How Do I Find Out About Cheddar Cheese?
Filed in Category Cheddar Cheese
My aunt sent me four gourmet cheddar cheese for Christmas. I would like to know more about them. How can I do this?
They are all from igourmet.com which offered some help, but I would like to know more. These are the names of them:
~Shelburne Farms Aged Vermont
~Red Leaf
~Denhay
~Mainland Superior 2 year New Zealand Aged
How does the length of time cheddar cheese is aged effect the taste? Does longer aging create a stronger or sharper taste?
5 Comments so far
Long story so bare with me me.
( the cheddars you mentioned can be looked up on the web).
There’s hundreds of brands out there.
See what you have that says “Unpasteuized”, those will be the better ones.
Sherlburne I’ve had and I love it.
The rest( you can tell me after you tasted them)
But about some other cheddars?
Fiscalini bandaged cheddarhttp://www.fiscalinicheese.com/
Montgomery( unpasteurized) Englandhttp://www.artisanalcheese.com/prodinfo.…
Grafton 4 year old ( unpasteurized)http://www.graftonvillagecheese.com/shop…
And so on ( so many great ones).
The length of time does effect the taste( except with cheaper cheddars).
Here’s why.
With the cheaper cheddar, alot of moisture is left in the curd, so aging it is quite futile.
One example would be a 2 year old inexpensive Australian that we used to sell. To moist, and never could age properly( or at all).
The moisture is left in to add weight to the cheese and keep the price down.
The best cheddars are unpasteurized.
They are also( for the most part) cloth wrapped.
The curd from the cheddaring process( a process where the curds are place one on top of the other) are well drained( so aging can occur easily).
English Farmhouse Cheddars will form green lines throughout the cheese( mold) which is desirable. It’s refered to a “bluing” and is edible.
Taste:
They all vary ( different countries, different grazing, different feed=different milk)
Grafton 4 year old gets a strong flavor with a bitter aftertaste( desireable)
Montgomery’s( My Fav), sweeter except when bluing occurs.The you have a lot of things going on in that cheese( Fabu)
Same with Fiscalini( one of the best and most expensive).
So with the aged cheddars, the older, the sharper, the more complex.
( I’ll stop hear)..
A good friend of mine wrote a great book and it’s available in almost every bookstore.
“The Cheese Primer” by Steve Jenkins.
He was the master cheesemonger for Fairway in NYC and now own’s a part of one of their stores.
Pick one up.
You’ll love it.
The older the cheese, the stronger the taste. I love all cheddars, but especially the older ones. Mmm…I’m getting hungry!!!
Aging typically makes the cheese sharper.
Look on the web- Gourmet aged cheddars*
The Romans brought this recipe to England from the Cantal region of France.
Let’s make some cheddar cheese
Ingredients:
one gallon freshest milk (the fewer bacteria present, the more predictable the cheese)
2-3 teaspoonfuls buttermilk (or 1/3rd cup yogurt )
1/4 tablet rennet or equivilent(you don’t want to know)
Directions: Put a gallon of milk into a clean non aluminum preferably stainless steel pot and add the buttermilk or yogurt. Cover it and let it sit out all night. The next day warm the milk slowly till just before blowing up the kitchen.Add one crushed and diluted in cold water rennet tablet. Stir well. Kill the fire and let the milk congeal. Cut the now congealed milk into cubes in the same container.This is where it gets tricky partner: For soft cheese gently massage the curds till they reach 92 degrees or feel real warm to the touch (thats right you gotta feel the cheese so wash them spark plug changing, roofing tar, pecan cracking, collard green planting hands good) for harder cheese get it just above confort level for root canals or poaching eggs whichever comes first. At this point you run screaming from the kitchen with 3rd degree burns on both hands OR you simply grab some pot holders and strain off the mix,saving the liquid for other thangs* if you like. Add some salt to this, then get you some cloth and press this out real firm to get all the liquid out as you can. Salt the outer portion good, wrap it in clean cloth let it kick a bit changing the cloth daily till a yeller skin forms on the cheese. Then let it sit around in the ice box till yall decide to eat some.Aint nothing to it. And yall said government cheese was whack. NOTE:During the Second World War most milk in Britain was used for the making of one single kind of cheese nicknamed ‘Government Cheddar’ as part of war economies and rationing. This nearly resulted in wiping out all other cheese production in the country.
Hey I ain’t makin this up.
Bonus info: “Making Ricotta cheese”
you need the liquid left over from the cheese making process .
Cover the liquid (Whey) for 24 hours.Next morning start heating up this stuff till foamy (call the fire department and notify your next of kin)When you feel the need you transfer this to a receiving cloth and allow it to cool; squeezing out all remainiing liquid. Eat right away. Freezes well. This is called Ricotta cheese. The word ricotta means recooked.