Milling & Remixing Cheese

[FRANCOIS]

Only now have I found the "addiitonal options" button.  Behold, smushed cheddar (the only photo I have handy on my desktop).  Is this thing on or what?

[FRANCOIS]

sweetness.  that is 3 year old cheddar waste, milled, mixed with red food coloring, chilli and curry then repressed in a 1kg mold. 

[Cheese Head]

Beautiful, both chilli & curry!

Only you could have 3 year old cheddar "waste", why was it waste?

[FRANCOIS]

We get in 20kg blocks of the stuff and the waste comes in when we have to cut it into 200g pieces.  They are either odd sized pieces or underweights.  It normally gets sent off to process cheese at another plant but we are playing around with ways to make higher value cheeses.  I have other variants plus some blue in the works.  Reviews on that one were mixed.  50% of people said it was too spicy, 50% said it wasn't spicy enough. 

[wharris]

Very interesting.  Love to photo.

[DeejayDebi]

Sure looks pretty Francois!

[newbie001]

It does look interesting, very creative and original. At first I thought it was some kind of strange mold and not red food coloring until I read you description. I must admit that I would be quite hesitant to try it. I generally stay away from products with food coloring.

[DeejayDebi]

I've seen it done with beer and wine but I haven't tried it yet. Might give it a try on my next cheddar.

[Cheese Head]

Also, member Chilipepper made a somehwhat similar remixed Chokecherry Stout flavoured Cheddar and posted his results here.

[DeejayDebi]

Seems I heard somewhere the color gets more intense with age too.

[chilipepper]

That is a nice looking cheese. I like the experimentation of creating this with already aged cheese.  That is an interesting direction that I totally didn't think of.  I wonder how and if additional aging would further develop the flavor or otherwise mellow the intensity of the curry/chili marbling.  I hope to further experiment with these types of cheeses again shortly as I'm getting a little closer to my cheese making season.

Great job!

[FRANCOIS]

We have made trial versions of mutiple runs (blues, mixed aged cheddars etc..).  They are ready to go after 1 day in the chiller.  We have been letting them go 7 days before tastings though.  Ours are waxed or vacuum bagged.  I haven't attempted putting a rind on any yet.  I don't think it would work well and I really wouldn't age these for very long open...they aren't fresh curd.