6 Nuts You Should Buy At Costco And 3 You Should Avoid

Looks can be deceiving at Costco. Walk through its aisles and you'll be greeted by an array of attractive, alluring food items, and while a lot of them will provide supreme satisfaction, some of them just don't taste as good as they look. Sadly, that can sometimes be the case with its nuts. Like most things at Costco, its nuts are typically super-sized and come in bags that promise to see you through the winter — but their flavor can sometimes be lacking, and their quality occasionally isn't up to scratch.

However, the keyword there is "occasionally," because a lot of bagged nuts at Costco do stick the landing. Varieties like its cashews, peanuts, and macadamia nuts are total winners and must-buy products, and some fancy flavored options — like its praline pecans and cashew clusters — scratch a deep snacking itch. But to figure out which ones you'll likely love and which to miss, we wouldn't expect you to try them all. So, we did a little digging for you and checked in with the folks who have. For this article, we looked at as many customer reviews as possible for Costco nuts to establish which are worth your cash and which are duds.

If you want good cashews, you have to get yourself down to Costco (or log onto its website). Costco's Kirkland Signature Black Label Premier Cashews are at the top of cashew league tables, and quite frankly, customers fall over themselves to sing their praises. "I'm fairly certain these are the best cashews I've ever had," said one happy customer on Reddit, with another Reddit user stating they could easily plow through a whole jar in just a couple days. When said jar weighs over 2 pounds, that's a real testament to how delicious these things are.

One of the most beloved aspects of these nuts is their sheer size. These cashews don't do things by halves; each kernel is absolutely enormous, so you can get your fill with just a couple at a time (if you can stop yourself from munching through handful after handful, that is). They win points from customers for their quality and, of course, their taste. As a bonus, the glass jar they come in is both attractive and useful, and can make anything from excellent storage to a cool light feature if you stuff it with LEDs. Just be careful when you're carrying it around, as it's not known to be particularly sturdy.

When Costco says something is "super extra-large," you know it's going to follow through on that promise. After all, it's a store that's famous for its gigantic proportions, so any false advertising on that front will look pretty bad. You don't have to worry about that with its Kirkland Signature Super Extra-Large Peanuts, though, which are as big as the bold claim on the container implies. Customers have confirmed the ample proportions of these nuts, which come in a similarly large 2½-pound drum, ensuring that you won't run out any time soon.

We know what you're thinking: "Okay — so they're big. Is that it?" No, it's not. Costco shoppers also love Kirkland Signature Super Extra-Large Peanuts for plenty of other reasons. They've got an excellent crunch and freshness to them, and just the right amount of salt. This product also errs on the right side of oily, and manages not to leave a greasy film on your hands, which can't be said for a lot of other nuts out there. No wonder some people think they're the best peanuts money can buy.

Finding good in-shell pistachios is surprisingly difficult. Actually, it's difficult to find ones that you can actually eat in the first place. The problem with in-shell pistachios is that a lot of the time half of the nuts in the bag are ready to open easily, and the other half haven't split open yet and are totally sealed. You either have to find a hack for opening pistachios and then season them yourself, or you have to throw them out.

Kirkland Signature In-Shell Pistachios won't give you that problem. The bag they come in is incredibly large — weighing in at 3 pounds, to be exact. Customers absolutely love how easy these pistachios are to get into, and how fresh they are once they've been freed from their shells. They're tasty enough that the folks who buy them have to be very careful about the number they're eating to prevent polishing them all off in one go. One customer on the Costco website summed it up nicely when they said: "So delicious. Perfectly roasted, lightly salted, most [are] opened. Whatever this company and farmers [or] suppliers are doing to make this perfect representation of the pistachio — may they keep on doing it!" How's that for high praise?

If you like your nuts with a little extra something to them, then you'll love Kirkland Signature Praline Pecans. Costco shoppers certainly do. These pecans have received rave reviews from Costco regulars, who have fallen head over heels for their sugary flavor, dubbing them one of those must-try foods at Costco that you might otherwise walk past. "I would never [have] gotten these, but they were doing samples of them yesterday. I'm now having to ration them out with my kids. They are so flippin' good," stated one Reddit user. "The coating is buttery and crunchy. It's very hard to stop eating them."

This review is just one in a chorus of positivity about Kirkland Signature Praline Pecans, with customers also finding innovative ways to enjoy them. Sure, you can eat them on their own (they're certainly tasty enough), or you can crush them up for an easy ice cream topping. Alternatively, you could dip the pecans in chocolate to add even more flavor, or throw them into candy bar cookies. Oh, and they make the perfect gift for a friend. Just warn that they might need a trip to the dentist if they plow through the 2½-pound container too quickly, though — these things are very sweet.

Sometimes, single nuts just aren't enough. That seems to be Costco's thinking behind its Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters, at least. This product takes roasted cashews, combines them with almonds and pumpkin seed kernels, and binds them all together with honey, rice syrup, sugar, and sea salt in a 2-pound bag. The result is fabulously snackable clusters perfect for popping into your mouth when you need a quick pick-me-up that isn't candy.

It's not just us saying that, either: Costco customers are in love with Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters. They claim the nut clusters have just the right balance of sweetness to saltiness, they've got a glorious crunch to them, and although they do have sugar in them, it's nowhere near as much as some other snacks. They're also gluten-free, which is a nice touch for folks who have celiac disease or gluten intolerance. You know when a product has thousands of five-star reviews, it's probably a good one — and with almost 2,850 five-star reviews on the Costco website at the time of writing this article, this is sure to be one Costco item you'll wish you knew about sooner.

It can be hard to find good macadamia nuts, particularly in any significant quantity. That's why we love that Costco's Kirkland Signature Dry Roasted Macadamia Nuts come in hefty 1½-pound bags, and in every pack is a simple combo of just nuts and sea salt. As it turns out, that duo is a winner for customers, who are big fans of these nuts. Costco roasts them to just the right point to unlock their flavor without introducing a burnt note, and while macadamia nuts can often be overly soft, they have a good amount of crunch. Combine that with a deliciously buttery, sweet flavor and an overall sense of quality, and it's fair to say that the big-box store hits a home run with these.

Kirkland Signature Dry Roasted Macadamia Nuts also have a lovely freshness to them that customers appreciate, which is certainly impressive, given the big bags they come in. Importantly, they are on the salty side, and some folks might want to watch out if they're keeping an eye on their sodium levels. However, others have said that they have just the right amount.

Kirkland Signature Extra Fancy Salted Mixed Nuts — which are hard to miss in the Costco nut camp — should be a winner, in theory. The promise of an upmarket salted snack seems pretty enticing, and when the bag states that the mixture contains almonds, pecans, cashews, Brazil, and macadamia nuts, it feels as though you'll have the pick of the litter here. The problem, though, is that multiple people have noticed that the mixture is poorly distributed. And to make matters worse, there are just way too many cashews throughout. In fact, some folks have found that the majority of the bag is cashews, and that the other nuts are in pretty short supply.

As a result, this feels a little bit like a case of false advertising — and that's all before you get to the other problems with this product. Some Costco shoppers have noticed that there's been a decline in quality with Kirkland Signature Extra Fancy Salted Mixed Nuts, and that certain bags have a strange, overly salty taste. Others have found large clusters of nut dust and salt taking up room in the bag for the actual edible parts of the snack.

It's fair to say that Costco's Kirkland Signature Walnuts are in a bit of a sorry state right now. These nuts are a core part of Costco's selection, but over the last year or so (and in some cases, even longer), customers have repeatedly taken to the internet to discuss how rancid they are. One customer only realized that their Kirkland walnuts had been rancid when they tried another brand. "The difference in taste and smell was night and day," they said on Reddit. "Basically, our family had been settling for semi-rancid walnuts for the past two years, thinking that this is as good as it gets."

To be fair to Costco, that customer was comparing its Kirkland Signature walnuts to an in-shell version, which will naturally retain its freshness more effectively due to less processing and air exposure. However, when a seemingly endless stream of shoppers is saying the same thing, it's hard to ignore the fact that all might not be well with this Costco product. The apparent rancidness is paired with an unpleasant softness, which has put people off this item even further.

Is it really that difficult for a store to get almonds right? If you're Costco, apparently it is. The retailer seems to be seriously struggling with its almonds, and customers are increasingly steering clear of all of its almond-based products due to the general patchiness of their quality. This is especially apparent with its raw almonds, which have recently begun to have a chipped, unpleasant texture and a porousness that doesn't exactly make them enticing. Some shoppers have even reported signs of bug larvae in their bags, which is pretty gross, to put it mildly.

Costco's roasted almonds aren't much better. Like the raw version, these almonds appear to have lost their shine of late, and customers are now reporting that they're dry and relatively tasteless. Others have found that the almonds don't always hold onto salt well, with Costco shoppers comparing them unfavorably to other brands. It's a shame, but their lack of consistency and general poor quality means they should probably be skipped entirely.

To figure out which Costco nuts were worth buying and which weren't, it wasn't enough to just try them ourselves. Nuts can be highly variable from bag to bag, and as such, we knew we needed to get a wider set of opinions than just our own. So, we turned to the internet to find what customers were saying about Costco's nuts and nut-based products. Luckily, people have been pretty vocal about them. Across the Costco website, Reddit, Facebook, and retailers like Walmart and Amazon (both of whom sell Costco products), we were able to find dozens, if not hundreds, of comments and reviews about its various nuts.

To ensure that we weren't working with old information, we stuck to reviews and comments less than a year old — and in a lot of cases, they were posted in the last few months. We then determined which snacks were viewed favorably and which were seen as a waste of money, and then figured out why. A lot of the time, it came down to the base quality of the products themselves and their general flavor. However, we also took size and alleged freshness into account when determining which were good and which were bad.