fans for a second time how to make her viral mac and cheese. The young chef says with confidence that her pasta of choice for the dish is always cavatappi. According to Tini, "It's because all the cream gets into the hole, and you're just biting into straight cream." She also recommends boiling 1 pound of cavatappi pasta for 8 minutes if you're making the mac and cheese right away, or 7 minutes if preparing the mac and cheese the night before serving.

TikTok users are the only ones reacting to Younger's posts. Redditors have also chimed in to discuss her viral recipe. At r/tonightsdinner, a poster who watched Younger's video typed out the recipe verbatim, while another shared a photo of the finished product. A comment from u/Randi_Butternubs_3 expressed appreciation for Younger's mac and cheese tutorial, calling it, "100 times better than all the internet pages giving 200 paragraphs before the recipe."

While much of Younger's Reddit feedback was favorable, users at r/cooking were not quite as enamored with her viral mac and cheese. The thread opened with u/Hiraaa_ asking, "Is Tini's Mac and cheese really that good?" Several commenters said they'd tried the recipe and thought it had too much cheese, with one stating that the whole dish felt too heavy. There were, however, no objections to Younger's use of cavatappi. The corkscrew-shaped, ridged noodles are known to hold cheese sauce well.

Amid the chorus of critiques, one user in the thread wrote that they used half the recommended amount of cheese, swapped Younger's mozzarella for Gouda and Gruyère, and left out the Dijon mustard (there was no mention of substituting the cavatappi). They claimed their tweaks produced a better result. Internet commentary is a battleground where opinions are bound to differ, but there's no denying that Younger has made an impact on social media's bustling culinary world.