9 Blue Cheese Dressing Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

Blue cheese dressing occupies a special place in the salad dressing world. Bold and funky, sharp and briny, it's not a neutral choice by any means. If it's not your jam, you'll know it right away. If it is, you likely know there are many uses for its big personality aside from on salads; a dollop of blue cheese dressing on a baked potato elevates the spud to new heights, but it's also an unbeatable dip for chips or veggies. You likely also know, as I do, that some brands on the grocery store shelf seem afraid to let blue cheese dressing be as out-there as it wants to be. Some feature deeply repressed flavors, while others pack an extroverted punch but in the wrong way — too vinegary, for instance, as if trying to make up for underwhelming funk.

Some people avoid buying salad dressing at the grocery store, preferring to make it themselves. I spend my culinary energy elsewhere, so I wanted to know which brands out there satisfy my criteria for a good blue cheese: a sharp flavor that isn't too shy to show its funkiness, a thick rather than watery texture, and generously portioned, amply sized chunks of cheese in any given bite. I'm delighted to say that none of these nine dressings that I tried were flat-out icky in the slightest, though some satisfied my personal criteria much more than others. But one dressing (and only one) in particular so exceeded my hopes and dreams that it was pretty much game over after my taste buds made its acquaintance. 

I enjoy Publix, but its store-brand items aren't always a hit for me. When I ranked cottage cheese brands from worst to best, the Publix version ended up in last place, right where Publix blue cheese dressing lands here in this ranking. In this case, however, the item doesn't taste terrible –- it just doesn't taste like what it ought to. It has earned last place for two simple reasons: too much salt and not enough blue cheese. It's also a bit thin and watery.

Though this one is not labeled as a "chunky" blue cheese dressing, I still stirred and took a peek. At first, I saw no chunks of blue cheese at all, but then I noted the small, solid specks. This was passable if the flavor made up for it, but the dressing was just too salty. That's the predominant note. The funk of the blue cheese is very light, but it's really crouching behind the salt and the vinegar. It's not a terrible condiment to my taste buds, though -– I appreciate some salty foods -– but this isn't what I want my blue cheese dressing to taste like.

I've always been fond of Wish-Bone's iconic Italian dressing, so I was optimistic about its chunky blue cheese. As it turned out, this one didn't quite live up to the "chunky" in its name. For starters, it was rather thin in texture (not full-on watery, thankfully), and a fairly large amount came out of the bottle when I poured. Despite the generous size of my sample, I encountered only a few chunks of blue cheese, and they weren't even all that large. That wouldn't be a deal-breaker if the flavor had plenty to offer, but this is where Wish-Bone really fell flat for me.

This blue cheese dressing offered a wallop of flavor that hit fast, but it was mostly acidic, with blue cheese as a secondary note. This could work if you're not a huge blue cheese lover (in which case, buying blue cheese dressing would be a bit of a gamble, anyway), but for me, it tasted either too heavy on the vinegar or the buttermilk. Like the Publix blue cheese dressing, this contender is not downright unpleasant, but it displays too much of the wrong element to be what I want in a blue cheese salad dressing. I just happen to find "too acidic" a little less than jarring than "too salty." 

On that note, using two salad dressings can sometimes enhance the flavor of your greens, so I'd be curious to see if doubling this up with a sweeter dressing, something like a honey mustard or a poppyseed, could balance that acidity. 

Kraft, even more than Wish-Bone, is a ubiquitous name in the sauce and condiment world, inspiring high expectations for its chunky blue cheese dressing. And like Wish-Bone and Publix, it disappointed, though it did not disgust. This dressing poured out a tad thicker than the two that ranked lower, and it contained more blue cheese to boot. However, these small specks hardly constituted the descriptor "chunky" ("dotty" might be more accurate).

This was the only dressing I tried that was so strongly flecked with dark blue dots. At first, I assumed these would be blue cheese, but I'm not entirely sure about that: Kraft, like Wish-Bone, hasn't really made a "chunky" dressing, nor one that is rich in blue cheese flavor. In fact, this dressing tasted similar to Wish-Bone's version: It had an in-your-face, tartar sauce-like vinegariness, but with a smidge more blue cheese behind it that raised it higher in my estimate. But it, too, lacks the quantity of blue cheese that I would want in this dressing; there's nothing fun to bite into, no scrumptious chunks to adhere to your salad ingredients.

I always get a little worried before reviewing a Great Value item. Walmart's store brand makes a few products I enjoy, but it also produces some duds. I had a hard time eating the Great Value contender for the cottage cheese brand ranking, and a blue cheese salad dressing seems a little in that ballpark.

But I was pleasantly surprised by this Great Value dressing. There weren't all that many blue cheese chunks in here — a few, for sure, but very small. In all fairness, though, this one is also not marketed as a chunky dressing. It was quite thick, which I appreciated, and unlike Wish-Bone's and Kraft's, the flavor was balanced, with not too much of any polarizing element. To my tastes, though, that's something of a bug rather than a feature. If all the salad dressing flavors were to have a party, the blue cheese should be one of the loudest voices in the room. This Great Value version is sitting in the corner with the oil and vinegars. That said, I can see this pick working for people who want a blue cheese funk but prefer a toned-down version.

I had no idea what a huge variety of dressings Ken's Steak House produces. The brand claims over 60 flavors, and three of those are some form of blue cheese. Surely a dressing from a brand so experienced with this specific condiment would produce a stellar chunky blue cheese dressing — this was my thought process as I poured out a sample into my ramekin.

The first thing I noticed was the texture: It was fairly thick, with a few lumps of blue cheese immediately visible in it. Would more have been better? Always, but the sizes of some of these cheese chunks were fairly satisfying. They were a little smaller than a chocolate chip. Considering that a number of the lower-ranking dressings featured poppy seed-sized blue cheese pieces, I couldn't really complain. Unlike other dressings I tried, the opening flavor of Ken's Steak House chunky blue cheese leaned a tad close to mayonnaise, but a bigger blue cheese tartness hit toward the end of the bite and hung out on my palate for a while. Overall, this wasn't a bad dressing, but a bit more funk would make it better. 

I love Bolthouse Farms juices and protein drinks, and I never knew the brand produced dressings, too, until I went shopping for this taste test and ranking. Later, when I saw that Bolthouse Farms performed fairly well in our ranking of store-bought ranch dressing, I was intrigued to see how its blue cheese would fare.

First note: This is not very thick at all, so it poured out way too fast; I ended up with much more dressing in my ramekin than I wanted. It did smell wonderful, though: savory and buttermilky (buttermilk is the second ingredient after filtered water), with a promise of depth. It had tiny flecks of blue cheese; a few more would have been ideal ("Chunky?" Nope!), but I wasn't too unsatisfied.

This dressing presented plenty of blue cheese flavor with that iconic tart backdrop. In addition to standard ingredients, it contains sour cream and even pineapple juice concentrate, but the tartness didn't overwhelm at all. That said, somehow the blue cheese didn't feel entirely integrated into the flavor mix the way it did in the higher-ranking dressings — a minor complaint. One more fact of note about this pick is that it contains only 4 grams of fat per serving compared to a much more robust quantity in the others (around 14 grams, on average), so if a low-fat dressing is what you want — one that doesn't taste like a compromise — this is it.

The label on this bottle of Litehouse chunky blue cheese dressing threw me off at first: It's football-oriented, perhaps because the Super Bowl is drawing near at the time of this writing. While football season may send you visions of toothsome appetizers and delicious slow cooker meals for a chill Super Bowl Sunday, it makes me think of sweat. And sweat plus blue cheese just isn't that appetizing. This dressing also poured out quite thin, which didn't inspire confidence.

Because of my grim expectations, I was taken aback by how much I liked this one. The aroma was savory and inviting, and on the tongue, it had a wonderful, buttermilky depth, with a mild sweetness that balanced the buttermilk tang. The blue cheese flavor was not the strongest note — it was more like blue cheese was in there to back up the buttermilk — but it was too succulent an effect to rate any lower than third place. As for the "chunky" on the label, there were indeed a few chunks, but not a lot, and they were comparable in size to those of Ken's Steak House. Yes, this is blue cheese dressing for the masses, but it's done very well.

I had never heard of the Marzetti brand before this review, which is a surprise considering it's been around since 1955 (at least in Ohio, where it was founded). The moment I poured this out, I could see it was going to be good. It was loaded with chunky blue cheese. The dressing's color, unless my eyes deceived me, was even vaguely blue. After pouring out a number of near watery dressings, I enjoyed the fact that you spoon this out rather than being at the mercy of the spout when you pour.

Texture-wise, this was nice and thick. The flavor was even better: perfectly funky and tart, with an obvious buttermilk note complementing the blue cheese. The balance was just right; unlike Wish-Bone's dressing, the blue cheese was in charge of this bottle — not the buttermilk. Each little chunk of blue cheese was a delight to bite through, too. If you're a blue cheese dressing lover who doesn't want to pay more than around $4 for your 13-ounce bottle, this is your dressing. If you don't mind spending a bit more, there's one dressing that bested Marzetti's.

I'm typically not a person who sits and eats salad dressing from a spoon as if it's yogurt even after I'm finished taste-testing it. Marie's chunky blue cheese dressing was so good, though, so delicious to an unparalleled degree, that it turned me into this person. This stuff is off the charts. I had to go learn about this brand (because like Marzetti, it had been off my radar until now) just to see where this top pick had been hiding all my life. Lo and behold, chunky blue cheese dressing was this brand's first product. A cafe chef created it in the late 1950s and presented it to the owner of his workplace, a woman named Marie Nordquist. If what she tasted was anything like what I tasted, it's no surprise the cafe began bottling and selling the stuff to eager customers.

Take everything I said about Marzetti's dressing and double it, and that gives you Marie's chunky blue cheese dressing. The aroma was divine: incomparably savory and delectable. It was a fairly thick dressing with small chunks of blue cheese spread evenly throughout. Looking at my speech-to-text notes for this contender, I apparently said, "Oh my God, this is everything" when I first tasted it. After that, I apparently babbled incomprehensibly as I spoon-fed it to myself. It was absolutely brimming with umami from the blue cheese, and the buttermilk and sour cream complemented that note perfectly. Could there be bigger chunks of blue cheese? Sure, but it was too delicious for me to care.

For this ranking, I chose blue cheese dressings readily available in two local supermarkets, Walmart Supercenter and Publix. Each blue cheese dressing was refrigerated after purchase. After shaking the jar or bottle vigorously, I tested the dressings both as a dip for baby carrots, and straight from a spoon, so that I could get a clear sense of the flavor and texture — two factors I considered. 

A good blue cheese dressing should have a sharp, funky, appealing flavor (naturally!) and should be thicker rather than watery. It shouldn't taste unbalanced in any way — not too salty or sweet, for instance. I also assessed the quantity of blue cheese pieces. The best dressing would have plenty of them, and there would be some larger chunks of cheese mixed in with smaller pieces. I had no exact, optimal number of blue cheese crumbles in mind per spoon, but — like many things in life — I would know it when I saw it.