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Cheese Expert Tries Every Trader Joe’s Cheese

Trader Joe’s is famous for its cheese selection, but which ones are actually worth buying? Cheese expert Liz Thorpe joins Epicurious to taste test everything from classic Brie and sharp cheddar to more adventurous flavors like chocolate stilton and spicy scotch bonnet. Join Liz as she breaks down the best buys, hidden gems, and which cheeses to skip on your next Trader Joe’s run.

Released on 05/28/2025

Transcript

Trader Joe's is famous for its cheese section.

It's got cult classics, budget breeze,

and some seriously weird wild cards.

I've been dreading this cheese all day,

but which of these deserve the hype

and which of them are just fancy packaging?

I'm cheese expert Liz Thorpe,

and today I'm gonna be trying them all.

This is the ultimate Trader Joe's cheese taste test.

We'll start with elevated snacking cheeses,

higher quality cheeses to grab from the fridge

or nosh on the go.

Creamy Toscano Soaked in Syrah.

This, for me, is one of the Trader Joe's cult classics.

This is a firm, Italian-style cheese soaked in red wine.

This is an homage to a very classic, traditional style

of cheese made in Italy called ubriaco cheeses,

that means drunken cheese.

And the cheese essentially bathes in the wine

and also sometimes they'll even pierce holes in the cheese

and the wine flavors will permeate into the center

of the cheese.

This has been rubbed and soaked with a wine mixture.

No holes have been pierced.

The flavor is only on the rind.

It's like a creamy, buttery Parmesan,

but as you move closer to the outside of the cheese,

really discernible notes from the red wine.

It's fruity, but it's not sweet.

So Trader Joe's doesn't make any cheese.

They go out and they find the best selling sort

of fundamental foundational flavors and styles

and then they find cheese makers

who will make those cheeses under their own brand.

If I'm gonna eat a flavored cheese,

this is the kind of flavored cheese I'm gonna reach for.

Unexpected cheddar.

So this is a cheddar,

but it's described as having flavors like a Parmesan.

The way that you do this

is by adding a very specific kind of bacteria

to the milk during the beginning

of the cheese-making process.

It's called an adjunct culture.

And it breaks down the fats

and proteins in such a way that it releases flavor compounds

that we read as nutty.

So that's really where they're getting

that Parmesany quality from.

There's this sort of fine white grit

on the outside of the cheese.

It's calcium lactate crystals,

simply something that happens over time

and it's something you'll see on the exterior cut surface

of block cheddar.

Hmm, this feels like an aged block cheddar.

It's dense, it's kind of crumbly in the mouth,

mouth watery finish, sharpness,

but underneath it all are those nutty,

savory Parmesan flavors.

It does not surprise me

that this has one Trader Joe's customer choice award

for seven straight years.

New Zealand Sharp Cheddar.

This is six to 12 months old.

What you cannot ignore about this cheese right off the bat

is that it is bright yellow

because it is made of grass-fed cow's milk.

The betacarotene in the grass passes through their milk

and comes out in the cheese and makes yellower cheese.

That does not happen with goats,

which is why goat's milk is very white.

It's described as sharp cheddar.

So, I'm from New England.

To me, sharp cheddar means like I take a bite

and my mouth is really, really watering,

kind of explodes with acidity.

This is spritzing of acidity.

Texturally and flavor-wise, it does not feel like it is aged

for six to 12 months.

The grass-fed milk is not really driving the flavor here.

It's too big a production.

It's not a small enough, handcrafted enough cheese

to really be feeling the impact

of where the cheese is made.

Goat Milk Cheddar Style.

So here we have another famous cheese, cheddar,

that is usually typically traditionally made of cow milk.

Here we've got it made of goat milk.

The label describes it as soft and creamy,

which is not really a description I would give

of most cheddars I've had, and it is pretty soft.

I find goat milk,

when it's made into an aged-style of cheese,

can have kind of, like, a powdery smell.

Sadly, it sort of tastes a bit like baby powder.

It's really just got a, like, not great texture.

What I love about aged goat cheeses

is that they can turn a goat milk cater around,

they can have that kind of caramelly sweetness,

and this doesn't really have that.

It just tastes kind of flat.

This is not my favorite goat cheddar.

Toscano with black pepper.

We've got a fully-formed, fully-aged cheese on its own

and then we have these different flavorings that are added

to the rind, very finely ground black pepper.

So generally when they're doing these kinds

of flavor additions to the rind of the cheese,

they're making kind of, like, a paste.

Finely ground pepper and some sort of fat or oil

so it will adhere to the exterior of the cheese.

This tastes like a really good American Parmesan.

Definitely not crystally and crunchy

like the Italian Parmigiano Reggiano,

but sweet and nutty

and really approachable and crowd friendly.

You don't really get any essence of pepper at all,

and I think in order to get any impact from the pepper,

you're gonna have to eat the rind.

Normally you wouldn't eat the rind on a hard cheese,

but here, it's really been coated in the pepper,

I think, for your eating pleasure.

It's more like a white pepper.

It's not really spicy.

It's like sort of a softer heat,

but you're only ever getting that flavor

when you eat the rind of the cheese.

The rest of the time

you're basically getting American-made Parmesan,

so I can see how that would irritate some people.

Next up, shredders and melters.

These are great for grilled cheese and melting into sauces.

Fontina, this is traditionally an Italian cheese.

Don't know where Trader Joe's is made,

but I'm guessing not Italy.

It doesn't taste like much.

I think I would probably call it bland.

When I look at this, I have to compare it

to introductory level fontinas,

and they're all gonna be this kind of buttery mild cheese.

I give props for texture.

This is not gummy and it's not plasticy,

and those are the two biggest flaws

with most fontina on the market.

So this fontina has a waxed rind,

and some fontina do and some do not,

but that wax is there to retain moisture

and really help this cheese maintain its core identity

as pliable, moist, great-melting cheese.

Red wax is most commonly used for Dutch gouda.

This fontina will do exactly the same thing

as a red wax gouda.

People might buy it

'cause of the appearance rather than the name.

Creamy Havarti.

Havarti is the most famous cheese made

in the country of Denmark,

but it's now made all over the United States

and in other European countries as well.

It is what's called a washed-curd cheese.

They drain out the whey, which is quite acidic,

and they add hot water.

And that bathing of the curds makes the cheese less acidic

in flavor, milder or sweeter.

It also contributes to the texture

and the elasticity of the curd.

So you get this, like, real bendy texture.

It doesn't snap or break.

In terms of this Havarti, I'm seeing little irregular,

they almost look like pin pricks.

And that's pretty typical for this cheese.

It has to do with when the curds are being pressed together,

little pockets of air get trapped.

Hmm, unlike the fontina,

the Havarti is really, really creamy.

It's almost like eating a room temperature bite of butter.

Compared to other Havarti out there,

this one is very mild, little bit salty.

Many other Havarti I've had have a bit more tang to them,

which I think makes them a little bit more interesting

as an eating or a snacking cheese.

This is really something I just wanna melt

and I wanna put a lot of stuff with

and I wanna enjoy the texture.

Double Cream Gouda.

Technically you would pronounce it gouda or gouda.

Like all gouda, this one has a waxed rind,

but it's this, like, thin spray wax,

and it's kind of weird to me

that the fontina has the traditional red wax

and then the gouda has something different.

The texture of this one is much firmer than the Havarti,

still very creamy, but it breaks when I bend it.

Mm, even though it's firm on the bend,

it's really, really creamy when you're eating it.

This one is starting to have some of the flavors

that you'll see in gouda as it ages over time that I love,

that I think make it a little bit more interesting.

A hint of a caramelly note.

Very subtle kind of nutty flavors.

Again, it doesn't have anything in the cheese,

but just compared to the previous two cheeses,

this one has some flavor complexity.

This is called Double Cream Gouda cheese.

Typically in the world of cheese,

double cream or double creme,

cream is added to the milk to amp up the fat content.

What's weird to me about this cheese

is that this is called a Double Cream Gouda,

but there's no cream added to it.

I'm not entirely sure what that refers to.

Compared to the others in this section,

the gouda is the best for a combo of flavor and texture.

Cheddar and Gruyere Melange.

This is combining cheddar cheese, which is usually sharp

and not a very great melting cheese,

with Gruyere, which is low in acidity, very nutty in flavor

and melts like a dream.

You're not taking Cheddar and Gruyere

and, like, grinding them up and mixing them together.

You are tweaking steps to achieve certain flavors

and perhaps certain textural characteristics.

It's more bendy than a cheddar,

but not as bendy as a Gruyere.

We're getting somewhere in the middle.

Gruyere has an amazing, powerful nutty aroma

and this does not really have that.

Smells a little bit cheddary, I guess.

I think the goal here is basically to give you a cheddar

that's gonna melt really well,

but I want nutty flavors or sharpness

and I'm not really getting either one of those things.

Compared to other blended recipes I've had,

this one is underwhelming,

but I bet it would melt really well.

That said, I would just go melt Gruyere.

Le Gruyere,

more commonly known in the US as Gruyere.

It is always made of raw or unpasteurized cow milk.

These are large format wheels, 80 pound wheels

that are aged anywhere from four to 12 months.

Looking at it, it looks kind of young to me.

It is a cheese that gets washed a bit in salt water

as it ages and sometimes you'll see brown

or orange kind of stickiness on the rind.

When I don't see any action on the rind,

it kind of makes me wonder

what the cheese is gonna taste like.

This is a really great example

of a kind of introductory Gruyere.

It just tastes very young and very mild,

the like beef bouillon, the savory notes,

the oniony notes.

These are all the things I look for in Gruyere,

kind of expect in Gruyere, not really happening here.

My recommendation would be you buy your Gruyere elsewhere.

Comte, if Gruyere

is the poster child cheese of Switzerland,

Comte is like the lesser known version

of that cheese from France.

I was mentioning with the Gruyere the rind

was kind of sanitized.

This looks a little more like a rind.

There's some surface mold, it's a little bit harder

and sharper edge.

These are cheeses that are,

they're called natural rinded cheeses.

They are aged in open air, temperature

and humidity-controlled rooms,

and the rind develops naturally.

It's okay.

It's pretty mild.

A good age Comte at a specialty shop

is probably gonna be at least twice as expensive

as what you would spend at Trader Joe's.

I don't think this is gonna give you the flavor experience

that you want.

So ultimately, if you wanna branch out and try this,

I think a specialty shop is worth the extra spend.

Soft and spreadable cheeses.

These are mild, creamy, and great to use for cooking.

Fresh Mozzarella Cheese Log.

What I wanna see in a fresh mozzarella

is bright white appearance,

no spots of any color, and moisture.

I want my mozzarella's to be sweet, creamy,

with a good hit of salt.

No rubbery texture, no gumminess.

This is right on the mark.

It's what's called a high-moisture mozzarella.

So it's packaged with some of the water in the plastic

to keep it very creamy and not dry.

This is comparable to BelGioioso

or any other bestselling high-moisture mozzarella brand.

Fresh Mozzarella Cheese Pearls.

This is perlini, little pearls,

the most classic and bestselling shape

of little mozzarella balls.

No smell, exactly what I wanna see with fresh mozzarella.

These are really tasty.

A little bounce, a little spring,

but still creaminess.

Compared to a ball or a log of mozzarella,

the smaller size just makes them a little bit creamier

in texture.

Another great example of mozzarella

and, honestly, probably a lot less expensive

than the national bestselling brand.

Marinated Fresh Mozzarella Cheese.

Unlike the pearls,

they actually use a larger size mozzarella ball

and they're marinated with oil, garlic,

herbs, and red pepper.

I don't usually like pre-marinated mozzarella.

The flavors tend to get kind of dull.

The cheese can sit in the oil and get kind of slimy,

but this is really good.

The oil is nice and light

and impressively they got the herb mix down pat.

And the garlic flavor comes through really clearly.

This is the most impressive mozzarella so far in my opinion.

Burrata, regular mozzarella

is what's called a pulled curd cheese.

The curd is being dipped and stretched in hot water

and formed into a ball or a log.

In the case of burrata,

they start with that same process,

but they're going for a very, very thin, almost like sheet

that can then be filled with little chopped up bits

of mozzarella and a good amount of cream.

It's very decadent, very rich.

Like all mozzarella's, bright white, no smell,

but really it's all about the texture on the inside.

And this one's okay,

but it tastes a little bit like cottage cheese.

What I'm looking for in a burrata is a center

that's really sort of silky, liquidy, creamy.

The center of this one's a little bit more mealy.

By making a burrata

that has more of kind of, like, a chunky, solid interior

and less of a liquidy interior,

you're really making a cheese

that's gonna have longer shelf life.

The really, really authentic burratas

are super perishable cheeses,

and I understand that that doesn't make a lot of sense

for a store like Trader Joe's.

Definitely worth trying,

but I would say not my favorite burrata.

Mascarpone, mascarpone is basically the milk

and the cream are brought together,

they coagulate, and you gotta get rid of the liquid.

You're left with this rich fluffy mass of milk solids.

Mascarpone is so thick,

it's like, sticks to the roof of your mouth.

This one is really good.

Texturally it doesn't have any graininess,

and it's got that foundation of sweetness.

I really like it in dessert applications

and I really like it In lieu of cream in pasta dishes.

This is a great mascarpone, not an easy cheese to find,

so now's your chance to try it.

Traditional Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese.

Fresh cheeses are about the texture, the creaminess,

the sweetness of the fresh milk.

This is not a place to skimp on fat.

When I'm buying ricotta, I wanna hear whole milk ricotta.

I'm hoping that this is gonna be as creamy,

sweet, and fluffy as it appears.

Bummer, this is really grainy.

The best ricotta's are like perfect, moist little curds

and they don't have any graininess.

It's a shame 'cause the flavor is really great.

This has that wonderful recooked, sweet flavor,

but it's kind of a bummer that the texture is so grainy.

It does have some milk and it uses vinegar.

And I think that the grainy texture

is coming from the use of the vinegar

and, honestly, the reliance on whey,

which is the traditional ingredient,

but here, I think it's just been cooked a little too hard

and you get that granulated texture

that I really don't want in my ricotta.

Part Skim Ricotta Cheese.

This is ricotta made with partially skimmed milk.

Usually a red flag for me.

I'm looking for whole milk ricotta

for that creamier texture.

This is really grainy.

It's kind of like paste.

The flavor's really nice, it's sweet.

The fat content is not markedly less.

So if you're reaching for skim ricotta

because you want something that's lower in fat,

it's about 6% less in fat.

It's not a huge difference.

Go for the Trader Joe's whole milk ricotta

or even look for some other national brands.

Calabro is my personal favorite.

Chevre, we've got another white cheese with no rind.

The big difference here is that chevre is made of goat milk.

There are flavors of goat milk

that are gonna be tartare, tangier, more lemony,

and different from cow's milk.

So not as sweet.

So right off the bat it smells different.

It smells more like yogurt.

Hmm, this is very creamy.

It's almost like clay.

It's very mouth coating.

These are very high-moisture cheeses.

They've got a lot of water in them

and that kind of reads in your mouth as smearable,

spreadable creaminess.

This one also has really good salt.

A lot of fresh goat cheeses are kind of under salted

and they taste kind of like lemony and flat.

This one's got really good salt to support the acidity.

So I'm no doctor,

but a lot of people talk about being lactose intolerant.

And actually what I find is that there are many people

who have trouble digesting cow's milk cheeses.

Their molecular structure

can be harder for our bodies to digest.

A lot of people have no trouble eating goat

or sheep milk cheeses.

They're easier for your body to break down and digest.

So your issues with cheese may not be a lactose thing.

They may be a cow's milk thing.

This is a great introduction to fresh goat cheese.

Chevre with Honey.

So typically when you make a flavor-infused goat cheese,

you make your fresh cheese

and then you add the honey afterwards

and sort of combine it into the cheese

before you pipe it out into these little logs.

Wow, you get a hit of sweetness upfront.

It doesn't read as honey,

it just tastes kind of sugary upfront

and then it fades away.

It's pretty subtle.

If you're someone who's buying goat cheese with honey in it,

you want that honey flavor,

and this is a little timid.

I wouldn't say it's bad,

it's just not what I think people are looking for

when they buy a flavored goat cheese.

Chevre with Fine Herbs.

Smells really strongly tarragon.

Usually parsley and basil are the lead herbs here.

Mm, and this is like an explosion of herb flavor.

The flavor of this goat cheese is present, which I like,

but then on top of it,

chervil and tarragon and those flavors

are coming through really, really strongly.

Hmm, this one really tastes fresh and bright and strong.

This may not be a perfect little log,

but that's because it's moist and creamy.

If it were dry and crumbly,

it would hold its shape perfectly.

I'd rather have a cheese that's very spreadable,

very luxurious in texture.

And this one is excellent.

Crumbled Goat Cheese.

I feel you can buy a log of goat cheese

and crumble it yourself with a fork

and you're probably gonna wind up with a creamier,

fresher tasting goat cheese than if you buy it pre-crumbled.

You've got these little distinctive clusters.

It's much drier than the goat cheese

that we were looking at in a log form.

Impressively, when you eat it,

it retains a good amount of creaminess.

It does taste a little bit less balanced,

kind of sharp edged, a little bit too acidic.

The thing I really don't like about crumbled goat cheese

is that all the crumbled goat cheeses out there

includes cellulose.

It's an anti-caking agent.

It's added so that the clump don't all stick together,

but I find that it gives kind of, like, a powdery finish

to the cheese.

In general, the quality of the cheese that's used

to make a pre-crumbled product is just not as high

as the quality of the cheese that's sold in a wedge

or a log or a wheel.

To make a crumbled cheese,

they're going to start with a cheese

that is lower in moisture

and/or the cheese has more acidity

to make a cheese that's more breakable in texture.

Do the crumble yourself,

you'll wind up with a better cheese.

Feta, traditionally feta's made in grease out of goat

and sheep milk.

That being said, we are tasting cow milk feta.

The way you make feta is that you pickle it.

You take a fresh cheese

and it is immersed in salt water for days or weeks

or even months.

So it's gonna be wet and have a saltier flavor.

Here's what's good about this.

Many cow milk fetas are very bland and very salty.

This has some balance to it.

It's got a strong brininess.

It's not overwhelming,

and it's also got a pretty good moisture to the texture.

A lot of cow milk fetas are very dry and crumbly.

They don't have the added fat that sheet milk has.

So you wind up with this sort of mealier, drier, textured,

very salty cheese, but it's cheaper.

This manages to still have some creaminess and some moisture

and it's not overwhelmingly salty.

So on the whole, this is a pretty darn good cow's milk feta.

Fancy imports.

These are traditional cheeses

with a strong regional identity.

Double Cream Brie.

All brie is gonna have a white edible rind

that is made of a mold called penicillium candidum.

That's where the rind comes from.

You can see it's actually papery in texture

or a little bit fluffy on the outside.

Smells a little bit moldy 'cause it's covered in molds.

This brie suffers from what many domestic brie suffer from,

which is a chewy rind.

The rind on your breeze should be soft and skin-like,

it should be a cohesive part of the cheese.

You do not want it to be crunchy, snappy, or chewy.

And this is kind of snappy,

like a sausage skin on the outside of the cheese,

but all the things I'm describing are very, very typical.

So if you think about national bestselling brands,

this would be very comparable to that.

Fromage Pave.

Fromage pave literally means cheese brick.

It's Trader Joe's French triple creme cheese.

The triple cream style is a brie-style cheese

that's had cream added to it

to increase the butter fat content.

It's called a bloomy rind.

So that white edible rind is made of mold.

It will contribute mushroomy aromas to the cheese.

It's really luscious, really spreadable.

That molded rind

is actually breaking down the cheese over time.

So the textural breakdown

that's happening here right under the rind

is where we're gonna have the most concentrated flavor.

Again, it doesn't have a really strong smell,

and you don't want it to.

If these cheeses smell really strongly of ammonia,

they're over ripe and they're gonna taste really bitter

and they're not gonna be good.

It's just like eating whipped butter,

and I see nothing wrong with that.

The other thing I really, really like about this cheese

is the rind.

The rind is soft, it's cohesive, it's part of the cheese.

I don't know why one would choose the brie over this.

Goat's Milk Gouda-Style cheese.

This is made in Holland.

It is a gouda recipe, but instead of using cow's milk,

they use goat milk.

You can see that the cheese is really, really white,

has to do with the way goats process betacarotene.

Betacarotene is what makes cheese look yellow.

We've got that great gouda bend,

but here we finally have a cheese that has some aroma.

It smells kind of like dulce de leche.

Beautiful, deep, dense buttery texture,

and it's got that awesome goat gouda flavor.

For people who've only had cow milk gouda,

this is gonna be noticeably sweeter, caramelly toffee.

People out there who hate goat cheese,

when you get into the world of goat gouda,

it's totally different

and it's a cheese that can really change your mind

about what goat's milk can taste like.

Manchego, Manchego is a name-protected cheese.

It can only be made in the region of La Mancha, Spain.

And from there, it can be aged anywhere

from a couple of months to more than a year.

It can be made of raw milk or pasteurized milk.

So on the one hand, Manchego means something really specific

and on the other hand, there's a really broad spectrum

of what you get when you get a Manchego.

So this hatch mark pattern is characteristic of Manchego.

It actually is a throwback

to the time when the cheese was drained in baskets

that were made of reeds.

Today, that is not how the cheese is ripened or aged,

but the pattern is imprinted using plastic molds

and it hearkens back to that original reed basket.

You don't eat the rind, it is wax.

The other thing, just to point out,

is that it's gone greasy.

This is a cheese made of sheep milk.

Sheep milk is higher in fat than cow milk or goat milk.

And at room temperature,

that butter fat will start to leach out.

So when you have a sheet milk cheese

and it's greasy on the plate, that's totally normal.

I will say it's not as concentrated a flavor

as I was hoping for,

but there's a reason why Manchego is very popular.

It is a very approachable cheese,

and I find it has flavors that are also reminiscent

of, like, the mac and cheese powder.

This has that inherent cheesy quality.

There are many better Manchegoes out there,

but this is an excellent place to start.

Mini Basque.

This is another aged sheep milk cheese made

in the French Pyrenees.

Mini Basque is a larger production version

of a really famous French cheese called P'tit Basque.

This is sort of an homage to that traditional cheese.

It's just made on a larger scale

and it's more readily available and less expensive.

Like Manchego, it's going to have higher fat content.

It's also got a wax rind

and it's got kind of, like, a springier, semi-soft texture.

This is a really easy-eating cheese.

Hmm, the main thing I think of

when I taste this cheese is coconut.

It doesn't actually taste like eating a coconut,

but the, like, fatty richness of coconut

is what this cheese is all about.

It too has some of those kind of mac and cheesy flavors.

Everyone will like this cheese.

It is one that I strongly encourage you to try

if you haven't already had it and if it's one you know,

to keep it on your regular rotation.

Italian Truffle Cheese.

Many people criticize truffle cheeses

because they often rely on truffle oil

for their flavor intensity.

And I think some people feel

like that makes it a fake cheese,

like it's a fake flavoring,

but the truth of the matter is

if you were to just put truffle in the cheese,

it wouldn't taste like anything.

So without that oil, you're not gonna get the aromatics

that we're all looking for.

Traditionally they're made of sheep milk,

and this is an Italian truffle cheese

that is made of cow milk.

The base cheese is going to be milder.

And really this is a cheese that's designed

to just be about the flavor of the truffle.

It's not wack-you-over-the-head truffly,

which actually I'm kind of happy about

'cause if it were, that would mean

it was gonna be just like greased up with truffle oil.

It's definitely truffle.

You can get the truffle really clearly.

The cheese itself is kind of sour

and kind of gummy in texture.

I want the base cheese to be good

before I layer in the flavor.

I wish this were a more aged cheese

with the same amount of truffle hit.

Parmigiano Reggiano Stravecchio.

Don't hate on me for my pronunciation.

This is the king of cheese.

This is Parmigiano Reggiano.

Stravecchio means extra aged.

This one is aged for three years.

And it must, by Italian and EU law,

be made of unpasteurized cow's milk.

When you heat treat a milk and you pasteurize the milk,

you kill any bacteria that are naturally present

and those bacteria contribute

to the flavors and aromas of the cheese over time.

You have more opportunity for complexity

with a raw milk cheese than you may

with a pasteurized milk cheese.

I love that you can see these white patches.

These are crystallized amino acids.

You'll start to see them in cheese around nine to 12 months

of age, and they contribute a kind of crystally texture

to the cheese.

This is the strongest smelling cheese

that I've tasted yet today.

When you have no water in the cheese,

you get a lot of flavor and a lot of aroma.

Toasted nuts, really toasty, toasty smells.

Because this is so aged, it is very dry,

it's very flaky.

Really crunchy, like pop rocks.

This is a really excellent Parmigiano Reggiano.

This manages to still have some creaminess.

And instead of being dry, it's crunchy, it's crystallized

and that, to me, is like textural perfection.

You can get Parmigiano Reggiano pretty much everywhere now

and a lot of it is dried out and not great.

So this is a surprisingly great Parmigiano Reggiano

and I will be eating more of it.

Thousand Day Gouda.

People may not be as familiar with aged gouda

and it's a style that I really, really try

to steer people to because it is extremely likable.

That crystallization,

those tyrosine crystals form around nine to 12 months

of age.

Here we've got three years of ripening.

And they're even bigger here than they were

in the Parmigiano Reggiano.

It's like every bite is full of crunch.

Being a gouda, it's always gonna have that waxed rind.

The aroma of this cheese is also incredibly intense.

It's caramelly, it's nutty.

It makes me think of pecan pie.

It's super crunchy.

Very different from the Parm because it is much creamier.

It's got really deep nuttiness, it's got vanilla,

it's got caramel.

Like, everybody has to have this cheese.

I really don't think there's a markedly better

aged gouda out there.

Cambozola, Camembert meets Gorgonzola,

ptt, Cambozola.

It has a white molded rind, like a Camembert or a brie,

and then it has blue mold on the inside like a Gorgonzola.

Texture, texture,

it's all about the texture.

Very, very buttery.

The blue mold is definitely present.

It contributes kind of bitter notes, like bitter greens,

and also more mushroomy flavors to the cheese.

For people who don't like blue cheese,

you're probably not gonna like this.

For people who are interested in blue,

this is a really great starter

because it's not as salty, as peppery,

or as overwhelming as other kinds of blue cheese.

This is a very delicate cheese

and high turnover really helps with quality

with this style of cheese.

And one thing that I know Trader Joe's has is high turnover.

So I do think that the quality that you can expect to get

of the Cambozola is probably among the highest

because they're cutting it and selling it and cutting it

and selling it very quickly.

Blue Stilton.

Stilton is an English cow's milk blue cheese.

It's got this crazy natural rind

on the outside of the cheese.

This is what happens when a cheese

is aged in an open air environment.

While the rind is really important,

it's generally not that tasty to eat.

So I'm gonna cut the rind off.

I mean I know this is a blue cheese,

but it smells like aged cheddar.

That's really good.

The way you make a blue cheese

is that you add blue mold spores to the milk

during the cheese-making process,

but that mold won't grow without air.

So after the cheese is formed,

the maker pierces holes in the rind of the cheese,

air gets into those holes

and the mold starts to grow from the inside out.

At the same time they put a lot of salt

on the outside of the cheese and the salt migrates in

as the blue mold is growing out.

And those things are happening simultaneously.

So if you look at the blue molding in this cheese

versus the Cambozola,

Cambozola is like little pockmarks of blue.

It's a very, very wet cheese.

It's like a big wet sponge.

And so when they pierce holes in the cheese

to let air in to let the blue mold grow,

the curd just kind of collapses.

It can't hold itself up.

So you don't ever have an opportunity

for veining to develop.

You just get these little pockets of blue.

When you're working with a firmer,

denser cheese like Stilton,

when you pierce holes in the cheese, the holes remain

and you get these more even kind of cohesive mapping

of blue veins that develop throughout the cheese.

That also impacts the flavor.

It's more kind of evenly distributed.

It's not as intense 'cause it spreads throughout the cheese.

This is really fudgy and dense.

It does have those fungal notes

and it does have some of those, like, fruity,

peppery notes of blue, but it's very balanced

and it's got really good salt to kind of anchor it.

I'm frankly surprised at how good this Stilton is.

Party tricks.

These are cheeses with wild flavors and classic mix-ins.

White Stilton with Apricots.

So now we're into the world of Stilton

that isn't blue cheese.

White Stilton was created as a base cheese

that different flavorings, specifically fruits,

could be added to.

This is a rindless, dense, firm cheese

that is sort of,

I guess I would call it a cheddarish-based recipe,

but it is not sharp like a cheddar.

The flavor here is about the additive.

It's not about the cheese.

The cheese is milled, it's ground up

and the fruit is added to that mixture.

So you're really getting all of the flavor here

from the fruit.

Additionally, yeah, I really get a sweetness as well.

It's very typical that sugar will be added,

in this case fructose.

I'll be totally honest,

I don't get the appeal of these cheeses,

but people really love them.

I don't feel like I'm eating a cheese.

I feel like I'm eating some sort

of cheese-cakey dessert situation.

So I would say, if that appeals to you,

you can get some at Trader Joe's.

Blueberry Vanilla Chevre.

So here we have a fresh goat cheese log

that's been rolled in sweetened, dried blueberries

and flavored with vanilla.

The sweetness of the blueberry really,

really counterbalances the tanginess in the goat cheese.

Hmm, I've only had a couple of versions

of blueberry vanilla goat cheese.

To my knowledge, there's really one major producer

in the US who's making all the cheese for everybody

who sells this style of cheese.

This isn't my preferred style,

but it is really good for what it is.

It's very consistent with everything else that's out there.

Sweetheart White Stilton.

Okay, this is the ultimate insane flavored cheese.

This is white Stilton with chocolate,

caramel flavored fudge pieces

and dried sweetened cherries.

Kind of crumbly, like the apricot one.

I've been dreading this cheese all day

and weirdly, it's not as, like, frightening

as I thought it was gonna be.

There's so much stuff in it.

The cheese is merely the glue that holds it all together.

I think white Stilton is the ideal base for flavoring

because it is really very neutral

and it is not about the cheese.

You don't buy white Stilton without stuff in it.

It's not a cheese that's available on its own

and it does have this very particular kind of, like,

moist, crumbly texture that makes it smearable.

So it's almost like is it a spread

or is it a piece of cheese?

I've never seen this cheese anywhere.

Could be a Trader Joe's exclusive,

but if you want a sweet spreadable cheese

with lots of stuff in it,

you've found your perfect sweetheart.

Everything but the Bagel Cheddar.

Maybe it's just me,

but the idea of savory flavorings in cheese

is a lot easier for me to get my head around.

This is a cheddar in name only.

It's not gonna have much in common

with the cheddars that we've tasted today.

And it is, whew, like walking into a bagel shop.

It's like garlicy and oniony.

They do an amazing job

of getting intense concentrated flavor

in every bite throughout the cheese.

It's just very mushy and soft.

It's not really cheddar at all

and it tastes like an everything bagel.

If you're going for that flavor profile,

this is nailing at 100%.

And it would be an incredible melting cheese,

which, to me, is just super conducive

to this flavor profile.

Cotswold Double Gloucester.

There are a lot of cheeses in England,

not technically cheddars.

The cheese-making process is somewhat different.

They usually take the name of the region they come from.

And frankly, at least to me, they all remind me of cheddar.

Double Gloucester is one of these cheeses.

Cotswold is a flavored double Gloucester.

So you take double Gloucester and then you add onion

and chive and you get Cotswold.

And that's what we have here.

A firm mild cheddar dyed orange

by adding annatto.

It's a plant-derived coloring.

Doesn't impact flavor, makes the cheese orange.

This is younger cheese,

it's moisture,

and it should be really dominated by onion and chive.

The chive is freeze dried.

We're not adding fresh produce to the cheese,

but you get a much greater concentration of flavor

by using those dried ingredients.

And this is really chivey right off the bat.

This does taste more like cheese, with a hint of chive.

That's what Cotswold should be.

Even though this says Trader Joe's Cotswold,

there's only one Cotswold.

And they've allowed Trader Joe's to put their brand on it.

So this is Cotswold

and if you like that style of cheese,

you're gonna be really, really happy.

Cheddar with Caramelized Onions.

This is an English farmhouse cheddar.

The way they get the caramelized onion flavor in there

is by using a marmalade of caramelized onion,

which I think is brilliant.

You address the stability issues,

the shelf stable issues,

at the same time that you can infuse a really intense flavor

into the cheese.

Flavor-wise, it's, like, super intense.

I like a flavored cheese where I can taste the cheese first

and the flavoring second.

This is a cheese for somebody who wants

to taste caramelized onion marmalade delivered

in a delightful cheese block format.

This is not my favorite cheese,

but this is 150% of what it promises to be,

and it tastes great.

Cheddar with Scotch Bonnet Chili and Red Peppers.

Here we have young cheddar.

It's infused with spicy scotch bonnet chili relish

and sweet red bell pepper.

What I'm looking for is actual heat.

If you tell me you're making a pepper cheese,

I want it to be spicy.

It's very vinegary smelling.

Okay, that's pretty spicy, honestly.

No joke.

I don't really get the sweet red pepper at all,

but I get the spicy pepper.

The one drawback is the texture is very weird.

It's mealy, sort of smushes down in your mouth

in a way that I don't really care for that much.

There aren't many cheeses that really deliver on the promise

of spice the way this one does,

but I've definitely had spicy cheeses with better texture.

My top seven cheeses of the day in recommended tasting order

are Chevre with Fine Herbs, Fromage Pave,

Goat's Milk Gouda-Style, Mini Basque,

Unexpected Cheddar, Thousand Day Gouda, and Blue Stilton.

The Chevre with Fine Herbs, I loved for the bright, fresh,

and unexpected herbaceous blend.

Fromage Pave, for that extra hit of cream, insane butteries

and whisper thin rind.

Goat's Milk Gouda-Style is an amazing introduction

to the wonders of aged goat milk cheeses.

Mini Basque shows you the world of sheep milk cheese

beyond Manchego, coconutty and mellow.

Unexpected Cheddar, because seven years

of Trader Joe's customers can't be wrong.

Parmesan and cheddar go really well together.

The Thousand Day Gouda was probably the best one overall.

It reminded me of vanilla, bourbon, caramel.

The flavor went on forever.

And Blue Stilton,

because I think every cheese plate needs a blue cheese,

and this one was amazing,

minerally balanced, and not at all overwhelming.

Trader Joe's kills it

at all of the fundamental cooking cheeses,

but where they really shine

is in curating an amazing assortment of cheese 101 classics.

You can put together a great cheeseboard any night

of the week at an insanely good value.