Betcha didn’t know that cheddar cheese isn’t really yellow.
I know. It was a big shock for me too. I’ve lived my whole life thinking a herd of special golden cows was bred solely to create cheddar, or as I like to call it, God’s gift to Wheat Thins.
But it turns out that cheddar–like all cheese–is actually white. It achieves its yellow hue when cheese makers inject the cheese with annatto bean coloring.
“Why, Maegan!” you say. “What an expert you are at cheese!”
Right-oh, friend. And you soon will be too.
I believe that part of my responsibility as a columnist is to explore the important questions that come up in readers’ busy lives–the ones you don’t have time to pursue answers to and, thus, often go unresolved.
That’s why, when I wondered the other day, “What is cheese, really?” I knew that if I didn’t call a dairy farmer, I’d go the rest of my life not knowing.
And I don’t want other cheese lovers who have stood in the dairy section at the supermarket and pondered, “Monterey Jack or Swiss?” to go a lifetime without knowing the answer.
So, I called Lindsey White, who runs Torkelson Cheese Co., a dairy in Lena, and asked her to reveal the mystery of how brie goes from Bessie the cow to my party platter.
(If you grew up on a farm and hitched a tractor ride into the city to pursue your dream of a vivacious urban life, you may want to stop reading now. Not because you’ll be offended by the air-headed description I’m about to give of the cheese-making process–although, feel what you will–but because I don’t want you to write in and make fun of me. But if you do, please remember that I’m from Los Angeles.)
I learned from White that cheese making is an art, complete with secret family recipes passed down for decades. Making specific cheeses varies by the dairy, but there is a standard process. It goes something like this, admittedly in my own inexperienced words:
– Bessie and her bovine pals get milked. It takes about 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese, so as you can imagine, Bessie sees a lot of action.
– The milk gets collected and tested for antibiotics before it is pasteurized, which means it gets cooked at a Food and Drug Administration-mandated temperature. If the cheese does not meet these temperature requirements, it is considered illegally made, and the feds have the right to step in. (Note: When I asked White if there are illegal cheese busts, she said it’s not really a big problem in the industry, destroying my hope of becoming a member of an elite illegal-cheese fighting task force.)
– After it’s pasteurized, the milk is put in vats that hold about 15,000 to 20,000 pounds.
– The milk cooks, and different cultures–a.k.a. bacteria–are added to create different kinds of cheese.
– A chemical called rennet is added to the milk, which makes it into a harder, Jell-O-like form; this is also when any other secret recipe stuff gets added.
– For all you Little Miss Muffet fans, the milk hardens and is turned into curds and whey.
– The curds and whey get pumped into forms and placed on stainless-steel tables, where the whey–a liquid–is drained off. Then the forms get flipped and sit until they turn into cheese.
– The cheese is put in big salt brines to absorb flavor from the brine before it’s packaged.
So, that’s how it’s done. The different cheeses you see at the store have different cultures and have been aged for various time periods.
I feel better that we all know this.
Please show off your newfound cheese knowledge tonight at dinner, or file it away in case you ever get to take on Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!
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mcarberry@tribune.com.
