In our Taste Test series, Bon Appétit editors conduct blind comparisons to discover the best supermarket staples (like mayonnaise or frozen pizza). Today, which block of cheddar should you reach for first?
If cheddar is your favorite cheese, you’re in good company. Cheddar is the most popular cheese in the United Kingdom, and is a top dog (trailing mozzarella) in the US. Hailing from the UK, it is now made around the world in a slew of different styles. Like most cheeses, making cheddar starts out with milk—usually from a cow—which gets added to cultures and rennet to curdle. Those curds get cut up, stacked, and flipped repeatedly in a process called cheddaring, which removes the excess moisture until it reaches a semi-firm texture.
From there, it’s all about aging. Cheddar gets sharper—more tangy and pleasantly sour—the longer it’s aged. Over time, more water evaporates, and the flavor concentrates. As Andi Wandt, the creamery manager at Shelburne farms in Vermont, explains, cultures and enzymes break down fat during the aging process, which changes the taste. “Just like in cooking, fat is flavor,” she says. “That’s why a young cheese at three months is going to taste buttery, creamy.” As months pass, enzymes and cultures break down more fats, and more complex and umami flavors come through.
If you head to the cheese section at your local grocery store, you’ll see cheddars labeled as “mild,” “sharp,” “extra sharp,” and even “seriously sharp.” There aren’t official designations for those terms, but Wandt says generally mild cheddars are aged for less than a year, sharp cheddars are aged for about a year, extra sharp cheddars are usually aged for two years, and anything beyond that is often labeled as some kind of reserve.
Since this ingredient plays a central role in many of our recipes, we set up a blind taste test to find the best sharp cheddar at the supermarket. We wanted a nutty flavor, semi-firm texture, and admirable meltability. Could this Goldilocks cheddar exist?
How we set up our blind taste test
Before we dove into the tasting, we asked staffers: How do you use cheddar most often at home? Many said they eat cheddar as a quick snack—with crackers or simply on its own—and others said it was a staple in cooking, like for mac and cheese or a grilled cheese. To that end, we tested our cheddars in two formats: First, we tasted a slice on its own to get a straight-up sense of its flavor, texture, and aroma. Then we slathered a couple slices of white bread with mayonnaise (Duke’s, to be precise), layered on some shredded cheddar, and cooked each sandwich until golden brown in a skillet. For both, tasters were unaware of the brands at hand, though they couldn’t help themselves from guessing.
How we picked the products
There’s a lot of choice when it comes to cheddar cheeses—age, color, shape. For a fair comparison, we needed to narrow things down. We decided to test sharp cheddars as a middle-of-the-road choice with a lot of brand options. We chose to include white cheddars as well as the cartoony orange ones; the color simply comes from a food-safe coloring agent, like annatto, and does not affect the taste. And we tested cheddars that came in block form, avoiding pre-shredded options, since many use anti-caking agents, which can affect the taste, texture, and meltability of the cheese.
