The Best Cheddar Cheese: A Taste Test Of Supermarket Brands

If you eat a lot of cheese (and we eat a lot of cheese), spending $30 per pound of cheddar isn't always an option. The key is to save expensive cheeses for special occasions -- fondue night or cheese plates, for example -- but opt for the supermarket brands when it's time for a no-fuss grilled cheese (though, truth be told, sometimes we do like to make fancy grilled cheese).

So which brand of supermarket cheddar should you reach for when you want something affordable? We hit the supermarkets and rounded up a collection of the most widely available cheeses on the East Coast (though you'll find many of these nation-wide, as well). Then we conducted a blind taste test of 11 cheeses, judging primarily based on flavor, sharpness and texture.

So what's the lesson we learned from this? Sadly, one very popular brand ended up at the bottom of the barrel, with all three of that brand's varieties ranking at the tail end of our list. On the brighter side, another brand came out as a clear and dominant winner. Check out the results in the slideshow below to find out who we're talking about.

As always, this taste test is in no way sponsored or influenced by the brands included.

This story appears in Issue 41 of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, in the iTunes App store, available Friday, March 22.