A Complete Guide to Buying, Wrapping, and Eating Cheese
BY DAVID TAMARKIN
The main thing to keep in mind: cheese lives!
I’ve probably walked by that package of cheese papers, sitting near the cash register at my cheese shop, 217 times. But each time, I looked away. Buy a special set of paper specifically for my cheese? What could it possibly do that plastic wrap can’t?
But the other night, as I peeled away a few layers of plastic wrap to uncover a hardened, dusty piece of cheese inside, a thought haunted me: The papers. I should have bought them.
Instead of buying a pack, I called Jordan Edwards, a cheesemonger at Chicago’s best cheese shop, Pastoral. I got to the point right away: Do I really need to buy special paper to wrap my cheese in?
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Even though we were on the phone, I could sense Jordan shaking his head. “Cheese is a living thing,” he said. And I had killed mine.
Luckily, Jordan had a few tips for keeping my cheese alive in the future.
BUY CHEESE IN SMALL QUANTITIES
Cheese ages best when it’s part of a big, airtight wheel. The minute a wedge of cheese is cut from the wheel, it’s exposed to oxygen, and from that moment on, the cheese is losing moisture—especially in your fridge. “Cheese likes humidity, and your fridge sort of dries things out,” Jordan says. For that reason, “you shouldn’t be buying cheese that you can’t get through in week.”
WRAP IT RIGHT
About those cheese papers: Jordan is a big fan. He’s much less enthusiastic about plastic wrap and plastic bags. “The problem with plastic is that cheese is in a constant state of change. There’s evaporation happening, and plastic wrap doesn’t let humidity out. So the cheese sort of sits in water.” Cheese papers, on the other hand, “keep the moisture you want there, while keeping the moisture you don’t want out.” The papers are expensive—15 sheets for $9—and if you don’t want to buy them, you can recreate the effect by wrapping your cheese in wax paper first, and following that with a layer of plastic wrap. Barring that, Jordan conceded that “a Tupperware container would be better than a plastic bag,” because the cheese would have more room to breathe.
GIVE YOUR CHEESE A SHAVE
I continued to push Jordan on the plastic issue. What about all those wedges of cheese at the grocery store that are vacuum-packed in plastic? “The cheese is sort of suffocating in that plastic,” Jordan said. Not to mention the fact that it’s imparting a plastic flavor to the cheese. To save it, Jordan says, get it out of that plastic and, with a long non-serrated knife, very gently scrape the surface of the cheese, removing the outer layer. “Scrape not even a millimeter,” Jordan says. “Just scrape a little, taste it, and if it still tastes like plastic, keep scraping.”
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EAT IT AT ROOM TEMP
While we were on the subject, Jordan threw in a final pointer: “Room temperature cheese tastes better,” he says. “As a society I feel we’re fairly squeamish about refrigeration. Cheese is sturdy stuff. It’s been made since 11 BC. There was no refrigeration in Ancient Greece, so I think we’re okay with cheese being on the counter for a couple hours.” Just, you know, take it out of the plastic first.
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PHOTO AND FOOD STYLING BY RHODA BOONE
