🍽️ Cheese in the kitchen

Cheese in the kitchen means cheese as an ingredient and as a course of its own: it is melted, grated, baked, fried and served on a cheese board. How a cheese behaves when heated depends on its moisture, acidity, age and the way it was coagulated, not only on its fat content.

Cheeses of medium moisture and age melt well: Gouda, cheddar, Emmental, Comté. Pasta filata cheeses — mozzarella, sulguni, Oaxaca cheese — stretch into long strings, which is why they go on pizza and into khachapuri. Hard aged cheeses — Parmigiano Reggiano, Grana Padano, pecorino — are grated over pasta; grated Pecorino Romano is the base of the sauce in carbonara and cacio e pepe. Halloumi, paneer and queso fresco hardly melt, so they are fried or grilled. Curd cheese goes into syrniki, dumplings and bakes, and ricotta into fillings and desserts.

Serving. For a cheese board choose 3–5 cheeses of different types (fresh, white-mould, hard, blue) and arrange them from mildest to strongest. Take cheese out of the fridge 30–60 minutes before serving, because cold dulls its aroma. Drink pairings are covered on the page Wine and cheese.

Storage. Keep cheese in the fridge at 4–8 °C, wrapped in baking paper or cheese paper: tight cling film traps moisture. Hard cheeses keep for weeks, fresh cheeses only a few days once opened. Grated hard cheese can be frozen for cooking. The NHS advises pregnant women to eat soft white-mould and soft blue cheeses only when cooked until steaming hot.

Why it matters to you: the right cheese makes the dish work — the sauce does not split, the pizza stretches — and a well-wrapped piece in the fridge does not dry out or go mouldy too soon.