Our Favorite Things From Costco

Kerrygold is some of the best supermarket butter you can get. It has a higher fat content than your average grocery-store butter. This means it’s soft and silky—not waxy and crumbly—even right out of the fridge. And it’s made with milk from grass-fed cows, which gives it a richer flavor and a beautiful golden color. Kerrygold is widely available in stores, but only Costco sells a 2-pound box of it, both in salted and unsalted varieties.

“We’re a butter-heavy household, and we go through a Costco box every month or two. My husband turns some of it into ghee for cooking, while the rest goes into baking projects or gets spread on my morning toast. At this point, I’ll never buy anything else,” says kitchen senior editor Marguerite Preston.

The large bags of Kirkland Signature brand nuts at Costco are a great value across the board. Not only are they less expensive than nuts you’ll typically find elsewhere, but they’re also consistently super fresh.

“I’ve never gotten a batch that tastes stale or rancid. They’re always sweet and delicious,” says Marguerite, who goes through bags and bags of the raw pecans and whole almonds in her household. Marguerite prefers the raw ones because they’re more versatile for cooking––and you can always toast and season some to your liking if you want.

If you’re someone who bakes frequently, it doesn’t take very long to run through those teeny tiny bottles of grocery store vanilla extract. The Costco Pure Vanilla Extract is 16 fluid ounces of well-balanced extract that is perfect for all sorts of basic recipes—from cookies to banana bread. “I love the Costco vanilla extract for casual recipes. It’s a really great deal! And I save my pricier Nielsen-Massey vanilla bean paste for recipes where the vanilla really needs to shine,” says kitchen senior staff writer Lesley Stockton.

Although they look like nothing more exceptional than little puck-shaped granola bars, Aussie Bites are truly in a league of their own. They have a rich, buttery flavor (butter is the third ingredient), and a soft, crumbly texture that’s somewhere between a chewy oatmeal cookie and cake.

“They’re packed with good things like oats, coconut, sunflower seeds, and dried apricots, and somehow manage to avoid the cardboardy, dusty oat flavor that is the downfall of so many granola bars I try,” says Marguerite. In fact, they’re so good that one Wirecutter editor caught her local coffee shop selling them for several bucks a pop.

Deputy editor Christine Cyr Clisset, who grew up in a commercial fishing family that fished for and canned their own tuna, swears by Kirkland Signature tuna. “My family has a high bar for canned tuna, and we all love Kirkland’s quality. The meat is firm, which means they’re using whole cuts to can. When you open a mushy can of tuna, they’re generally canning lower-quality bits and pieces. The cans from Costco are really delicious and I'm always sad when I have to eat tuna from the grocery store instead.” Her favorite preparation is a tuna-salad sandwich liberally sprinkled with pickled jalapenos.

There’s a reason we picked the Novaform ComfortGrande as our best foam mattress under $1,000. It’s a great value! As we write in our guide, it’s “made from layers of foam that are as dense (and probably as durable) as the foam in many of the mattresses that cost twice as much. Testers loved its cuddly yet supportive feel, but some found it to be too firm.” You can often find it even cheaper in the warehouse at the same time as online sales, so as long as you have a way to haul this bed-in-a-box to its home (it’s not huge but it is heavy!), you’ll save yourself some cash.

Time it for predictable mattress sale seasons, and you can get steeper discounts—even if you don’t get the timing perfectly right. “I was shopping at Costco just before Labor Day and couldn’t wait on buying a mattress, so I purchased the Novaform and lugged it home,” says supervising editor Marilyn Ong. “Sure enough, it went on sale days later. I returned to Costco with just the receipt and they refunded the difference.”

Don’t sleep on Costco’s beauty section–they often stock multipacks of high-end products at a big discount. We were thrilled to see classic French skincare brand Embryolisse on the shelves. Senior beauty editor Jen Hunter loves the creamy, lightweight Lait Crème Concentré. “It’s basic in the best way,” she says. “It doesn’t try to do too much with a lot of potentially irritating ingredients. It just moisturizes and soothes my extra sensitive skin.” Bought separately, a 2.54 ounce tube usually costs around 30 bucks, so two big tubes for under $40 is a steal.

Costco is often a really good value ($5 rotisserie chicken), though we do recommend that you comparison shop before making any big purchases. And they often have great deals on those already-solid prices. The Wirecutter Deals team tracks prices on Wirecutter picks every day of the year, and they regularly see great discounts on Apple products, and kitchen items like our budget pick immersion blender, the Braun MultiQuick 7, and one of our favorite mug warmers, the Ember Mug² (grey only). “Costco offers semi-regular discounts on some Wirecutter picks at lower prices than we see at other retailers anytime outside of Black Friday,” says Deals senior editor Nathan Burrow.