Mozzarella sticks are game changing in-and-of-themselves. Fried cheese in stick form, what’s not to be impressed with?

Over the years, we’ve had the Earthly privilege of witnessing groundbreaking innovation on the Mozzarella Stick front, and we’d like to highlight the top eight that Foodbeast’s have ever conjured up:

Bacon-Covered Mozzarella Sticks

It’s not crazy that food blogger Natasha Rodgers covered her mozz sticks with bacon, but it’s that she decided to use crumbs to sell the purists on a texture. From a distance, they maintain traditional mozzarella stick silhouettes, but when you get close, you get to dive into bite-after-bite of crunchy cheese and bacon bits. No wonder the video we posted of her creation received over a million plays in a few days.

Cheetos-Crusted Fried Mozzarella Sticks

It’s amazing what you can do with a bag of Hot Cheetos, panko bread crumbs, Tabasco, some eggs and a brick of mozzarella. The folks from food blog The Glut Life were of the first create these things, and they have an incredible simple recipe for these ass-fire inducing delights.

Chicken Cheese Sticks

Sneakerhead-turned-Foodbeast Peep My Sneaks created a mashup he calls Chicken Cheese Sticks by using ground chicken to encase a piece of string cheese, coating it in batter and creating the ultimate Cheese Stick + Chicken Finger hybrid.

Bacon-Wrapped Cheese Sticks

Bacon-fried Mozzarella Sticks? Decadent, greasy, cheesy, and best of all…EASY. This crazy invention was first spotted in early 2015, and has since spawned an Internet gallery’s worth of mozzarella stick jump offs (I mean look at this list for example).

Doritos-crusted Mozzarella Sticks

“When combined together in your mouth, you basically get the sensation of crispy Doritos and creamy cheese, with a kick.” — Pat Sheldon.

Pesto-filled Mozzarella Sticks

@thejoshelkin kicking off the March Green #FoodBeastFamily Challenge with these mouth watering PESTO MOZZARELLA STICKS! If you like what you see double tap and help him win! Please submit submissions to [email protected] and tag #FoodBeastFamily also please include in the caption what it is and that it is for the March #FoodBeastFamily challenge! The sooner you submit the better chance you have of racking up likes! Good luck 🍀 more info on the event on our Facebook and further down on IG (look for the green French toast)

A photo posted by foodbeast (@foodbeast) on Mar 7, 2016 at 12:23pm PST

Josh Elkin, former Epic Meal Time chef and current food hacker and genius, has stuffed mozzarella sticks with PESTO. Yes, with PESTO.

Mozzarella Shot Glasses

Imagine a mozzarella stick in the shape of a shot glass and filled with the marinara sauce. We live in beautiful times my friends. BEAUTIFUL times.

Mozzarella Stick Burger Buns

The dudes behind Orange County-based burger chain GD Bro Burger took the latter part of 2015 to introduce a burger bun made entirely of mozzarella sticks. Sounds messy, but indeed it stays together better than you’d think — it also tastes amazing.