Herb additions to cheese

[Homestead]

Hi, I make a lot of different kinds of cheese and want to change them up a bit.  I would like to add dried onions and dried chives to some and various herb blends to others and a question popped up for me...does it make a difference what cheese I'm adding these too?  Can you add these to any cheese you want or would you have problems adding them to a gouda verses a cheddar?  Any help would be great...thanks to all!

[JMB]

HI,
I have added all kinds of herbs and spices to cheddars, jacks, goudas, havartis, mozzarellas. I usually use dried herbs but have done fresh in some cases.  Just did a cheddar with dried tarragon flakes.  The trick is to not get too much in and that just takes experimentation.   You still want to have the cheese taste first and herbs second.  I shake herbs in just before pressing.  The bigger seeds like cumin and caraway soften up in a month or so.  Pick out your favorites and a couple to play with and have fun.     I loved my whole fenugreek seed in gouda BUT a couple of the seeds stayed hard so I had to chew with caution.  Takes a couple months for them to soften but worth the wait.  Fenugreek is sort of like butter pecan/nut flavor to me.  It was yummy.
J

[JeffHamm]

Hi,

I added  some dried sage to a Wenslydale (10 Litre batch).  I made a sort of tea out of 2 tablespoons of dried sage, then added the fluid to the milk just before adding the starter culture.  I kept the sage leaves, and added them during the milling of the curds.  If you have fresh sage leaves, then you could put 1/2 your curd in your mold, then lay down a layer of sage, then put the rest of the curd on top before pressing.  You would want to sterilize the sage first (in the oven at 120 C for 10 minutes should do it).

Anyway, I've not opened this cheese yet, so I can't report on how well it's turned out flavour wise.  It was my first milled curd, and the knit wasn't great, so we'll see.  This was due to the curds cooling down too much, not the sage.

- Jeff

[Homestead]

Thank you both.....it really helps to have some advice!  Has anyone ever used herbs de Provence?

[george]

I've used Herbes de Provence along with garlic in a cheddar, but it's only about 4 weeks old now, so I don't know how well it worked yet.  Seems like it'll be wonderful.  Usually I use an Italian-type blend with the garlic cheddars, I just wanted to try something different that time.  Have one with garlic and straight rosemary going too, but again, not aged enough to try it yet.

(How's THAT for a non-helpful answer?)

[Homestead]

  That helps to just know that someone has tried it!

[megdcl]

Mmmm, now I'm thinking about spiced cheeses.. I wonder if I might have to try that sometime. We used to buy a really hot cheese that could bring tears to your eyes.. but only some of us had a taste for that . Has anyone tried something hot like a red-pepper cheese?

[JeffHamm]

Hi megdcl,

I believe if you search around you'll find some recipies for Pepper Jack, which is Monteray Jack with hot peppers. 

- Jeff

[megdcl]

I don't know if I'm brave enough to try one myself (at least not yet ) but I'm curious if anyone has done hot peppers. I imagine you'd have to dice them up real small..

I think a dill and garlic cheese would be yummy.. wonder how that would work on an aged cheese, since we've only used that on cheese curds.

[dmasterman]

I've used Jalopeno in both Jack and Cheddar and love it. I teach High School and brought some for the kids -- it was gone in microseconds. It was prepared like the tea mentioned above -- cut it in a few pieces, boil for 5 minutes or so, let the curds soak in the liquid for a while, process the peppers a bit until they are a pleasing size, add to the curds before pressing.
I also have a great sage plant in the yard. I used that the same way in Derby with great success.

[JMB]

About the dill and garlic. 
Garlic is by far the bolder of the two so add with caution if you are aging.  I have had dill "disappear" way into the background with time.  Too bad because I do love dill.  Made a cheese for my company that I called "Rilly Dilly" which it was  .  Dill didn't disappear in that one  .  I have also seen garlic get bitter in an aged cheese.  I have used both roasted garlic tiny chips and garlic powder and both got bitter.  6 months was the most I could go most of the time.  BUT sometimes it was wonderful.  I think it has more to do with the cheese and what is happening there than the garlic but could be wrong.
J

[george]

JMB I think you just answered my wondering about using dried garlic.  For the first bazillion garlic/herb cheddars I made, I used fresh garlic (you'll pry my food processor out of my cold dead hands, thank you very much).  Then I wondered why I was doing all that extra work when I had at least a pound of good dried organic garlic.  So I've done a couple with the dried, but only within the last month or two, so I haven't been able to open them yet to see how well it worked.

I think I'll stick to fresh from now on.  (Oh, and I do the same "boil it first, add the flavored liquid with the culture and the solids to the milled curds" thing.)