Head To Walmart For The Closest McDonald's Cheese Copycat

Making your own McDonald's dupes at home has become preferable for some, as the rising cost of fast food has priced out some lower-income families, and even those who do have more disposable income are opting to eat at home more often. For the same amount you would spend on a single meal or even sandwich at the Golden Arches, you can make double the amount of food by buying the ingredients and assembling them at home. You can find copycat McDonald's breakfast sausages in Walmart, but how can you get as close as possible to McDonald's' bright orange cheese, which populates their many sandwiches (including the under-appreciated Quarter Pounder with Cheese)?

While you're at Walmart picking up a bag of those sausages, make your way to the dairy department, skip by the individually wrapped slices, and pick up a block of Great Value Deluxe Slices, Pasteurized Process American Cheese. This cheese has a similar ingredient make-up to McDonald's, with variations in the emulsifiers (sunflower lecithin in the Great Value cheese, versus soy lecithin, in the McDonald's cheese). To really get the McDonald's-at-home experience, you should also let your cheese sit on the counter for about an hour (but never more than two). Letting the cheese come up to temperature is called tempering it, and it helps improve both the taste and texture.

McDonald's does list some of its suppliers on its website, and while it does boast two dairy farms, these farms are described as supplying drinking milk and milk used in soft serve. However, there is a very good chance that Green Bay, WI-based (because where else would you expect cheese to be manufactured?) dairy supplier Schreiber Foods provides McDonald's with American cheese. Neither McDonald's nor Schreiber foods has made their partnership public, however, so it is still up for speculation.

It's the same deal with Great Value's deluxe cheese; there are rumors that ConAgra, one of the biggest suppliers of house brand foods (as well as the parent company for many name brands), makes Walmart's cheese. But, again, there is no confirmation from either camp, and the only way to know for sure would be if one party spilled the beans or there was a recall on this particular type of Great Value cheese.