10 ms·

Why I eat old cheese (2020)

48 points by arthur2e5 3y ago

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
(Cheese that's grown mold in the fridge, not cheese that was intentionally aged a lot before sale)
- _ahxg 3y ago
  pity, i was expecting an article in defense of delicious aged Parmesan cheese, which, so I heard, is quite good for cardiovascular disease prevention, e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9318947/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9318947/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0307.12755 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0307.1... Well, at least if stays not so popular it may avoid the mass creation of fakes like they do with Manuka honey.
  - fakedang 3y ago
    Parmesan cheese already faces issues of a number of fakes cropping up though.
- arthur2e5 3y ago
  The article doesn't specifically require mold; it only argues that mold is safe if the cheese is hard and salty. It's more about how cheese that's been forgotten in the fridge actually continues to age and develop flavors -- a poor man's cheese-aging cave. The big fun tidbit is the 40-year-old cheddar from Wisconsin, forgotten in a walk-in cooler.
Propelloni 3y ago
The author is not wrong, but if the goal is food waste reduction one could start with buying less in the first place.
- terminalcommand 3y ago
  The author doesn't mainly intend to reduce food waste. He says aged cheese develop flavors that you cannot find in fresh cheese.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    While she argues the flavour angle, she also does point out the amount of food waste caused several times.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      I am biased from growing up in a place with food shortages: food waste is not a “problem.” When it comes to food, you want margin for error. You want your home, your store, your agriculture system, etc to have more food than is necessary. Because if something goes wrong, you have a bit of slack before everyone starves. If your system produces the “perfect” amount of food with no waste, it means the very first crop failure, trucking disruption, etc. puts you into a dire situation. I’d rather throw out a thing of moldy cheese once in a while.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        You don't need to end up with a lot of food waste to have a lot of slack.
      - ericfrazier 3y ago
        We are talking about buying less food or going shopping more often and with recipes in mind and just get those ingredients. The Costco bulk shopping where a sizeable portion becomes out of date and thrown away can be pretty easily prevented with forethought.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  That was my idea as well. In my household, we rarely throw away any food. More likely, we run out of food entirely, which necessitates a short trip to nearby Tesco (7 minutes on foot). I just don't get why people buy mountains of food. It is not just food waste, but money waste as well, and most people ought to respond to financial incentives.
acd10j 3y ago
Food poisoning is real, Rotten Cheese and Panner could cause severe food poisoning, Until unless you and me are experts in determining whether aged cheese is still edible, a single ER visit due to food poisoning can eat up all money saved in eating aged cheese.
- OJFord 3y ago
  What a divide we have in the world, that nice aged cheese can't come from a grocery store, and you might not eat it anyway in case your hospital bill is too high.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  Every time I see such a comment, I'm happy I'm no longer covered under the American health care system. It isn't like I'm going to start playing Food Poisoning Roulette any time soon. But if I happen upon some bad food, there is a limit to the expenses occurred.
  - mypastself 3y ago
    This does not necessarily apply to you, but that system could also encourage making reckless dietary choices with the knowledge others would pay the potential bill.
    - watwut 3y ago
      Except that somehow Americans are not more healthy nor have less of food poisonings. All that price tag achieves that they afraid of a lot of things that are actually safe.
    - danparsonson 3y ago
      You think people might carelessly choose to eat spoiled food because they won't have to foot the medical bill? Have you ever had food poisoning before?? It's not a pleasant experience....
      - 3y ago
wazoox 3y ago
Gabriel Coulet just started selling a wonderful 24-months Roquefort. It's very soft and creamy, strong but not too pungent, and beige to light brown in colour (it really look like it's spoiled, but it isn't :) ). I'm pretty sure it all started with a forgotten wheel of cheese in the caves that they decided to try out anyway :D
- 0wis 3y ago
  If you have the chance to visit Roquefort (the city) and the cave, you should. That's what the legend tells : a young shepard forgotten his cheese in a cave when he saw a beautiful girl passing by... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort I personally understood the taste of it when I visited the caves there and now I am a huge fan. What is remarkable with Roquefort is the penicilium roquforti and the fact that it is not that dry. Many dry cheese can be aged and should be to develop their aromas (Comté, parmiggiano...etc). One more parameter that I find often overlooked is temperature : aromas and texture are much better at room more than fridge temperature. If you can get your cheese out of the fridge 30min-1h before consuming, you will enjoy it much more. Edit: typo
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    I like to eat cold cheese, somehow having it warm is disgusting to me. It did not even depend on the cheese, all of them does not taste good to me when warm.
  - arthur2e5 3y ago
    On the cold, industrial side where people just do "close enough", Penicillium roqueforti is also used to make concentrated blue cheese flavor. Food scientists know that blue cheese flavor mainly comes from ketones produced by the mold, which in turn derives from milk fat. So they start with cream, mix the spores in, then aerate and stir to let the mold eat as much fat as possible. 48 hours later, you get what salad dressings use for "Blue cheese" flavor.
tragomaskhalos 3y ago
My mum briefly worked as kitchen staff for Winston Churchill, and she tells the story that they had to wrap his stilton in a piece of greaseproof paper, hold it up and listen for weevils moving about - for only when it was at that stage would the great man eat it.
- leobg 3y ago
  Wtf? Your mom worked for Winston Churchill? Incredible. Does she have more stories of that time?
- leobg 3y ago
  > Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping. :-D https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu
zdragnar 3y ago
My grandfather always used to joke that he would put a block of fresh cheese behind the stove, and by the time he forgot it was there it would be ready.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  Behind the stove is a pretty nasty place to keep it though. Have you ever looked behind there? Even moreso if you're renting.. we found all kinds of trash there not just food bits.
SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
I’ve really enjoyed using sodium citrate lately as an emulsifying agent to make things like queso and Mac’n’cheese. Once you start using it you’ll never want to use velveeta (or its better tasting older sister restaurant variant Land O Lakes melt) again. The other day I was making mac with it and found some funky foot smelling chunks of “queso fresco” (Mexican crumble cheese) in the fridge and decided to include them in my regular cheddar/Gruyère mix. These had just started to take on a little too much extra moisture and had that characteristic “funky but not rotten” smell. My god, that extra funk took the Mac from “really good” to “divine”.
- hellotheretoday 3y ago
  I will second the sodium citrate recommendation. It should be in every kitchen if you make food with cheese that is melted. Cheap, crazy long shelf life, very easy to work with. Adding a bit of sodium hexametaphosphate is good if you want to make cheese slices or blocks of cheese. Increases the firmness of the final product a bit and slices easier.

48 points by arthur2e5 3y ago

ReactiveJelly 3y ago

(Cheese that's grown mold in the fridge, not cheese that was intentionally aged a lot before sale)

_ahxg 3y ago
pity, i was expecting an article in defense of delicious aged Parmesan cheese, which, so I heard, is quite good for cardiovascular disease prevention, e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9318947/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9318947/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0307.12755 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0307.1... Well, at least if stays not so popular it may avoid the mass creation of fakes like they do with Manuka honey.
- fakedang 3y ago
  Parmesan cheese already faces issues of a number of fakes cropping up though.
arthur2e5 3y ago
The article doesn't specifically require mold; it only argues that mold is safe if the cheese is hard and salty. It's more about how cheese that's been forgotten in the fridge actually continues to age and develop flavors -- a poor man's cheese-aging cave. The big fun tidbit is the 40-year-old cheddar from Wisconsin, forgotten in a walk-in cooler.

Propelloni 3y ago

The author is not wrong, but if the goal is food waste reduction one could start with buying less in the first place.

terminalcommand 3y ago
The author doesn't mainly intend to reduce food waste. He says aged cheese develop flavors that you cannot find in fresh cheese.
- vidarh 3y ago
  While she argues the flavour angle, she also does point out the amount of food waste caused several times.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I am biased from growing up in a place with food shortages: food waste is not a “problem.” When it comes to food, you want margin for error. You want your home, your store, your agriculture system, etc to have more food than is necessary. Because if something goes wrong, you have a bit of slack before everyone starves. If your system produces the “perfect” amount of food with no waste, it means the very first crop failure, trucking disruption, etc. puts you into a dire situation. I’d rather throw out a thing of moldy cheese once in a while.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      You don't need to end up with a lot of food waste to have a lot of slack.
    - ericfrazier 3y ago
      We are talking about buying less food or going shopping more often and with recipes in mind and just get those ingredients. The Costco bulk shopping where a sizeable portion becomes out of date and thrown away can be pretty easily prevented with forethought.
inglor_cz 3y ago
That was my idea as well. In my household, we rarely throw away any food. More likely, we run out of food entirely, which necessitates a short trip to nearby Tesco (7 minutes on foot). I just don't get why people buy mountains of food. It is not just food waste, but money waste as well, and most people ought to respond to financial incentives.

acd10j 3y ago

Food poisoning is real, Rotten Cheese and Panner could cause severe food poisoning, Until unless you and me are experts in determining whether aged cheese is still edible, a single ER visit due to food poisoning can eat up all money saved in eating aged cheese.

OJFord 3y ago
What a divide we have in the world, that nice aged cheese can't come from a grocery store, and you might not eat it anyway in case your hospital bill is too high.
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
Every time I see such a comment, I'm happy I'm no longer covered under the American health care system. It isn't like I'm going to start playing Food Poisoning Roulette any time soon. But if I happen upon some bad food, there is a limit to the expenses occurred.
- mypastself 3y ago
  This does not necessarily apply to you, but that system could also encourage making reckless dietary choices with the knowledge others would pay the potential bill.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Except that somehow Americans are not more healthy nor have less of food poisonings. All that price tag achieves that they afraid of a lot of things that are actually safe.
  - danparsonson 3y ago
    You think people might carelessly choose to eat spoiled food because they won't have to foot the medical bill? Have you ever had food poisoning before?? It's not a pleasant experience....
    - 3y ago

wazoox 3y ago

Gabriel Coulet just started selling a wonderful 24-months Roquefort. It's very soft and creamy, strong but not too pungent, and beige to light brown in colour (it really look like it's spoiled, but it isn't :) ). I'm pretty sure it all started with a forgotten wheel of cheese in the caves that they decided to try out anyway :D

0wis 3y ago
If you have the chance to visit Roquefort (the city) and the cave, you should. That's what the legend tells : a young shepard forgotten his cheese in a cave when he saw a beautiful girl passing by... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort I personally understood the taste of it when I visited the caves there and now I am a huge fan. What is remarkable with Roquefort is the penicilium roquforti and the fact that it is not that dry. Many dry cheese can be aged and should be to develop their aromas (Comté, parmiggiano...etc). One more parameter that I find often overlooked is temperature : aromas and texture are much better at room more than fridge temperature. If you can get your cheese out of the fridge 30min-1h before consuming, you will enjoy it much more. Edit: typo
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  I like to eat cold cheese, somehow having it warm is disgusting to me. It did not even depend on the cheese, all of them does not taste good to me when warm.
- arthur2e5 3y ago
  On the cold, industrial side where people just do "close enough", Penicillium roqueforti is also used to make concentrated blue cheese flavor. Food scientists know that blue cheese flavor mainly comes from ketones produced by the mold, which in turn derives from milk fat. So they start with cream, mix the spores in, then aerate and stir to let the mold eat as much fat as possible. 48 hours later, you get what salad dressings use for "Blue cheese" flavor.

tragomaskhalos 3y ago

My mum briefly worked as kitchen staff for Winston Churchill, and she tells the story that they had to wrap his stilton in a piece of greaseproof paper, hold it up and listen for weevils moving about - for only when it was at that stage would the great man eat it.

leobg 3y ago
Wtf? Your mom worked for Winston Churchill? Incredible. Does she have more stories of that time?
leobg 3y ago
> Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping. :-D https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu

zdragnar 3y ago

My grandfather always used to joke that he would put a block of fresh cheese behind the stove, and by the time he forgot it was there it would be ready.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
Behind the stove is a pretty nasty place to keep it though. Have you ever looked behind there? Even moreso if you're renting.. we found all kinds of trash there not just food bits.

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago

I’ve really enjoyed using sodium citrate lately as an emulsifying agent to make things like queso and Mac’n’cheese. Once you start using it you’ll never want to use velveeta (or its better tasting older sister restaurant variant Land O Lakes melt) again. The other day I was making mac with it and found some funky foot smelling chunks of “queso fresco” (Mexican crumble cheese) in the fridge and decided to include them in my regular cheddar/Gruyère mix. These had just started to take on a little too much extra moisture and had that characteristic “funky but not rotten” smell. My god, that extra funk took the Mac from “really good” to “divine”.

hellotheretoday 3y ago
I will second the sodium citrate recommendation. It should be in every kitchen if you make food with cheese that is melted. Cheap, crazy long shelf life, very easy to work with. Adding a bit of sodium hexametaphosphate is good if you want to make cheese slices or blocks of cheese. Increases the firmness of the final product a bit and slices easier.