Pueblo Lindo Queso Fresco

One of my favorite sections at Aldi — with apologies to the middle aisle — is the cheese section. Usually located in the back among the refrigerated fare, Aldi cheeses range from basic slices to exotic wedges. I’ve been known to simply drift over and look up and down the aisle, taking in the varied offerings. It’s a product line that has grown a lot over the last decade. Whether you need string cheese for your packed lunch or a fine cheese to pair with wine, Aldi has gotten pretty good at the cheese game.

Still, every once in a while, I’m surprised. A while back, that’s exactly what happened. I was walking through my Aldi, and there in front of me was a small wheel of queso fresco. I hadn’t seen that before, not in an Aldi.

Queso fresco, for the uninitiated, is a light, low-salt, generally mild cheese that has a reputation of being highly versatile. It crumbles easily and can be sprinkled over all kinds of dishes, from eggs to salads. It’s tricky (but not impossible) to melt and can also be browned. In Mexico, it is often made either from raw cow milk or a combination of cow and goat milk, while in the United States it is typically pasteurized.

I grabbed a wheel and decided to take it for a spin.

Pueblo Lindo Queso Fresco Mexican Style Fresh White Cheese is an Aldi Regular Buy. You can find it in stores all the time, in the store’s refrigerated section. It comes in a 10-ounce shrink-wrapped plastic package, and at the time of purchase it cost $2.65, or about 27 cents an ounce.

We purchased the cheese with our own money for review.

The cheese appears to be a product of the U.S., as there are no indications it comes from another country.

The package has a best-by date on it, so be mindful of that. It should be kept refrigerated. Cheese like this should be sealed after being opened, but this cheese does not come in a resealable container, so I tracked down something else to store it in after I cut it out of the plastic wrap.

The cheese contains just three ingredients: pasteurized whole milk, rennet, and salt. (Rennet is used to make cheese.) Each one-ounce serving has 80 calories, 6 grams of fat (10% of the recommended daily value), 4 grams of saturated fat (20%), and 190 milligrams of sodium (8%).

As advertised, it’s a crumbly cheese. It cuts easily enough, and the texture is such that it crumbles just as easily.

I tried it out in a few ways. I sprinkled some on chicken tortilla soup and some on a spinach salad. I also mixed some in with a salsa omelet. In all cases, the cheese fared just fine, accenting what I put it in without overwhelming it. That’s what this cheese does — because it’s a mild-flavored cheese, it’s an accent that won’t radically change a food flavor but will complement it.

And as expected, it didn’t melt all that well, something I found when I tried cooking it into an omelet. It tasted fine, but it was still mostly in the diced shape I’d cut it into when I put it on the omelet.

I also tried it out on its own. The packaging claims it can be eaten as a snack, and it is a decent enough snacking cheese, although the flavor is mild enough, with only a modest saltiness, that it might be too muted for some cheese lovers just as a standalone.

The Verdict:

Pueblo Lindo Queso Fresco is a light, crumbly, low-salt cheese that proves a versatile addition to many dishes. Because it’s mild in flavor, it accents rather than overwhelms dishes, making it a nice complement to salads, soups, eggs, and other dishes.