How to Talk About Cheese Like You Know What You’re Talking About

Cheese is basically just rotten milk. But anyone who has ever looked at a grocery store起司货架已经看到了这个简单的过程如何创造截然不同的结果。

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between analpine-style cheeseandcheddar? Or a washed rind versus a bloomy rind? I’m here to translate confusing cheese jargon into regular English. To help break it down, I spoke with Elizabeth Chubbuck, SVP of sales atMurray’s Cheesein New York City, and Antonia Horne, affineuse (i.e., professional cheese ager) forCaputo’s Market & Deliin Salt Lake City.

Cows are big animals—the average mature dairy cow weighsover 1,000 pounds—and they produce a lot of milk. That milk is considered the most versatile for cheese, producing the greatest range of styles of all the animals. Cow’s milk also has the widest range of hues, which offer clues on how the animal is being raised.

Unlike goats and sheep, cows do not absorb the beta carotene in the grass they eat. It gets passed through their systems and straight into the milk. So, cows raised on fresh grass end up producing cheese with a golden butter-yellow hue. That rich color is often a good indication of quality: cows that are raised on grain do not have as much beta carotene going through their systems and into the milk.

“Anyone could go to the grocery store and pull the spectrum of white cows milk cheese to golden cows milk cheese,” Chubbuck says. “I would bet $50 if we researched the scale of production or commitment to artisanal practices they very white cow’s milk cheeses would be more industrial and the very yellow would be more artisanal—and probably more expensive.”

Read more:21个放纵烤奶酪食谱

山羊奶的脂肪比其他奶酪低。当它形成新鲜的样式（例如雪佛兰）时，它具有浓郁的味道，带有明亮的柠檬和柑橘味，将更多的年龄变成柑橘髓。山羊奶酪更容易出现类似于动物的“ barnyard-y”风味。

Unlike cows, which absorb no beta carotene, and sheep, which absorb a little, goats are great at absorbing beta carotene, which gets converted into Vitamin A in their milk, lending it a crisp, white hue. “Goat cheese is pretty much universally going to have a snowy white color,” Chubbuck says.

Read more:Our Favorite Goat Cheese Recipes

Sheep are smaller than cows and not as hardy as goats, and often require hand-milking and time-intensive grooming, which drives up the cost of their cheeses.

但there’s a reason buyers are willing to pay the price. Sheep’s milk cheese is high in fat with a richer, rounder, and heavier mouthfeel even after aging. Much of that is due to its lanoline qualities, a source of Vitamin E produced on their skin to keep the wool from getting overly brittle or wet. “Lanolin has a very particular aroma,” Chubbuck says. “It’s a little nutty in the sense of raw almonds, a little waxy like high-quality beeswax, and a hint of gaminess with a sheepy note to it.”

That wide range of flavor is present in all sheep’s cheese from rarer soft varieties, like ricotta salata, to hard and blue styles.

就在山羊和牛之间而言，就β-胡萝卜素吸收而言，所有绵羊的奶酪都具有丰富的象牙色。

Get the Recipe:Pizza with Prosciutto and Sheep-Milk Cheese

Most famously used in水牛马苏里拉奶酪，水牛在所有牛奶类型中的脂肪最高。在美国很难找到，但是除了用牛奶制成的水牛马苏里拉以外，还有其他奶酪，包括其他新鲜奶酪和一些陈年的品种。

Read more:8 Ways to UseMozzarella

A cheese’s texture is impacted by a combination of factors such as the pH and acidity levels from the cheese making process, individual choices made by the cheesemaker and natural proteolysis, the breakdown of proteins into smaller polypeptides or amino acids, as it ages. “There's a spectrum of really soft spreadable cheese to really hard crumbly cheese and within that spectrum there's going to be a lot of nuance,” Chubbuck says. “I like to think about it in three different big picture textures.”

和消耗很快,软切eses have a higher moisture content. It’s the kind you can easily cut with a spoon and smear onto a cracker or piece of bread.There is a broad range of textural variation in this category, ranging from buttery mascarpone and velvety fresh goat cheese to creamy surface-ripened brie and custardy washed-rind epoisse de bourgougne. “When I say soft these are things you’re going to have a hard time slicing,” says Chubbuck. “They typically tend to be smaller format, some are larger and you might slice a wedge, but you want to just carve into it and slather it onto things.”

这是软奶酪风格的细分：

Fresh cheese:These unaged cheeses have no rind on the outside, so they have a shorter shelf life of about seven to 14 days. They should always be pure white and milky fresh with some citrusy tartness or subtle butteriness depending on the milk. This includes Mexican queso fresco, feta, chevre, Buffalo mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, fromage frais and other soft spreadable cheeses.

布鲁米·恩德（Bloomy Rind）：Identifiable by their white, velvery rind, bloomy rinded cheeses are creamy and soft. Brie and camembert are two of the more common varieties, but the style goes well beyond those ubiquitous rounds, highlighting all kinds of milk (including really delicious Casatica di Bufala from Water Buffalo) with flavors spanning from simple buttery notes to really intense Brussel sprouts, broccoli, and iodine aromas in traditional French brie fermier.

Ash ripened:有一个蓬松的成熟奶酪的子类别，它放弃了通常在外部的黑色蔬菜灰的通常的青霉素或盖特里奇覆盖的果皮。适当配音称为灰烬成熟的奶酪，山羊，绵羊，有时用牛奶发酵灰分，以平衡酸度，形成天鹅绒般的灰色和皱纹的外观。一些知名的灰烬成熟奶酪是法国瓦伦萨（Valençay）和赛普拉斯格罗夫（Cypress Grove）的洪堡雾。

Washed rind:Washed rind cheese tends to be the stinkiest and most pungent. The exterior varies in color from orange to pink, with a tacky or grainy texture on the outside and moisture-rich doughy to runny texture within. Sheep’s and goat’s milk are occasionally transformed into washed rind cheese, but cow is far more common in well known versions like epoisse, taleggio and pont le veche, all known for their intense gamy aromas. “Washed rind’s bark is louder than the bite,” Chubbuck says. “The smell is really strong, the flavor is not usually as intense.”

This wide-ranging category encompasses cheeses that are able to hold their shape even when warm. Typically, they’d be sliced, but don’t require a sharp knife. You might shred it on top of enchiladas but you’re not going to grate it and watch it seamlessly melt into a pasta dish.

These cheeses have less moisture than soft cheeses and require additional steps in the fermentation and aging process. This includes springy cheeses like taleggio, tome and young havarti to sliceable provolone, gruyere and younger cheddars, styles that often cut easily and melt well for things like grilled cheese sandwiches. “These are very user-friendly,” says Chubbuck. “They’re good picnic cheeses if you’re not rolling out the whole spread.”

Most blue cheeses fall between the spectrum of semi-firm to firm. A couple other styles of cheese that fall under this texture category are:

Alpine：这些视觉上牢固的压力奶酪在阿尔卑斯山中高高地构成，质地光滑，有时弹性稍微弹性，而且通常是金色的金色。鉴于该地区历史上的寒冷温度，它们被设计为融化，具有焦糖和坚果的香气。Gruyére和Comte是高山奶酪的最知名品种，它们从一些法国comt中的温和榛子棕色黄油调味料到非常强烈的富含浓厚的Butterscotcotch风味的Challerhocker和洋葱，洋葱，肉质的Scharfe Maxx，来自瑞士。

阿尔卑斯风格的奶酪来自欧洲山脉的冰雹，来自德国和意大利的一小部分选择。绝大多数是在法国和瑞士生产的。丘布克说：“作为一般规则，瑞士高山会变得有些大胆。”“法国人往往会更加细微和微妙。我描述了像加利福尼亚霞多丽和勃艮第霞多丽这样的区别。”

切达：Cheddars are made in a variety of techniques, from block to more nuanced clothbound fermentation. The texture can range from slightly springy and somewhat moist to crumbly and dry. Colorwise, anything from cream to pumpkin orange goes. What all cheddars have in common is a specific production process—cheddaring the curds. Simply put, cheddaring is a method of shredding and stacking the curds before the blocks are formed.

The flavor spectrum of cheddar cheese can span from milky and sweet, with the butterscotch and caramel notes that are more common in American cheddar, to the acidic, fresh-cut grass and horseradish aromas in British clothbound varieties.

这种质地通常通过切割凝乳和/或压下所有乳清的大部分水分去除。通常，这些奶酪至少已经陈化了整整一年（有时对于较小的车轮而言少了）。它们倾向于是您想要在面食上磨碎的东西，以将真正浓缩的口味注入到每种叮咬中。

“You pick up a hard cheese and feel it: it’s totally dense,” Chubbuck says. ”You wouldn’t describe it as doughy or springy.”

Grana-style cheeses are some of the most common hard cheeses. These hard, grainy cheeses have the least amount of moisture, a bold flavor and, often, a lot of age. These craggy, crumbly wheels span from ivory to straw yellow with sweet, savory, and nutty aromas often with a deep umami-rich taste. Parmigiano-reggiano is the best known grana-style cheese, but this category also includes sheep’s milk pecorino-romano and Sardinian Calcagno.

If you’re trying to put together a solid cheese board, buying a mix of textures and colors should ensure there’s enough diversity of flavors to keep it interesting—even if you forget what “alpine-style” means.

It’s easy to forget that cheese is a living organism. If you want to enjoy it in the same condition it was when you picked it out at the cheese counter, it’s important to buy small amounts of cheese frequently. “There’s no such thing as stasis for cheese,” sys Horne says. “What you buy will be different every subsequent day.”

一般的经验法则,新鲜的奶酪, the faster you want to consume it. Fresh mozzarella, for example, will start to disintegrate within a week from production if uncut and should be used within the same day it’s been sliced. Queso fresco, ricotta salata, and other cheeses made without a protective rind hold up well in plastic but are very vulnerable to picking up molds and spores from other cheeses and foods. “Keep it as air tight as possible,” Horne says. “It can pick up a mold spore out of the air or from a knife and will immediately take the opportunity to grow a rind.”

Historically, soft cheeses with a rind were made with the intention to eat within a few weeks to a month at most. To keep bloomy or washed rind cheeses from changing too much, they need airflow—unless you intentionally want the aromas to get stronger (which you totally can do at home for fun).

While bloomy rinds are more prone to ammoniation (when cheese gives off a pungent ammonia odor), washed rinds can get ammoniated, as well. The more airflow they get, the less likely they are to start smelling like chemicals. To ensure your washed or bloomy rinded cheeses stay better, longer, wrap them in parchment paper or stick them in a tupperware in the fridge.

Horne recommends adding a wad of damp paper towel to the tupperware and burping the lid every day or so to make sure it's getting enough humidity and oxygen. “If you don’t allow it to breath and gas off, eventually it will start to rot,” Horne says. “You can develop the flavors with less danger of ammoniation if it has airflow.”

但here’s the thing: cheese is a lot heartier than many people think. Expiration dates are required by law, but they don’t actually mean that much in terms of whether the cheese is OK to eat. So, even if a cheese does get ammoniated—with that irritating chemical smell, snowy white or brownish discoloration, and spots where the rind had begun to flatten or warp—it can often be saved by setting it out on the countertop. “If it hasn’t penetrated too far, it’s often recuperable,” says Horne, who encourages her customers to use their noses to determine whether it's healthy enough to taste good. “It’s not going to make you sick, it’s not just not going to be pleasant.”

Mold, too, doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker, according to Horne. It’s better to keep different kinds of cheeses in separate containers, so they don’t cross-contaminate each other with different kinds of spores. White, green, brick red, grayish green, and blue molds are regular cheese molds that are safe to eat, says Horne, “Healthy cheese is cheese that’s growing stuff. The rind wants to heal where it was cut.”

半固定到硬奶酪，从年轻的大棉道和切达干酪到格拉纳风格，水分较少，保质期比柔和的版本更长。因为您不是要保持活跃的果皮活跃，所以您想将它们紧紧包裹在保鲜膜或Ziploc中，以防止它们干燥或收缩其他类型的模具。但是，同样，即使它们确实会生长出表面模具，或者在这种情况下，将那种粘稠的米色胶片放在外面，霍恩也鼓励人们刮掉它，看看它的味道。

那么，您怎么知道您的奶酪脱了？嗅探。霍恩说：“如果它闻起来不像健康的生物，那可能更好。”霍恩承认，尽管大量奶酪有一束脚的脚，但它的脚气味与腐烂的脚部气味相反。“有这种气味，如果您打开一箱坏得变坏的牛奶，这会使您的胃部搅动，那就是您不想要的。”