Why You Should Avoid This Grocery Store Brand When Buying Cheddar Popcorn

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The best cheddar popcorn is light, crisp, and full of sharp dairy flavor from loads of cheese powder. When we sampled different brands through our ranking of six different store-bought cheddar popcorns, we tried everything from brand name products to store-brand ones. The one grocery store brand cheddar popcorn we recommend you steer far away from is the Good & Gather brand, which is Target's house version. Its main issue is that it lacks in cheesy flavor, which is really what you're looking for when you scoop up a monster handful of popcorn.

The cheddar popcorns that fared poorly were unsurprisingly the ones with the least amount of cheddar flavoring. In contrast, there was one store brand cheddar popcorn that we truly loved (our child taste tester called it his favorite), which was the Trader Joe's version. This one skewed just a tiny bit sweet as well. Just because a popcorn is a store brand item, it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a bland or a boring one. All it needs is some bold, punchy flavor.

If you find that you're frustrated with the lack of cheese powder in your bags of popcorn, you could always tackle the situation yourself by seasoning your own batch. Fortunately, plenty of cheese powders, like King Arthur Better Cheddar Cheese Powder, exist that you can order online, which means all you need to do is pop some popcorn on your own and dust away as you please. 

There is a slight art form to getting your cheese powder to stick — you'll want to make sure the popped kernels have at least some form of oil on them, and you'll want to start sprinkling and tossing the kernels while the popcorn is still warm. It'll adhere much better that way.

Of course, there is one store-bought brand of cheesy popcorn we do highly recommend: Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn, which is also infinitely more convenient coming pre-popped and dusted. Thankfully, that one is extremely easy to snag, since it's a ubiquitous and popular popcorn brand. But as it stands, if you're at Target, steer clear of the Good & Gather cheddar popcorn and move to another option instead. It'll save you the heartbreak before it needs to happen.