I Tried 7 Frozen Mozzarella Sticks — This Is the Best

Big Italian dinner feasts can hit our wallets pretty hard, but there's always a way around these things. Looking to fill the dinner table with apps everybody’s gonna love? You may want to reach for some frozen mozzarella sticks.

But many brands out there are horrible, and you might not know which you want to go with. Because I serve the public, I went and found every brand of frozen mozzarella stick I could get my hands on and ranked ’em from best to worst. Here’s who came out on top.

Big Mozz is doing the most bragging by far. The box is adorned with words like “premium” and “gourmet” and “100% real.” The packaging could not be more in-your-face about this product’s superiority. Big Mozz is certainly talking the talk.

Folks, it also walks the walk. I’ve done more taste tests than I can count for Cheapism, but rarely does something pull off a landslide victory like this. It’s so much better than everything else in every single way. Premium, gourmet, and 100% real: Absolutely. These are big honkers, too, about the same size as a hot dog, and every inch of it is seasoned and flecked with Romano cheese.

I usually don’t eat frozen mozzarella sticks because no matter how you cook them, the cheese turns into rubber almost instantly. Not here. Big Mozz stays melty and stretchy for a long time after cooking. Between a tasty batter and delicious cheese, the difference is night and day.

I wouldn’t have expected this from TGI Fridays, but these are really solid. While the seasoning isn’t much to write home about, the fact remains that they are seasoned at all. That’s a lot better than most of the sticks I tried for this test. The cheese stays nicely nestled into the batter, which is also better than some of the sticks I tried for this test. All in all, solid, dependable; a Volvo.

While it’s true that Whole Foods seasoning is far superior, there’s an inarguable truth that propels Fridays ahead: It comes with dipping sauce. There’s a little packet of marinara to defrost. Nobody else is doing this. That’s huge, and nobody else is doing it.

It’s amazing what some actual seasoning can do. These are zesty and really feel Italian, almost like they already have the flavor profile of being dipped into marinara. The cheese is higher quality than most others too, and when I took a bite I had an actual cheese pull. That’s rare in this business.

Of all the little skinny mozzarella sticks, Snapps is the best. The batter actually has some flavor and the cheese inside stretches, pulls, and melts better than all the rest. I probably still wouldn’t go for these in a store, but if they were my only option, I could live with it.

Food Lion’s sticks are essentially the same as Feel Good and Farm Rich, but instead of exploding and ruining my air fryer, they remained intact like good little boys. Unfortunately, these still have that bland, generic, frozen batter vibe and I wouldn’t buy ‘em again.

Imagine a fish stick, except with a log of string cheese in the middle. That’s what Farm Rich has for us here. With virtually no seasoning to be found and breading that gets too hard too fast, these are a pass.

This is a prank food, I think. I followed the Air Fryer directions on the box exactly, but when I took them out, they had all split open and the cheese had melted out completely. And when I say completely, I mean that each stick was a hollow, empty log without any cheese inside. The cleanup on this took a while. My vengeance knows no bounds: Last place for you.

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