Facts About Cheddar

Warren and Hugh are back again to help de-mystify the world of cheese. This week they tackle cheddar, and explain the process of Cheddaring

Warren: So, these are some wonderful cheddars once again from Canada and from around the world. And right away, you viewers must notice that these are not orange. These are not orange cheddars. Hugh: That’s right. Cheddar isn’t orange. Cheddar is only orange when food coloring has been added to it. Traditionally, if it’s the good orange cheddar, it will be a spice called annatto. A lot of the time, if you’re getting it at the supermarket, it will be red number whatever, yellow number this and that. It will just be chemical additives that make the cheese orange. It’s just something that we’ve become accustomed to over the years and sort of expect from cheddars. Warren: So now, these are all—some of these are artisan-made, some of these are industrially made but they all undergo the cheddaring process, is that right? Hugh: That’s right. What cheddaring is when the cheese is made, the curd is cut very finely so that moisture drains off. And then it’s made into sheets, which are stacked on top of one another to press out more moisture. And the more times this is done, usually the better the cheddar is going to be. More and more moisture is removed, the flavors become stronger, sharper, and more acidic. And that’s really where the taste of strong cheddar comes from, that cheddaring process repeated to take out all the moisture so that the cheese can ripen without going bad from having too much liquid in it. Warren: So the tanginess that I love from the cheddars, the dry, the crumbly, that all comes from just stacking cheese on cheese? Hugh: Yeah. What happens is more and more of the lactose is converted to lactic acid over the course of that process. Once the cheese is made, that process slows down, almost stops, so it’s the stacking, that repeated cheddaring that makes it develop those flavors. Warren: Right. And here we have a wheel of cheddar and here we have a block of cheddar. Hugh: The difference is here, in North America in particular, we’re used to a cheddar that’s made—that’s wrapped in plastic that’s aged in that way. The plastic will hold in all the moisture and you can age the cheddar for years without any trouble, and that’s where we see the 7-year-old cheddars that you’ll see sometimes. Warren: So that’s fine, that’s not a sign of industrialization or— Hugh: Not of an industrialization thing, just the way that we make cheddar most of the time in North America, as opposed to this one here which is a British Cheddar which is wrapped in cloth. That’s wrapped in muslin so it doesn’t hold in nearly so much of the moisture. It dries out much faster, it gets stronger much faster but usually doesn’t age beyond about a year and a half, two years, and that’s usually the upper limit for that style of cheese making. Warren: And one of our favorite producers makes a cheddar in this style, is that right? Hugh: That’s right. There's one of these being made in Prince Edward Island from Cows Dairy and that’s one of the very, very few Canadian examples of cheese being made in this style, one that basically matches the best British ones pretty much right out of the gate. Warren: Which is why we sell a lot of it all the time. Hugh: Absolutely!