No polyethylene: how to store cheeses to preserve freshness and taste for a long time
'04.04.2021'
Source: Furnish home
To keep the cheese fresh and tasty for a long time, to retain its structure and smell, you need to keep it in a special way. How to protect the cheese from drying out and not to deprive it of its taste?
It is difficult to predict how much cheese you need for today and tomorrow, and to hedge, many people buy more than they can eat, writes Furnish home. In addition, the beautiful circles in the windows and ask in the basket. However, cheese is not a product that can stay fresh for a long time, and in order to preserve its taste for a long time, you must be able to store it properly.
No plastic films
Maybe this will be a revelation, but cheese can be called a living thing: it breathes, sweats and grows old. When the cheese is wrapped in polyethylene, it stops breathing, just without such an opportunity. At best, its taste will be disgusting, at worst - there will be harmful bacteria in it.
Jake Lane, who explores different types of cheeses, explains that plastic packaging often turns the taste of cheese into the taste of plastic. So, if you do not want to eat plastic, having spent several hundred on cheese, it is better to shift it from plastic packaging immediately after being brought home.
Wrapping the cheese yourself
After you have removed the plastic film, you need to wrap the cheese in something so that it does not dry. An alternative to plastics can be parchment. It allows enough air to "breathe" and, at the same time, does not allow the cheese to dry.
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There is a special cheese paper, but in order not to bother, you can wrap it in simple parchment - it will also perfectly preserve the product.
How to wrap
In order to securely wrap the cheese, you will need:
- parchment
- scissors
- marker
- Scotch
Cut a large square of parchment, about two or three times larger than your cheese. Put a piece of cheese diagonally, with a thick end in a corner, thin - towards the center.
Wrap the cheese, successively folding the sides, as if you were packing a gift. "Tail" your package bend up and stick with adhesive tape.
When you wrap the cheese, stick a paper tape or sticker on it and write on it what kind of cheese (if you buy different types and store them at the same time) and the date when it was bought. So you do not risk to eat the spoiled product.
Hard cheese
From the moment the whey is separated from the curd, the process of dehydration begins in the cheese, in other words, it dries out. To help him retain moisture, you can send the cheese in parchment into an open plastic bag.
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In addition, you can store hard cheese in polyethylene, but make sure that it is not tightly wrapped, and there is enough space between the cheese and the package.
Blue cheese
This type of cheese has a rather sharp taste and aroma, so you should keep it away from other varieties of cheese. To keep all the foods in the fridge from smelling your favorite cheese, it’s best to wrap it in parchment and put it in a container.
Soft cheese
When it comes to soft cream cheeses, advice to avoid plastic wrap can be ignored. Many people believe that soft cheeses are best kept in plastic packaging, because only it can protect them from drying out. However, there is no consensus - someone prefers to keep them in parchment, as well as solid varieties.
Very soft cheeses, such as ricotta or mozzarella, should be stored in their own liquid in a plastic container. You should be especially careful about them - soft cheeses are not stored for as long as their firm comrades.
And a few more tips on storing cheese:
- If you turned the cheese, and there was a little mold on it, do not be alarmed. Just cut and discard this piece, and you can eat cheese. But this applies only to hard cheeses, if the mold appeared on the soft, it is quite possible that it deteriorated.
- Do not freeze cheese! It loses its smell and structure. However, if you use cheese only for cooking, freezing will not be okay.
- If you take out cheese, for example, late at night to have a snack, be sure to wrap it in clean paper again.
