Trader Joe's Apizza Gouda Cheese

If you do an internet search for "apizza gouda" this product is the only thing that comes up. Not sure why we're adding an "a" to the beginning of the word "pizza" because this is essentially just pizza-flavored cheese. Maybe it's there for searchability purposes? Trader Joe's offering pops up if you search for "pizza gouda," but so do many other products and recipes.

At any rate, we paid $5.85 for our wedge of cheese. It's about 13 bucks a pound. Not a bad value, considering it's imported from the Netherlands. You'd think it's Italian, right? Nope. It's Dutch. The striking color and unique name has raised more than a few eyebrows over the past month or two. I know we're not the first ones to review it, but if you read on, I'm sure you'll feel enlightened.

Tasting the cheese straight out of the plastic wrapper, I must admit I wasn't impressed. It was very tomatoey. The spices were quite potent, too. I tasted oregano, garlic, and a faint bit of vinegar. The gouda flavor didn't shine through the veggies and seasonings as much as I would have liked it to.

So we decided to experiment. The beautiful wifey made a grilled cheese sandwich first. Wow. What a difference. When placed on bread, the apizza cheese emulated the flavor of pizza. Imagine that. Nothing but a bit of butter for grilling, some nice thick slices of sourdough, and this apizza gouda, melted, made an outstanding snack. I didn't even whine about not having soup. If I eat grilled cheese, I almost always want soup. In this case, I just inhaled the sandwich with reckless abandon. What kind of soup would go with it? Your guess is as good as mine. Tomato, I suppose.

Then we tried some quesadillas. Not bad. I preferred the grilled cheese since the bread is much thicker than our tiny corn tortillas. Sonia, on the other hand, liked the quesadillas better. She is Mexican, after all.

Finally, we made some flatbread pizzas. We used Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Lavash Flatbread as the base and topped it with this cheese, canned white meat chicken, olives, spinach, and onions. Sonia added a little pesto to hers. We both agreed that one was the best of all. The apizza gouda served as both the tomato sauce and the cheese and all the flavors blended together beautifully. For pictures of the pizzas, simply click on that review of the lavash flatbread or watch the video embedded below.

It's not a great standalone cheese in my humble opinion, but there's a lot you can do with it. Sonia gives Trader Joe's Apizza Gouda eight out of ten stars. I'm torn. It's interesting enough, but it's just so weird and funky unless you heat it up and add it to something else...I'll be nice and give it seven and a half stars.

Bottom line: 7.75 out of 10.