Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart / Target / Walmart
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Cheap cheese is a refrigerator essential. When you mindlessly walk to the kitchen for a little treat even though you aren’t that hungry, cheap cheese is there for you. Expensive cheese is for impressing company and for cooking that New York Times recipe you screenshot before the paywall blocked you; cheap cheese is for eating guilt-free in front of the open fridge door, stuffing in your mouth before you rush to work with no breakfast in your stomach, and making cheap cheese boards when actually cooking just isn’t in the cards.
From American to Swiss, we’ve tried a lot of cheese to find the best cheese at the grocery store—but the best of the best isn’t always budget friendly. We went back through all of our rankings and picked out cheeses that were tasty enough to make our rankings. (Oh
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A lot of the best cheap cheese we’ve found in our taste tests comes from Aldi, like this non smoked provolone. It’s squeaky and creamy tasting and melts like a dream. It doesn’t have the sharpness or complexity of the other best provolone cheeses, but it’s simple and straightforward, and we love that. This is going to make a damn comforting bologna and cheese sandwich on some squishy white bread with mayo.
A great thing about taco night? The ingredients are affordable and when you combine them, they all taste really, really good. This shredded taco cheese from Walmart, the best cheap cheese we tried in our Mexican blend cheese taste test, ensures you never run the risk of eating a bland taco or quesadilla. It’s a pleasant mix of finely shredded cheddar and monterey jack cheeses, but the secret weapon here? Taco seasoning right there in the mix. It’s the best cheap cheese if you want to make anything you eat taste like tacos—and why wouldn’t you want that?
A good snacking cheese is worth its weight in gold, even if it’s cheap cheese like these colby jack cubes from Aldi. They’re fun and easy to eat—seriously, why don’t more foods come cubed?—not to mention creamy with a pleasant pop of tang. This is the best cheap cheese to eat on the go or to make the world’s easiest cheap cheese boards for game night. Roll up some cold cuts and you’re set!
You should always have a bag of shredded mozzarella in the fridge. Making a simple dinner of pasta and sauce? Melt some mozz on it and—boom—it’s fancy baked pasta. Have some flour tortillas and red sauce? Welp, now you have individual pizzas. This shredded mozzarella from Target isn’t just some of the best cheap cheese we’ve tasted, it’s kinda fancy, too. In addition to finely shredded mozzarella, this blend has some parm in the mix, which adds some nuttiness and saltiness to the neutral creaminess of the mozzarella. This took the #2 spot in our best shredded mozzarella cheese ranking, which makes it some of the best cheap cheese, hands down.
Frigo is probably best known for making string cheese with a weird little anthropomorphic string cheese mascot on the packaging, but don’t snooze on their feta. No, it isn’t Greek feta, but these crumbles have a lot of virtues, including a salty bite on the finish and a lot of creaminess up front. This is the best cheap cheese to sprinkle on a pizza or salad loaded up with kalamata olives.
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
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Gwynedd Stuart
Matt Crowley
Joe Rumrill
Justine Sterling
