We tried all 40 milkshakes at Cook Out. Here are the best (plus some you should skip)

Do you really know yourself until you know your favorite Cook Out milkshake?

To stare at the giant menu of 40-some milkshake flavors is the possibility to ask the big questions. Who are we? Why are we here? Peanut Butter Fudge or Red Cherry Cheesecake?

The North Carolina-born fast food chain Cook Out is perhaps best known for its endless menu of milkshakes.

In a daring and delicious feat of service journalism, a team from The News & Observer tried every single available milkshake at the Western Boulevard location in Raleigh, spending three hours eating through all 40 milkshakes and discovering which ones diners need to think about for their next trip through the drive thru.

Instead of a long ranking of all the flavors, we broke them up into categories, believing the milkshakes might be their best selves if tasted and considered among peers.

We unearthed new favorites, confirmed long-held grudges against some flavors and, most importantly, remain in love with Cook Out milkshakes despite a marathon taste test.

Here are the findings of the Ultimate Cook Out Milkshake Tasting. Within each category, we offer rankings best to not best.

The Banana Category

Drew’s Take

1. Banana Pudding

2. Banana Split

3. Banana

4. Banana Fudge

5. Banana Nut

6. Banana Berry

7. Banana Pineapple

If a typical restaurant had as many milkshakes as Cook Out has banana shakes, it would be a ton of milkshakes. Instead it’s just one of the many reasons Cook Out is the milkshake center of the universe.

But this is a nightmare category for me, as banana is basically the only flavor I can’t stand. Most of these shakes only confirmed this. I wrote one word in my notebook next to Banana Pineapple: “vile.”

Good banana pudding, though, usually doesn’t have that much to do with bananas and this Cook Out shake reminded me of being a kid at a church potluck and getting a scoop of fluffy pudding, with just a hint of banana behind all that vanilla and little crunchy crumbs of Nilla wafers.

Korie’s Take

1. Banana pudding

2. Banana

3. Banana split

4. Banana fudge

5. Banana Nut

6. Banana berry

7. Banana pineapple

The banana round was a roller coaster. I love banana pudding ice cream (and plain old banana pudding), so I was most excited for that flavor — and it delivered, proving to be one of my favorites of the day. I was also impressed by the regular banana flavor, but the vanilla wafer cookies in the pudding version added just enough crunch, texture and flavor to knock the no-frills banana into second place.

The banana split flavor was surprisingly enjoyable; it was similar to the banana fudge, but I liked the slight tang added to the banana split by the cherries. Banana berry, which had an almost metallic taste, and banana pineapple, which tasted like a green, not-at-all-ripe banana, were two of the worst flavors overall to me.

The Cheesecake Category

Drew’s Take

1. Strawberry Cheesecake

2. Chocolate chip

3. Red Cherry

4. Cheesecake

5. Blueberry cheesecake

Like the giant banana section, it’s surprising Cook Out devotes so much menu space to cheesecake milkshakes. Then I remember that Cook Out also offers a corndog as a side dish and it all kind of makes sense.

A milkshake/cheesecake mashup is a level of dessert decadence I wasn’t really looking for, but thrilled to see. The sweet tang of the cheesecake worked best with strawberries, eating like an extra creamy version of a traditional strawberry milkshake. I was worried about the chocolate chip shake, because ice cold semi-sweet morsels are no fun, but these were more like thin slivers of chocolate seemingly broken off some delicate fudgy ribbon.

The three other shakes, though, pushed the sweet tang towards sour, tasting neither any kind of cherry or blueberry and really screaming out for some graham cracker.

Korie’s Take

1. Strawberry cheesecake

2. Chocolate chip cheesecake

3. Red cherry cheesecake

4. Cheesecake

5. Blueberry cheesecake

I had high hopes for the cheesecake round, but I’m sad to say I was (mostly) let down. The strawberry cheesecake was great, offering a perfect balance of sweet strawberry swirls and fruit chunks, plain vanilla ice cream and tangy cheesecake bits.

But where the strawberry cheesecake soared, most of the other cheesecake flavors tanked. The plain cheesecake flavor tasted almost sour, sorely lacking on another flavor component — either fruit or chocolate — to balance it out. Like the other blueberry flavors of milkshakes we tried, the cheesecake version was a disappointment.

The Berry Category

Drew’s Take

1. Chocolate cherry

2. Strawberry

3. Blueberry

4. Red Cherry

It’s weird and muddy-looking, but Chocolate Cherry has been my favorite Cook Out milkshake for years. We may have put it in the wrong grouping here, because it’s intensely chocolatey, but still has a backdrop of cherry, tasting in the end like the last few bites of a melty hot fudge sundae with a few bright red drops of maraschino juice mixed in. Strawberry is an icon. Perfect, no notes. Blueberry is a bit unripe, maybe it’ll sweeten up later in the season and cherry didn’t taste like much at all.

Korie’s Take

1. Strawberry

2. Chocolate cherry

3. Red cherry

4. Blueberry

In hindsight, we may have received two strawberry cheesecake flavors instead of one cheesecake and one plain strawberry, but the strawberry in this round gets the benefit of my doubt and I’m still crowning it the best of the round. It’s hard to beat a good strawberry shake, and I thought this one offered a good mix of fresh fruit and strawberry syrup.

I had my doubts about chocolate cherry, and I’m not sure the cherry flavor was very pronounced in this one, but I actually enjoyed it. (Don’t think of it like a chocolate-covered cherry candy; it’s more like a chocolate ice cream with a hint of maraschino cherry, like what a kid might create at a make-your-ice-cream-sundae party.) Red cherry and blueberry left a lot to be desired, as neither fruit flavor tasted particularly fresh or appetizing.

The Fruit Category

Drew’s Take

1. Orange Push-Up

2. Pineapple

3. Peach cobbler

4. Peach

Orange is absolutely the brightest shake at Cook Out, practically glowing from within the styrofoam. There was a small pool of unmixed orange syrup at the top and I appreciated that honesty. We’re not in some Florida grove juicing oranges into ice cream. We’re on Western Boulevard, where the shakes are pumped and mixed with love and the air smells like burgers and, yes, there is a pickle stuck to the window and it’s hard to say how long it’s been there.

But the Orange push-up calls back to one of my all-time favorite summer desserts, the pale orange push-up served from the jingle jangly van as it passed through the neighborhood. The shake version is tart and sweet and quite acidic to the point that it feels carbonated, but the vanilla ice cream in the mix smooths out all the rough edges.

Korie’s Take

1. Pineapple

2. Peach

3. Peach cobbler

4. Orange Push-Up

Pineapple might have been my biggest surprise of the day, especially after I disliked the banana-pineapple flavor so much. But by itself, the pineapple was refreshing and light — a welcome antidote to the heavy, rich flavors elsewhere on the menu. The peach flavors could have benefited from fresher peaches, in my opinion, and I didn’t love the “cobbler” crust portion of the peach cobbler. The Orange Push-Up , while certainly spot-on to the flavor of the childhood frozen treat, didn’t translate well into milkshake form.

The Oreo Category

Drew’s Take

1. Oreo mint

2. Oreo peanut butter

3. Oreo

Everyone we talked to at Cook Out said Oreo was their favorite shake and, honestly, it’s perfect. It’s also a reminder that milkshakes at Cook Out have to be eaten with a spoon. No straw is going to do the trick. But for me, this round goes to the sharp, herbaceousness of the Mint Oreo, studded with chocolate shards of cookie. It’s bright green and easy to find the Oreo chunks to create the perfect bite every time.

Korie’s Take

1. Oreo

2. Oreo peanut butter

3. Oreo mint

I went into our taste test having tried only a couple Cook Out milkshake flavors, with Oreo — a simple vanilla base plus everybody’s favorite cookie — being my favorite and classic go-to. (I’ll admit that I typically reach for a Cheerwine float instead of a shake because they are The Best.)

Oreo reigned supreme in its own round, but it didn’t crack the overall top five for me. The addition of peanut butter took things about one notch too far for me, while the addition of mint made the shake taste, in my opinion, like straight-up toothpaste. Hard pass on that last one.

The Peanut Butter Category

Drew’s Take

1. Peanut butter fudge

2. Peanut butter

3. Peanut butter banana

Peanut butter is intense, no doubt about it. One beautiful thing about Cook Out’s version is it is somehow one of the most fresh and natural flavors on a milkshake menu with words like “pineapple” and “peach” and “mint.” The peanut butter tastes like a spoon swiped straight from the jar. But that intensity is tempered by fudge, combining peanut butter and chocolate into one of the classic pairings in all the flavor spectrum.

Korie’s Take

1. Peanut butter

2. Peanut butter fudge

3. Peanut butter banana

Peanut butter is a pretty overpowering and rich flavor, and I’m not sure I could eat an entire shake of any of these. If you’re a peanut butter-lover, it would be hard to mess with the classic, simple flavor of the plain peanut butter. Peanut butter fudge toned down the peanut butter flavor a bit, and I thought the two flavors complemented each other well. Peanut butter banana, while not terrible, was a distant last in this round — though it did nail the flavor of a peanut butter and banana sandwich pretty well.

The Chocolate Category

Drew’s Take

1. Hot Fudge

2. Double chocolate

3. Chocolate mint

4. Chocolate

5. Chocolate malt

It’s pretty astounding how different these milkshakes end up tasting when really they’re just a sidestep to the left or right of chocolate ice cream. To put it simply, Hot Fudge was a revelation. The thick band of fudge running through the shake gave it a nice textural note and an intense bite of chocolate whenever you hit a seam.

It’s hard to say who’s in charge of the milkshake math and whether or not we can quantify chocolate, but double chocolate is at least double the chocolate. Our shake had a pool of syrup sitting at the top as if it took a note from mashed potatoes and gravy. This was a good thing. Unlike chocolate malt, which tastes dusty and confusing.

Korie’s Take

1. Hot fudge

2. Double chocolate

3. Chocolate

4. Chocolate mint

5. Chocolate malt

I tend to reach for vanilla-based shakes over chocolate, so you can imagine my surprise when the hot fudge flavor was my favorite of our taste test. The shake was full of fudge swirls and bits amid its smooth, rich, chocolate base. It was pretty close to perfect, and will certainly be a new go-to flavor for me.

The double chocolate, as I noted upon my first bite, was actually more like triple chocolate, thanks to the heaping amount of chocolate syrup poured right on top. And, of course, it’s hard to mess with plain old chocolate. My least favorites were the chocolate mint, which was only slightly less reminiscent of my toothpaste than the Oreo mint, and the chocolate malt, which is perhaps the most perplexing and polarizing flavor on the menu.

The Misc. Category

Drew’s Take

1. Mocha

2. Walnut

3. Cappuccino

4. Vanilla

This round featured four milkshakes I never would have thought to order and each one was pretty great. Let’s start at the bottom. This was my first vanilla milkshake. I likely won’t order another one, but a creamy cup of vanilla, unadorned and unobscured is simple and beautiful. The standout, though, was mocha, which was rich coffee ice cream with fudgy chocolateyness. Cappuccino is exactly the same minus the chocolate, and walnut is one of the cleanest flavors on the Cook Out menu, boldly daring to just be vanilla ice cream and several heaps of chopped walnuts.

Korie’s Take

1. Mocha

2. Cappuccino

3. Walnut

4. Vanilla

Compared to the other rounds, I’d say this group was a lot… calmer. With virtually no mix-ins (aside from the walnuts), each flavor was smooth and creamy — and though they might not offer over-the-top, extravagant choices, they’re worth trying. I especially liked the mocha flavor, which offered a great balance of coffee and chocolate flavors, with each bringing out the best in the other.

The Candy Category

Drew’s Take

1. Reese’s

2. Snickers

3. Butterfinger

4. M&M

5. Heath

I think we unearthed an important truth in this round and that’s that the candy grouping is kind of lame. It’s not enjoyable to bite down on a hard, frozen rock of an M&M or a spiky shard of Heath toffee. The stuck-in-the-teeth-ness of a Butterfinger is only made worse by the chill. Snickers was fun in that it ate like the kind of deconstructed candy bar dessert you might find in an avant garde restaurant, but was instead at Cook Out. The shake was as if a Snickers bar exploded in a cup of vanilla and it was up to you to piece it back together. Reese’s was tops for me because a cold peanut butter cup is exquisite, making the chocolate crispy while the peanut butter stays creamy. But even here it tasted kind of incomplete, like a half-finished sundae.

Korie’s Take

1. Snickers

2. Reese’s

3. M&M

4. Butterfinger

5. Heath

Candy doesn’t make for a great milkshake or ice cream mix-in, in my opinion, because, well, some candies just aren’t meant to be frozen. Snickers and Reese’s Cups prevailed in this round because they both maintained their integrity and texture as candy bars in the shake, while Butterfinger and Heath are clearly better enjoyed on their own, outside of ice cream.

Korie’s OVERALL TOP 5:

Hot fudge, banana pudding, strawberry cheesecake, pineapple, mocha

Korie’s OVERALL BOTTOM 5:

Oreo mint, blueberry, banana pineapple, banana berry, chocolate malt

Drew’s OVERALL TOP 5:

Chocolate cherry, Orange push-up, Hot fudge, Strawberry, Pineapple

Drew’s OVERALL BOTTOM 5:

Banana Pineapple, Banana Berry, Blueberry Cheesecake, Chocolate Malt, Heath