Ye gawds, is it supposed to taste like this?

[tellner]

I made a batch of haloumi according to Ricki Carroll's recipe. The brine she recommends is middle of the road for the recipes people have listed here.
It went into the fridge in its salt water.

Three or four weeks later we decided to have saganaki for dinner. I pulled out the jar and fried up the cheese.

It was downright inedible. The texture was fine. The consistency was exactly what it was supposed to be. From what I could tell the underlying flavor of the cheese was on target. And I like feta as much as the next guy. But the stuff was so salty we couldn't eat hardly any of it. If we worked all day in the fields under a hot sun we might appreciate the salt. Otherwise, not so much.

As a food preservation method it's great. I don't even think extreme halophiles could live in it. But either something else went wrong, not cooking with much salt has changed my tastes, or haloumi just isn't for me. Is it just me, the nature of the cheese, or am I doing something wrong here?

[Cheese Head]

Hi tellner, welcome to the forum.

OK brine was too salty, basically you need 16% or higher salt to stop any unwanted bacteria, in which the cheese will live for a long long time. However the result is a way too salty cheese.

I asked at my local Eastern Mediterranean store about that problem for Feta and they said to soak in little milk then toss the milk, same advice member Tea has given here.

The other solution is to store in a lower % salt brine, but then your cheese will not last as long before goes off.

[tellner]

Thanks. I'll give it another try with less salty brine and the milk rinse.

[Alex]

I soak the Haloumi I make, in plain water before use, for 1-2 hours.

[tellner]

Thanks, Alex.
It looks like I've got an experiment to do. Make another batch of haloumi and try both the milk and water soaking tricks.