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String cheese is a brilliant snack. First, it’s cheese! Second, it’s easy to toss in your purse, gym bag, or glove compartment. Let me rattle off several other reasons: It’s individually wrapped, protein-packed, no mess, zero fuss, and plenty delicious.
As a 15-year cheese industry veteran, I was once too much of a cheese snob to indulge in these industrially produced sticks. Then I had kids and realized the error of my ways. My daughter Simone can be frustratingly picky, and string cheese is often an easy win. But it’s a crowd pleaser for both kids and grown-ups — a snack everyone can get behind. Plus, there’s something deeply satisfying about pulling apart strands of mozzarella; the flavor and texture changes, and the hands-on experience makes snacking fun. With that in mind, my family and I set out to find the very best ones on the market.
The Tasters
My 2-year-old, 4-year-old (Simone), my husband, and I dutifully snacked our way through a dozen brands of string cheese. We chose ones that looked familiar or nostalgic, as well as big national brands.
The Methodology
You can now get all sorts of cheese in stick form, from sharp cheddar to hot pepper-infused flavors to swirls of orange and white. For this story, we stuck with the classic mozzarella variety. They all looked quite similar: cylinders of ivory-colored cheese in a pull-apart plastic wrapper. But the differences in flavor, texture, and snacking experience were significant.
The best string cheese tastes like what it is: lightly salty, milky mozzarella. It should be easy to pull into wispy strings or fat threads. (If you just bite your mozzarella sticks, you’re either a toddler or a monster. Just kidding, we can still be friends). Of the dozen we tried, these were our favorites, the ones we’ll be reaching for again, and again, and again.
The Results
Our Absolute Favorite: Frigo Cheese Heads String Cheese
If you close your eyes and envision quintessential string cheese, you’re probably seeing Frigo Cheese Heads String Cheese. My whole family gave this a 10/10 for its spot-on flavor: rich and cheesy yet pleasantly light, with just a hint of tart brightness on the finish. We also liked its bouncy texture, and how easily it pulls into delicate strands — even my two-and-a-half-year-old managed (with a lot of focus).
Best Cheesy Flavor: Crystal Farms String Cheese
We love snacking on cheese curds, too, and Crystal Farms String Cheese’s squeakiness reminded us of that satisfying texture. My four-year-old thought these tasted most like “fancy cheese” of any of the brands, and she’s not wrong. It has the tangy acidity and a rich salinity that you’d find from fresh, just-made mozzarella. Plus, it scored high on pull-apart-ability.
Kid Pick: Good & Gather String Cheese
Mild and creamy without too much saltiness or tang, even the pickiest eaters will get behind Good & Gather String Cheese. There are no particularly strong flavors to turn off small palates, but the mellow cheese is still rich and had us all coming back for more. Our pulling apart resulted in fatter strands, which is totally fine for little fingers.
Best Classic: Polly-O String Cheese
“It tastes like string cheese string cheese,” my husband weighed in, and I couldn’t agree more. Super familiar, it had a winning balance of salt, richness, tanginess, and milkiness. It felt a little stiff, but then peeled off into pretty, smooth strands for a pleasant textural experience.
Creamiest: Galbani String Cheese
Simone said the luxurious creamy texture made this one “cream cheese string cheese.” It was a little more stubborn about its stringing, but I liked the smooth richness. It boasts a briny, buttery flavor reminiscent of pizza cheese.
Most Sophisticated: Organic Valley
The flavor mix here was a little different than the rest of the lineup: more richly savory, more nuanced, even a bit tantalizingly earthy. To me, this tasted more like the cheese I originally fell in love with — cheese cheese. These sticks were a little floppier than the rest of the contenders, but the stringing score was high for easy, skinny wisps.
PHOTO CREDIT:
Photographer: Paul Quitoriano
Art Direction: Sarah Ceniceros Gomez
