Tag: mozzarella
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Burrata: Bathing Beauty of the Cheese World
Luscious, voluptuous, silky, oozy, creamy butteriness. If you aren’t already turned on to Burrata, you should be. Hailing from the region of Puglia, Italy, this gorgeous little cheese’s name means “butter.”[i] Burrata is a member of the pasta filata family of cheeses: those stretched-curd cheeses related to Mozzarella, Oaxaca, and Provolone. Yet in a twist,…
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Three Reasons Why Some Cheeses Just Melt Better
It is a fact that not all cheeses melt equally. Sometimes we have to discover this the hard way, by preparing a meal that we anticipate will be ooey-gooey and utterly delightful—only to discover hard strings of cheese scattered over the surface like a platter of dry grains. Other times, a meal we prepare to…
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Pasta Filata Cheeses: Not Just for Pizza or Pasta
Pasta Filata: it’s kind of fun to say. And wouldn’t you know, this family of cheeses is also fun to eat! Pasta filata is Italian for “spun paste,” meaning that the cheeses’ curds are spun, or stretched, before the cheeses are aged (if they are aged). Filata means “string” or “thread,” and can be translated…
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Fresh Cheeses to Freshen up Your Summer Picnics (and Everyday Life)
Fresh cheeses are the wee babes of the cheese world, you might say. Allowed to sit for only a few days before they should be consumed, these youngest cheeses are fresh in all senses of the word. Understanding fresh cheeses requires a quick lesson in cheesemaking. The milk, which must be pasteurized if a fresh…
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Burrata: The Dumpling of Cheeses
Burrata and I have had a complicated relationship since my time in the cheese biz. That’s because it hasn’t always sold the way it was expected, or at least hoped, to sell. In the first cheese shop I worked at, I didn’t really understand what Burrata was. I stocked the few cases we received, it…
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How to Stretch Mozzarella Curds at Home
If you’ve ever been browsing through a nice selection of cheese and stumbled across a container of stark-white curds simply labeled “mozzarella curds,” you may have wondered, “what do you do with those?” We sell such a thing in our shop, and customers ask that same question at least once every day. While there are…
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Sunday Pun-Day for Softies
This Sunday Pun-day, I’ve got some bad jokes about soft cheeses to help soften the hard blow of the realization that your weekend is almost over. That includes soft-ripened cheeses like brie and camembert, pasta filata cheeses like mozzarella, and fresh cheeses like the Indian superstar paneer. They’re all softies, just like you when…