I like to vacuum bag like a lot of members here for long term storage / aging but considering the O2 barrier properties of modern co-extruded film I've always wanted to find a way to cut a section from a cheese and seal the paste enough to protect from desiccation / cracking and mold but yet prevent the need of having to vacuum bag the whole cheese and slow affrinage. I know there have been other posts concerning this, and my experiments are still in the early stages, but so far using coconut oil looks promising. I assume you could use any vegatable oil (or maybe even lard) but the nice thing about coconut oil when you brush it on it creates a thick coating vs. others. I know you can coat with PVA emulsion (polycoat?) but it is water based and may not wet out the paste fully (just guessing here). Anyway I've attached a picture of my little "pac-man" cheeses (on the far right and left). Left is a fontina and right is my last caerphilly we just cut tonight. If things continue to look promising I'll treat some more "sections" and update.
Hi John,
I use resealable manually hand Pump evacuation bags. I bought it from a camp store hoping to store dehydrated food - not so good, they eventually lost their suk !! Air got in a lost a batch of home made beef jerky. I was about to heave them to the bin, when my lovely wife suggested using them for already cut cheeses - we tended before to eat cheese like crazy as we didn't like the dry out aspect. Now, we can cut a cheese and store the rest, cut another chunk at a later date. I find them useful but as they don't keep their vacuum for long- 1 week at best- I wouldn't use them for long term storage.
--Mal
John,
Have been trying coconut oil on various things lately, including cooking. I have found that almost all vegetable oils go rancid with time,including olive and peanut oil---but so far the coconut oil seems more stable and doesn't seem to impart any flavors you don't want. Be interesting to see how it works on cheese.
Qdog
If the primary concern is the oil going rancid, there is a simple solution: motor oil! Never goes rancid. Of course, taste might be an issue ... :o
I'm just joking, of course, but ... way back many years ago I worked at a summer camp. One of the counselors was told to season a cast-iron skillet with oil. Yes, you guessed it -- he used 10W-30! It was definitely well seasoned ...
Quote from: awakephd on September 30, 2014, 08:44:42 PM
One of the counselors was told to season a cast-iron skillet with oil. Yes, you guessed it -- he used 10W-30! It was definitely well seasoned ...
That's ridiculous. Everyone knows you need 20W oil to season a skillet ::). By the way I checked one of my trial cheeses. The picture is of a fontina that I coated with coconut oil on the left side and a heavy brine on the right. I was wondering if the brine would establish some kind of protecting rind but all that happened was that a crack formed. The side with coconut oil looked fine so I coated both sides with some coconut oil with paprika (helps to show where you have the oil).
I meant to add that if you let the coconut oil to partially solidify (at 78 deg F) it goes on like soft butter, spreads good but gives a reasonably thick coating.
I'm a lard fan !!
I probably should have mentioned ---we were using the vegetable oils to try to protect our cutters on our meat grinders from rust---thinking it would be safer then food grade silicone-----all the oils got rancid and formed a gunk that was almost impossible to remove.
For cast iron ---nothing beats MOBILE 1synthetic.