If you are familiar with blue cheese, you would know what gorgonzola is. It is a variety of cheese with marbled bluish, greenish, or bluegreen vein mold – a characteristic that is commonly found in blue cheese.
The spicy gorgonzola or piccante has a sharp and savory flavor with a spicy and pungent aroma. It is aged 3 months, giving it a compact and crumbly texture. It has blue-green veins as opposed to the blue veins of dolce.
If you happened to run out of them, here are some of the best alternatives
- Stilton cheese
- Roquefort cheese
- Bleu d’Auvergne
- Danablue
- Fourme d’Ambert
- Shropshire Blue
- Cabrales
- Saint Agur
- Buttermilk Blue
Before we delve into the full list of the best substitutes for this cheese, let’s understand abit more about how this cheese is being produced.
21 Best Substitute For Gorgonzola Cheese
Gorgonzola is a soft cheese with straw-white color and blue or blue-green veins or streaks derived from the process of creating molds. Penicillium roqueforti is used to produce the bluish, green mold. You can enjoy 2 types of gorgonzola – the dolce or the piccante.
Dolce is aged 2 months and has distinct blue veins with a buttery, sweet flavor. It has a creamy, soft, spreadable texture with a milky and mild aroma.
In our list of best substitutes, Stilton is our choice as the overall best. It has the closest similarity in characteristics to gorgonzola, and its milk source is from cows.
The best substitute in terms of texture, taste, and streaks.
Stilton Cheese
Stilton cheese has many similarities to gorgonzola. Its milk source is cows and uses Penicillium Roqueforti to get its blue streak mold.
Stilton is mild, with a buttery flavor that contrasts with its subtle sweetness. Stilton has a nutty, tangy, earthy aroma and a creamy, crumbly, soft texture.
Gorgonzola is a type of blue cheese. What better way to substitute it than using other blue cheese varieties?
Roquefort cheese
Roquefort is a French blue cheese made from the milk of sheep. It is sharp, strong, and tingly on the tongue.
It has a deeper flavor than gorgonzola but has the same soft, crumbly texture. The presence of Penicillium roqueforti ensures that Roquefort will develop blue veins in its interior. This makes Roquefort worthy as a substitute for gorgonzola.
Bleu d’Auvergne
Bleu d’Auvergne is another French blue cheese made from the milk of cows. It has a creamy white color with blue-green streaks of mold and thin salty rind.
It has a crumbly texture similar to gorgonzola. It may not replicate the taste and flavor of gorgonzola, but its texture and mold aroma are good reasons to consider it a good substitute.
DanaBlue
Danablue, also called Danish Blue, is a semi-soft blue cheese from Denmark. It is made from full-fat milk of cows and ripened 5 to 6 weeks to develop a white or yellow color. While aging, the curds are pierced to build their blue-gray mold streaks.
The flavor is salty, slightly bitter, and sharp with a piquant, pure aroma similar to gorgonzola. It does not develop a natural rind, but produces a firm, tight outer layer and creamy, crumbly texture.
Fourme d’Ambert
Fourme d’Ambert is an old French blue cheese made from the raw milk of cows. It is unpressed and uncooked, which accounts for its unusual tall size.
Fourme d’Ambert has a high-fat content, giving it a smooth and creamy blue-green veined interior and a gray-moldy rind outside.
Fourme d’Ambert is cave-aged for 28 days. While aging, it is injected with sweet white wine to produce a delicate flavor with mushroomy, sweet, creamy, earthy notes and velvety mouthfeel.
Shropshire Blue
Shropshire Blue is an English blue cheese that has bright yellow color and bluish vein streaks – a unique in blue cheeses.
It has a soft texture and a sharp, tangy intense flavor with lemony notes that can replicate the flavor profile of gorgonzola.
Cabrales
Cabrales is a Spanish blue cheese made from unpasteurized, raw milk from sheep and goats. The cheese is aged for 3 to 4 months in the limestone caves of Asturias.
Cabrales is not injected with bacteria to develop its mold; the penicillium is naturally developed through aging. It has a slightly acidic taste and a sharp, intense aroma. Cabrales has a firm, creamy texture due to the high-fat content.
Saint Agur
Saint Agur is a French blue cheese made from cow’s milk and aged in cellars for 60 days. It has a smooth, creamy, spreadable, melty texture, and is rindless.
Saint Agur offers a spicy, sharp, fruity flavor with a milky, intense aroma. It has an octagonal shape in honor of the Auvergne basalt stones where it originates.
The United States has its own versions of blue cheese comparable to their European counterpart.
Buttermilk Blue
Buttermilk Blue is the most famous blue cheese made in the United States. The cheese is made using raw milk derived from Holstein and Jersey cows.
Buttermilk Blue is aged at least 2 months in cellars to get its creamy, crumbly texture. The cheese interior is ivory white in color with blue-gray veins. It exudes a mellow, fresh aroma and a tangy, piquant flavor.
Maytag Blue
Maytag Blue cheese originated in Newton, Iowa, and is made using milk from Holstein cows. The cheese is aged for 6 months to develop a dense and crumbly texture.
Penicillium is added to produce its greenish veins and sharp, pungent aroma. Maytag Blue has a lemony, tangy flavor that you can spread melted on your burgers.
Asher Blue
Asher Blue is an American blue cheese made from the raw milk of cows in Georgia. It is pierced 50 times on each side to allow the mold to grow for about 90 days.
The aged mold produces blue vein streaks all throughout, and develops a dense, creamy, crumbly texture with a natural rind. It has an earthy, tangy, slightly sweet, mushroomy flavor with a mild hint of grassy, milky and salty taste.
Midnight Blue
Midnight Blue is often mistaken for Midnight moon because both are made from goat’s milk. However, they are two different kinds of cheese. Midnight moon is a goat cheese styled like Gouda.
Midnight Blue is an American bluegreen-veined blue cheese made from the raw milk of Alpine, Nubian, and Saneen goats. The semi-soft cheese has a slightly dry and dense texture with a natural rind.
Midnight Blue is aged 2 to 4 months to produce a peppery, spicy, sharp, pungent flavor with a goaty aroma.
Barden Blue
Barden Blue is a blue cheese from Vermont cave-aged for about 4 months. This semi-hard, blue-veined cheese is made from raw cow’s milk.
Barden Blue is a pressed cheese that spreads the mold evenly in its interior. It produces a dense, buttery texture with speckled eyes (similar to Swiss cheese) and natural rind.
It has a tangy, mild, nutty flavor with hints of barnyard and hay. The flavors are complemented with peppery, spicy, herbaceous overtones.
Bohemian Blue
Bohemian Blue comes from Wisconsin, the same State that produces the famous brick cheese. The cheese was invented in retaliation to threats of high tariff imposition on Roquefort.
The cheese is made from sheep’s milk and aged in caves for 4 to 6 weeks. It develops a dry, crumbly texture with blue veins.
Bohemian Blue is a rindless blue cheese with a sweet, slightly sour, and piquant flavor.
Crema de Blue
New Jersey produces the blue cheese variety Crema de Blue. This blue cheese is the milk mixture of cow’s and sheep’s milk, and is cave-aged for 65 days.
It has blue vein streaks and a natural rind coating. The texture is semi-soft and creamy with spicy, tart, full flavor, and hints of licorice.
Blue cheese is not the only substitute for gorgonzola. Other types of cheese would work just as well.
Queso Fresco
Queso Fresco may not have the same intense level of flavor as gorgonzola. However, it has the same level of salinity, which makes it a good substitute.
It is generally made from the milk of cows or goats or a combination of both. It is not an aged cheese. This produces a mild, tangy, slightly salty, fresh taste.
The texture is creamy, soft, and crumbly, but not melty.
Cheddar
Young cheddar cheese has a moist, slightly buttery, a slightly melty texture with a creamy, smooth, and very mild flavor. It has a milky, mild, and somewhat sweet aroma similar to dolce gorgonzola.
Aged cheddar cheese has a funky, earthy aroma with a tangy, nutty flavor. It has a yellow to orange (due to annatto) color and a firm, crumbly texture similar to a ripened gorgonzola. Aged cheddar turns stronger and sharper the longer it ages.
Pecorino Romano
Pecorino Romano is an Italian sheep milk hard cheese used in the same manner as Parmesan. It is dry, salty, tangy, and intensely flavored.
The young Pecorino has a creamy, soft texture, and ages for less than a year. The longer it is aged, the more crumbly, firmer, and salty it becomes.
Asiago
The different varieties of Asiago depend on the type of milk used and the length of its aging process. Each variety bears similarities to gorgonzola to make it a good substitute.
Fresh or young Asiago is made from whole milk derived from cows. It is aged for a month to produce a soft, smooth texture and mild flavor similar to gorgonzola dolce.
Aged Asiago is aged anywhere between 3 months to three years. It is made from fresh and skimmed milk and results in flavors that range from sweet, slightly bitter to spicy, and its texture from compact, hard, to crumbly.
You can replicate the taste of gorgonzola without using cheese.
Ranch Dressing
Do not look surprised. The ingredients to make ranch dressing hit all the needed notes to produce the taste of gorgonzola.
Ranch dressing is not a perfect substitute in terms of usage. However, the mixture of salt, onion, mustard, and milk provides that sweet, tangy taste and creamy texture you are looking for.
If you are vegan, this seasoned tofu recipe is your best bet.
Seasoned Tofu
Tofu is silky, soft, and springy. If you can give it the intense, blue mold flavor of blue cheese, it would be perfect.
You can use mold cultures, yeast, or probiotics to bring out the blue cheese flavor. Use spirulina to produce blue-green veins. The texture is somewhat different, but the taste is as close as you can get to gorgonzola.