A cheeseball is one of the simplest, tastiest, and easiest things that you can make for a party, or any gathering of friends and family coming together. This recipe is the perfect example of ingredients coming together to form a truly delicious cheeseball – it’s chock full of comfort food, and comes together in no time at all, with barely any effort whatsoever.

Before we get to the recipe, we’re going to quickly run through a few things that we love about this recipe, as well as a couple of tips to help make sure that you nail it the first time. Happy cooking!

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About This Recipe

Something that we really love about this recipe is the specific cheeses that we’ve picked – cheddar, pepper jack, and gouda. All of these cheeses are wonderful examples of the cheese options that are packed full of flavor, and sure to be nothing short of wonderful.

At the end of the day, you’ll be serving this cheeseball at room temperature – you don’t want to pick a gooey cheese like brie or a stringy (albeit when hot) cheese like mozzarella – you need to pick a cheese that will hold its shape. That’s where these cheeses come in.

Cheddar, pepper jack, and gouda are all hard cheeses at room temperature, with some varieties of cheddar being so hard that they’re actually quite crumbly. Those options are unique, certainly, as well as being sharp and ideal for this cheeseball – the powerful flavor is ideal for bringing some sharp notes to a tasty cheeseball.

Hints & Tips

The number one tip we have for making sure that you nail this recipe the first time you make it is to use pre-grated cheese. The reason for this is that pre-grated cheese is tossed with potato starch in the factory, in order to prevent it from sticking together during transit.

This means that it’s not great at melting, which may not be ideal for pizza. It also means that the cheese won’t become ‘sweaty’ over time in a hot room, since the potato starch will be able to absorb some moisture, rather than the moisture collecting on the surface of the grated pieces.

For this reason, using pre-grated cheddar for the external surface of the ball is ideal.

Now, this next tip might seem like a drop in the bucket – we’d recommend using low-fat cream cheese in this recipe.

Considering the relatively high-fat content of the other ingredients, this may seem odd – changing the cream cheese fat content won’t make too much of a difference. However, since the cream cheese is the medium in which the other ingredients sit, the fat content of the cream cheese would mix with the fat content of the other ingredients. This could lead to a cheeseball that’s soggy and doesn’t have a meaningful level of distinction between ingredients. Instead, it would likely be better to have noticeable textures in a scoop of this cheeseball, enhancing the experience for the eater.

This cheeseball recipe is a wonderfully sharp and unique take on the party classic. We can’t recommend trying it out enough, and we’re sure that you’ll love it!