There are a plethora of toppings one can use when making nachos, but it’s the cheese that is the main attraction of the dish. The reason you never see nachos with feta or Parmesan cheese all boils down to these components that make a cheese suitable or unsuitable for nachos: taste, texture, and meltability.

Hard, aged cheeses like Parmesan and pecorino have a higher oil content, making them hard to melt with a sharper flavor that will be overpowering in nachos. More pungent cheeses like feta or bleu also suffer from this problem, so melty and mild cheddar or Jack cheese is the best option for nachos.

Combining cheddar or Jack with American cheese is even better, as American cheese melts easily and doesn’t firm up or separate quickly when it cools. If you have to choose between sliced or pre-shredded cheese for nachos, choose sliced, since pre-shredded cheese is often filled with preservatives and prone to clumping.