I managed to go a pretty long time without having to resort to this fancified store-brand goat cheese, but it was the only unflavored option at my grocery this time around. Luckily, it worked out just fine. Melts easy, tastes good, didn't kill me. A little goes a long way, so I hardly ever use the whole 4oz in time. Too pricy for what it is, though.
Overall
Cost: 4/10 [6$]
Taste: 6/10
On balance, I'm glad I live alone right now (for both allergy and noise reasons), but there are a few major downsides, and one of those is burrata. This is a set of 4 "mini" balls (each being a 2 serving 2-ouncer, so not actually that mini at all), and as the packaging warns you, you better eat it within one (1) day or you will suffer the most horrible agony. One of these is great on pesto pasta, or with olive oil and tomatoes, or whatever you have going along those lines. Two is a little much, but maybe doable if that's all you're eating that day. That leaves 2 burrataballs that solo-you simply cannot eat or you will suffer intense agony, either from overeating fatty cheese (a lesson I've learned a few too many times) or eating very smelly expired milk product (a lesson I only needed to learn once). You can't freeze it, either. The only choice is to waste food or to never buy it. Or, I guess, to have friends??
Anyway, as I said, it's very good. Mozz outside, wet mozz-goo inside. Good temperature contrast to hot food. Fun. Makes me think of Alyssa always getting burrata at trivia and me being jealous and also scared because it came with walnuts. And it is for those reasons that I made the sad choice to buy it... just this once.
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10
I guess this is strictly different than the part-skim off the block mozzarella, although I'm not sure I could tell the difference in a blind taste test. This is a solid cheese option, and mozz is unaged so OK for migraine girlies. Is it OK for the sensitive stomached among us? Well... sometimes.
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10
After so many mid-to-good recipes with the very-meh-on-its-own boursin garlic & herbs, I finally decided to try a different boursin (in more stuffed mushrooms #inmymushroomera)! But even though basil and garlic are very different tastes outside of a boursin blop, in boursin these flavors were near indistinguishable. The "cheese" (such as it is) is just very overpowering. I don't like it that much, but it's in so many of my brain-diet recipes that I may as well alternate between the boursin flavors until I develop a discerning enough palate to prefer one. Actually, this one is slightly better to me -- slightly more herb flavor, slightly brighter -- but that might just be the novelty of it. As of now this is my mild favorite between the two. Bore-sin!
Overall
Cost: 4/10 [7$!!!!]
Taste: 6/10
I never put cheese on my tacos, but since I was searching for something to review, I did it with this cheese. I always liked Giant the grocery store (and therefore Giant the brand), but the idea of a shredded taco blend cheese (cheddar, a bottom tier cheese, plus MJ, a good cheese) that has taco seasoning (garlic, onion, paprika, salt) built in is like... a little unnerving. But you know what? It was good. Probably more delicious than without the cheese. Shows what I know. Plus I read that cheese is good for staving off dementia, so all things considered, cheese me up.
Overall
Cost: ?/10
Taste: 7/10
I keep getting different versions of Cabot Vermont Cheddar and they're all the same (bad for cheese). Literally, tastes like nothing. Cold, square nothing. But I'm so hungry when I get home I ate 8 squares, cursing the banal flavor the whole time. Surely there are no remaining Vermont Cheddar Cabot Infinity Stones to collect, though. Surely...
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10
I don't know if this is a seasonal item or not, but it certainly could be! It's also the kind of item that makes my nut allergy radar go "ALERT! ALERT!", but the ingredos are safe and I've actually emailed LaClare before and they said there's no nuts in their stuff. So, OK. OK. (I'm also on high alert lately because of work stress: every faculty meeting has a huge open tub of mixed nuts and even with a mask on I feel like I'm dying, it's like a baseball game in there except INSIDE; also my bosses constantly cater events I'm told to be at and the catering is never remotely safe, and I've mentioned my Severe Allergy (just nuts, I don't even get into the restrictions that would allow me to actually Eat Things) so many times that it's clear they just don't care!!!) All that to say, eating this made me feel like I'm dying but it's probably just anxiety. Hard to evaluate the taste through all that, but I think it was: good. Very similar to their apple cinnamon one. Like mildly sweet cream cheese with a bit less tang. Very spready. Cute. I wish I were amongst the cows and not the humans. You get it, right blog fans?
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10
Some of my best friends are "little ones". This is mozz and as such it tastes like all the other form factors of BelGioioso mozz. However, there's like 50 wee orbs in here, which is actually better than the normal sized ones for most of my purposes (snacking, noodles, recipes that want you to pull off a bunch of tiny bits). They are fun, they are cute, they are small. I think mozz usually messes with me in large amounts, but it tastes good, anyway.
Overall
Cost: 5/10 [6$ish]
Taste: 7/10
Shew. I really wanted Single Cream ricotta, but I was in a minor crowd crush in the dairy aisle so I grabbed this and skedaddled. The plus side is, it tastes amazing: very creamy! But it's also, like, 1000calos per container, and as it's surely one of many fatty dairy ingredos in your pasta and/or dessert, that's not great when it comes Tummy Turmoil (not to mention heartburn and brain weirdness). Usually I get part-skim ricotta, but my latest lasagna recipe was very Use Whole Milk Or Else, thus why I ended up in this predicament. Hopefully I live to try the single cream version someday. This is also my first Galbani, I think, so there's a lotta confounds. But the taste was undeniably good.
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10
This is hard to review, because I used it to make ice cream (my first attempt at homemade ice creaming!) and it was a little weird (=thick, fatty), texturally, and extremely cheesy, but was that the goal of the mascarpone ice cream enterprise or not? Anyway, this comes in a convenient form and has minimal ingredients, and it is probably delicious, but I don't actually have enough information to make an educated review. So why review at all, you ask? Well. From an allergy perspective, it gets a pass!
Overall
Cost: 5/10 [6$ish]
Taste: 6/10 ?
Move over, reduced fat mexi-shreds! It's full fat time! I get this 4 cheese blend whenever a recipe calls for American, Colby, or Monterrey Jack cheese, since my store only has those in the deli counter, which is allergy central. We make do, do we not? But this cheese is plenty tasty. And it melts well, which is the main consideration usually. It's also non-aged, so theoretically fine for brain diet hangers-on (i.e. me depending on mood). Is it any better than the reduced fat version? I think the taste is actually pretty similar, but the texture is a bit less stiff, which is an improvement. Also, I feel cooler eating this one. You know, like the Gone Girl version. So it is what it is.
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10
My cheese education continues! I've had a lot of goat cheeses (mostly LaClare ones), and a lot of cow-milk mozzarella cheeses (mostly on pizza), but never a goat mozz. My (foolish) assumption was that this would be more mozz-like than goat-like. But it is not. It tastes exactly like the sharp, tangy sour notes I have come to expect from a non-mozz goat variety. That's not a bad thing, but it's not really mozz, is it? Well, maybe it is. The texture is absolutely right -- firm, smooth, shiny. Not smooshy or dry like your non-mozz-goat cheese. So the name is accurate, but my priors were not. I'm not sure I have a good use for this stuff, as it's far from neutral, but I'm gonna think on it. Thanks, goats!
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10
Some of my best friends are "Cherry Size". Listen, it seems like mozz should be right out, but it's fresh and not aged so perhaps it is fine. My store didn't have Normal Large Ball, but actually these 1/3oz blops are pretty convenient. They taste like mozz and I have no complaints. 6 of them make for a nice personal pizza lavash.
Overall
Cost: 5/10 (6$)
Taste: 7/10
I did some good deeds over the weekend and -- you'll never believe this -- it lifted my mood! If only the same were true for avoiding sweets. Are cheeses sweets? Surely not. They do seem treat-coded, but goat cheese not especially so. I don't really consider these "fresh cheeses" real cheese in my cheese typology, but they do hold some appeal. I used a little of this in my pumpkin pasta to cream it up, and that was successful. I had the leftover cheese blops with apples and it was the pinnacle of decadence (at least for this smalltime country mouse) -- very soft, bright tart flavor, a great pairing. On its own I would have to ask myself what I'm doing, though.
Overall
Cost: 5/10 [5$]
Taste: 6/10
I thought this was quite good -- above average for shredded cheese, for sure. The shreds are soft and big pieces, and mozzarella is among the tastiest cheeses. So, yeah. Good cheeser.
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10
This is pretty good! It definitely tastes more like cheese than the green store shaker. Supposedly lasts until June, and supposedly no nuts in there, so if all is as it seems, this is pretty good stuff. Of course I'm De-Lallo-Spicious now, but if I weren't, I'd be extremely on board.
Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10
I always avoid store brands like Lucerne now if I can help it, because I've gotten a lot more allergy-anxious over time and I see a lot more recalls of store brands. But I haven't seen them for Lucerne specifically, and they only make dairy anyway, and also it reads as safe and what more do I need!? If I didn't have allergies I'd be so into them, because they're cheaper and taste just fine. And this didn't kill me, so I'm into it. It melted as needed and tasted like cheese (good). Hooray!
Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10
This bag is Huge, but it was the only shredded 3 cheese blend on offer. It was my first "Supremo" product, too. The cheese was weirdly wet on opening, and the zip closure didn't line up well, but the taste and meltiness was certainly on point. Great for Mexican food.
Overall
Cost: 4/10
Taste: 7/10
I bought this thinking "oh, it's like brie!" and then I bit into it and thought "oh, no it's not -- it's like a babybel cheddar", but THEN I accidentally ate some rind (I was avoiding it due to allergy fear of mold, which is dumb) and I realised, oh, it IS brie! This is some good rind and the rind+inside combo is lovely. I cut this into 4 wedges and 1/4 cheese is a pleasant serving size. I wish it were a teeny bit more creamy inside, but the taste is very good and worth the price (cheese is expensive :().
Overall
Cost: 3/10 [9$]
Taste: 8/10
