Cotija Cheese - Cancun, Yucatan, Mexico

[Cheese Head]

My family and I were on holiday in Yucatan Mexico over Christmas & New Years, saw no cows and no goats and thus local Mayan people eat very little dairy foods or cheese.

But did find some cheeses in Cancun large grocery of Mexican Queso Cotija which wikipedia says is a milled salty grainy hard cow's milk type cheese named after town of Cotija, Mexico.

13 Mexico Peso's = 1 USD.

[DeejayDebi]

It looks like parmesan - is it?

[Brie]

Wow--did you taste it? Cotija cheese that is found in Arizona is quite similar to Ricotta Salata, and used to adorn Mexican dishes--with a taste quite similar to feta.

[Cheese Head]

Brie, nope, sadly I didn't buy or taste any.

Debi, good guess, I just found a picture in my files from a Texas store of USA made or imported Queso Cotija, it's a solid hard wheel and packaging says "Mexican Parmesan".

Actually I was quite surprised to see this and other cheeses in open, unrefrigerated, sold by the kilo, and you filled a container with it yourself as not very hygenic and one would think an uncovered ground cheese would dehydrate - dry out, even in humid Cancun.

[DeejayDebi]

From some of the things I've read that is one of the problems with importing the Mexican cheeses. We tend to be much stricter about thing slike that I guess. Similar issues have come out with the European cheeses. We have lower levels of acceptable bad bacterias.