What a friend we have in cheeses
The kids over at Apartment Therapy have a resident cheese monger, and she's always brimming with great ideas and hints on how to better enjoy that most wonderful of foods, cheese. Anyhow, she ran a list of ten rules on how to store and expand the shelf life of various cheeses. I'm reprinting it without shame or any of my editing and I credit her fully and completely. Here's her original column. As much as I don't want to think about it, the holidays are around the corner and if your anything like me, you'll have a fridge filled with exotic cheeses for the next couple of months at least. Here's to the better enjoyment of cheese!
10. Store your cheese within the warmest a part of your refrigerator. In most instances, this would be the vegetable, cheese, or butter compartment. Even better, keep all your cheese together in a significant Tupperware container. As stated earlier than, cheese is alive, and cold temperatures restrict essential bacterial activity.
Nine. The first-rate way to store cheese is with cheese paper, which has an outer paper layer and an internal waxy layer. The next first-class issue is to wrap your cheese in parchment with a layer of plastic wrap over that. This manner the cheese received?T dry out and you will create a protective layer of humidity inside the place between the plastic wrap and parchment. NEVER wrap your cheese in plastic wrap by myself! Plastic wrap has a specific taste and your cheese will flavor of it.
Eight. Blue cheeses grow to be increasingly more biting with age. You'll recognize with the aid of tasting whether or not or no longer it is become too strong on your flavor. An antique blue cheese will never hurt your health, best your taste buds. Blues with an particularly excessive moisture content will move downhill more speedy. Wrap blues in tin foil to fasten of their moisture.
7. Aged cheeses like cheddar, gruyere, gouda, Parmigiano Reggiano, and fontina were elderly to an volume that guarantees their durability. With such low moisture content, there is now not an awful lot need to worry about these men. In some instances, age can honestly heighten the revel in of these cheeses; extra often the flavor will wan with exposure to air. If greenish-blue mould develops like inside the photo at the start of this submit, no longer to worry, simply scrape it off.
6. Lightly aged, natural rinded goat cheeses, frequently character in format and French in foundation like elderly crottin, chevrot, or chabichou du poitou are sincerely indestructible. The nature of the cheese will trade: it's going to dry out and harden with age and the flavor turns into assertive, however they may not flip. Try shaving an old dried up drum over a salad for an opportunity to the ever-present sheet of parm or pecorino.
5. Washed rind cheeses like taleggio, limburger, and epoisses are quality eaten immediately from the cheese keep. These are the stinky cheeses, and the stink will best proliferate inside the small confines of your fridge. Their rinds (and, in flip, the internal paste) will dry out and crack, that is not anything brief of a death sentence for the micro organism dwelling at the rind that makes this style of cheese distinctive. Washed-rinds will last two to 4 weeks, however attempt no longer to peer them past their first week home.
Four. Bloomy rinded cheeses like brie and Camembert will closing longer than a clean cheese but still have a excessive sufficient moisture content material to damage. Again, depending on the age of the cheese at date of buy, this cheese fashion will generally final from 3 to 6 weeks. If the rind starts to develop a slimy, pinkish-reddish mold, do not forget it toast. Don't necessarily be scared of ammonia-like smells. Ammonia is a herbal by-product of cheese ageing. Try taste checking out in this case.
Three. Fresh, tender cheeses have a shorter shelf life than elderly, tough cheeses. Young cheeses like ricotta, mozzarella, and fresh goat usually have a shelf lifestyles of seven-10 days, relying on whilst you bought them. Generally talking, the viability of this family of cheese is the easiest to decipher. If the specimen has a flavor or fragrance reminiscent of that milk within the returned of your refrigerator, your excellent guess is to toss it. Along with the milk.
2. Taste it. If you cannot parent it out with the aid of the smell, attempt a chew. If it would not taste horrific, it hasn't long gone awful.
1. There's excellent bad-smelling cheese and awful awful-smelling cheese. Smell your cheese whilst you buy it (that is surely a key element in playing the flavor of your cheese, as nicely) and examine whether the cutting-edge scent is simply slightly greater offensive or if it sends shivers of disgust down your backbone. Trust your sensory instincts.
The top ten guidelines of storage and shelf lifestyles:
