Think Everything’s Better With Cheese on Top? You Need One of These Cheese Graters in Your Life

Let’s be honest — who doesn’t love cheese? It's most likely the best part of so many of your favorite foods, from homemade pizza and nachos to a tasty dash of dairy tossed in a salad. And a lot of work goes into making a quality block of cheese, from the cows that make the milk to the dairy farmers and cheese manufacturers who get it to your grocery store shelves. So why are you undoing all that effort by subjecting that delicious cheese to a cheap grater that delivers a dreadful shredding?

You may think, “A cheese grater is such a niche kitchen gadget, it only does one thing. So I can get by with a cheap, functional grater.” But cheese-grating technology has come a long way, baby! Not only can many cheese graters offer multiple functions, either on their own or in tandem with other appliances as an attachment — but even in its primary purpose, not all graters are created equal.

Much like trying to saw a plank with a dull blade, grating cheese with a cheap, generic grater will result in both what you're cutting off and what you're cutting from looking like a mess, and a bunch of dusty residue getting everywhere (though cheese dust is inarguably a tastier residue than sawdust). Investing in a quality cheese grater — one that fits your needs, your kitchen, and your budget — can help ensure you get exactly the kind of shredded cheese you need, every single time.

The Best Cheese Graters

What to Consider

Manual or Electric: Like virtually every kitchen gadget these days, there are indeed electric cheese graters, created with the intention of eliminating manual labor from the act of shredding cheese. In most cases, these electric graters are multipurpose tools, like food processors or attachments to appliances like stand mixers. However, these electric graters have yet to dominate the cheese grater space the way other electrified appliances have regularly supplanted their manual counterparts. Whether that’s due to expense, lack of space in the case of larger appliances, or most consumers finding the level of labor involved in grating cheese not worth trying to circumvent, is unclear. Whatever the reason, what’s apparent is that there’s no obvious “better” choice between manual and electric, so focus instead on what better fits your lifestyle.

Grating Style: Naturally, if you’ve ever strolled through an appliance aisle, you’ve noticed that cheese graters come in different shapes and styles. Rather than getting too bogged down in the minutiae of more niche styles like rasp graters (which, if you need one, you’ll know), we’re focusing on the three main designs: box, mandoline, and rotary. The box grater is typically (though not always) a four-sided grater, designed to stand upright on a counter. Depending on the grater, the box is either enclosed, capturing the freshly grated cheese, or open-bottomed, allowing the shavings to fall directly onto the desired area. Mandoline graters, which derive their name from the similarly shaped string instrument, shred or slice the cheese as the item being grated slides across the mandoline's surface. Rotary graters, as the name suggests, use a circular grater which the user cranks in order to grate the cheese.

Alternative Uses: If you're planning on adding a cheese grater to your kitchen arsenal, you might just be able to cut down on your overall kitchen clutter in the process. From graters that can be incorporated into your stand mixer to colossal food processors that can do countless kitchen jobs in a single appliance, there's plenty of multipurpose tools on the market that can make a cheese grater part of a complete and cohesive kitchen. So consider what other food prep tasks your intended grater can contribute to as well.

How We Chose

In our research, we scoured user reviews from retailers such as The Home Depot, Williams-Sonoma, and Amazon, and we also cross-referenced a few in-depth cheese grater guides, including this one from our friends at Good Housekeeping. We ultimately settled on picks that strike a nice balance between versatility, design, and practicality, while making sure we included options that are easy to use, efficient, and equipped with a range of different culinary applications.

So whether you're only preparing the occasional homemade pizza or grate your way through blocks of brie constantly, we've found the grater than will make your mealtime prep a breeze.