The rule of thumb I've heard is hard white: crystal. Soft white: mold.
If you can't tell, I would dump it.
Now, that doesn't mean rando-mold doesn't ruin the cheese's flavor...
See https://www.eatortoss.com/how-to-tell-if-white-stuff-on-chee..., https://www.eatortoss.com/aged-cheddar-with-a-crusty-white-s....
Sadly, the wayback machine has snapshots of the article going back to 2020, but doesn't seem to have archived those broken image links.
WSU's other cheeses are okay but do not stand out to me. Nothing from England or France has delivered the sharp cheddar experience like Cougar Gold.
Why do you choose that over looking it up? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain
There are plenty of extra mature cheddars with crystals here, though. Marks & Spencer have a 2 year aged one called Cornish Cruncher that I'm partial to.
I'd really like to try this Cougar Gold, though. People get nationalistic about cheese, but good is good wherever it's made. If England can have the best brie I know of (Baron Bigod) there's no reason in principle the US couldn't have the best cheddar. Canada makes rather nice cheddar too, which you can buy in UK supermarkets.
The US terminology is odd, though. Sharp isn't how I'd characterise most extra mature cheddar.
The archaic checkout system and the fact that this is a Washington State school agricultural product make me think that this will be the best cheese I've ever eaten in my life. Quite fond of their apples!
Or, to put it another way, they go stale.
Some of the best cheddars that I've tried are Wyke Farms Cheddar (from Somerset, but not quite in Cheddar itself) and my favourite is Davidstow which comes from Cornwall. Quite why you'd be expecting quality Cheddar cheese from France is beyond me - wouldn't they consider it insulting to be making an English style cheese when they have so very many unique types of French cheese?
There are hundreds of these across the country, but you have to seek them out. You can also get raw milk cheeses in the US.
I don't doubt that there's a thriving junk food culture in France, but they do have something like 1000 different varieties of cheese, so I can imagine the french getting annoyed if someone asks them for a nice bit of cheddar.
The U.S. seems to have a strange relationship with raw milk - I believe it can be fairly freely sold over there, whereas we in the UK can't buy/sell raw milk in shops although it can be purchased from farms and farmer's markets. Meanwhile, raw milk cheese are common in supermarkets - they just put a label on it warning pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/sartori-cheese-rum-...
> That’s right: if you run the numbers on cheese manufacturing, the percent yield is only about 10%.
Yogurt-making produces a lot of whey too, though probably closer to ~50% whey rather than 90% (when made at home). The only difference between greek yogurt and regular yogurt is that greek yogurt is strained to remove the whey, making it thicker / creamier. Though most commercial brands try to cheat and thicken it with something like pectin (which usually makes it kind of jello-y).
Anyways all that to say my favorite yogurt is the one where the only ingredient is milk + yogurt culture. No thickeners, added sugars, flavoring, I like to add those myself.
Percent yield is an odd choice of words when the "waste" product is 90-95% water.
Urine is mostly water as well, but I'd still classify it as a waste product.
If you don't strain the whey, yogurt-making produces 0% whey. And I make it at home, so I know I'm not missing anything. Your math is wrong.
skinwill•3mo ago
There is an extra "www." which breaks the link.