At that point just call it Redwall Abbey!

I would do the same, but that is a particularly expensive diet.

That's fighting talk round my way!

I submit to you that you've not tried the good British cheeses such as a Baron Bigod (Norfolk Brie), a nettle covered Cornish Yarg, the well-named Stinking Bishop, the rolled-in-ashes Kidderton Ash, Yoredale, Yarlington, Stilton, Beauvale, Gorwydd Caerphilly, Driftwood, Pevensey Blue, Witheridge in Hay, Ailsa Craig ...

There are also fake ways of accelerating aging to create this effect, like the Old Amsterdam cheeses you’ll find in the Netherlands. That particular brand has a lot of fake qualities to it that creates these effects.

Is this something they disclose on the packaging? I'm curious how to identify this in the cheese I buy.

Sure, replace "appearance" with "impression" for a more accurate representation of my intent.

People in the Netherlands are usually not at all proud of their cuisine, but the cheese is definitely a nice aspect (as someone who eats the >1 year ripened stuff almost daily)

Although for me some of the French cheeses are the best. Just what you're used to I guess :D

Have you tried Mimolette? It has a similar character to those very old Goudas.

L'amuse will blow the mind. One of the best cheeses out there and I've had hundreds.

Chällerhocker is another great one in your neck of the woods.

Same, tbh. I love cheese. But that aged Gouda is absolutely memorable. I can literally taste it now haha

I hate that I can’t say the word without saying it right, but that means that everyone else thinks I’m saying it wrong. Haha

Agreed btw, the tour in Gouda is wonderful. Show up for the morning when they have the cheese market; it’s a really fun time.

It's Ghowda right? The gh like in argh and the ow in brown.

Also MSG, obviously.

Umami is a lot more present that people recognize. I've built up an intuition for this over the years, and also sort of trained my tongue.

What we call umami is a subjective experience that has an underlying molecular cause, but it's complicated: more than one molecule contributes to the sensation, different foods have different molecules, many people can't recognize it on its own, etc.

The most easily recognized umami tastes seem to come from hydrolyzed soy protein and yeast extracts- both are added to tons of food. The canonical example is Doritos, which are a masterpiece of modern food industrial optimization. Doritos are mostly corn, but they also add whey (cheese derived umami), MSG (molecular, isolated glutamate in salt form), buttermilk (multiple flavors including umami), romano cheese (more umami!), tomato powder (umami), inositate (umami). It's basically an umami bomb.

From what I can tell, the best umami flavors come from a combination of several different molecules combined with some salt. the combination seems to potentiate the flavor significantly. You can also saturate out your receptors- if you drink a highly concentrated broth, you'll see there's some upper limit to the amount of umami you can taste and after that, additional aminos are just wasted.

> I'll never understand the popularity of pre-shredded cheese...

If spending too much time in eve online taught me anything, it's that convenience is worth money. People are inherently lazy, and there's plenty of ways to exploit that.

The next level of pre-grated cheese is frozen pizza, for example.

Me either, but a relative who worked in processed foods told me the reason it exists isn't just lazy consumers, it's made from the oddly-shaped (by supermarket standards) offcuts that they can't sell otherwise.

As a Penn State grad I feel like WSU and PSU need to have a creamery-off for charity or something.

The USDA says to cut off at least an inch and be careful not to cut through mold: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and...

I remember having a brie-like cheese cut in half and left forgotten in the fridge for more than a month. The mold had reformed completely, as if it they were made like this in the first place.

It tasted fine, no one got sick. Kind of underwhelming to be honest, but it wasn't particularly tasty to begin with: industrial cheese, pasteurized milk. It fact, that it still had some life in it surprised me.

I’ve eaten brie weeks after sell by date. It just turns into a firmer cheese by then no striking difference in taste really.

It does give a method of testing at home at the end, though, with hard being crystal and soft being mold.

Even if it is mold, just remove it off the surface. It doesn't penetrate far on hard cheeses like Gouda.

Also the reason why I don't buy pre-grated cheese, it doesn't age well. It also tends to be lower quality to begin with.

Yeah, especially for things like cheese sauces I find that it's better to just grate it yourself. It will _not_ melt correctly otherwise, and the additives mess with sauces more than you'd think.

Anti-caking agent can be either cellulose ("sawdust"), potato starch, or calcium sulfate

I have been shredding my own for a while, since it's typically cheaper. It just happened to be that I was feeling lazy one particular day and bags of shredded cheese were on sale.

it's wood pulp. sawdust derivative. aka cellulose.

don't buy pre-shredded cheese unless you like replacing up to 10% of your cheese with essentially sawdust at a premium.

https://www.eater.com/2016/3/3/11153876/cheese-wood-pulp-cel...

People are super religious about this but I've never been able to tell pre-shredded cheese from cheese I've shredded myself and I don't think anyone else can tell the difference in a blind taste test.

> Block cheese is cheaper, lasts longer, and cooks better.

Is this a promotion for the National Cheese Stockpile?[1] The US has about 1.5 billion pounds of cheese in storage in a cave in Missouri. Really. There's a USDA welfare program for dairy farmers, and they have to put the excess milk somewhere. So it's made into cheese and stored.

[1] https://modernfarmer.com/2022/05/cheese-caves-missouri/

Isn't the convenient version of something always worse in every way aside from convenience than the less convenient version of the same thing?

anything shelf-stable, hydrogenated peanut butter, highly processed milk, etc

I'm starting to wonder if

  convenience = 1/healthy

hopefully not bananas though.

Given our developing understanding of the importance of the human microbiome, which includes fungi (the mycobiome), I steer clear of anti fungal preservatives in my food personally.

Just because something has been used since 1955 doesn't mean it's all good.

Cheesy jokes on Hacker News? I approve.

It might not be good for the fungi in the tree roots.

>If you look, you can still find shredded cheeses without this, but it's usually pretty rare now.

You're quite correct. Thankfully, my local has me covered with that![0][1]

The stuff without preservatives definitely doesn't last as long, but the difference in taste/texture makes all the difference.

[0] https://shop.wmarketnyc.com/s/1000-1052/i/INV-1000-87892

[1] https://shop.wmarketnyc.com/s/1000-1052/i/INV-1000-89151

Edit: Fixed link formatting.

Fungi can grow inside the body. A man who was used to injecting heroin decided to try magic mushrooms. So, he expected the high to be better if he injected them too.

https://www.livescience.com/magic-mushroom-injection-case-re...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/man-injects-magic-mushrooms-...

Google. "systemic mycoses" or "mycosis internal organs". It isn't just the {lungs, skin, mouth, throat, urinary tract} that can grow molds or yeasts.

A few related medical words: Cryptococcal meningitis, Mucormycosis, Blastomycosis, Histoplasmosis.

Hopefully your brain is warmer than 34°C - perhaps avoid trusting zombie HBO shows for medical knowledge.

I'm guessing they were riffing on the zombie-ant fungus: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

Thanks for reminding me to rewatch it before the new season comes out (soon).

In the USA the main problem is everything has to be pasteurised which rules out many "real" cheeses like camembert.

In Europe, and at gourmet cheese stores, you get a slice from a wheel. It is alive, in the sense that it has not been "treated" to increase shelf life. A wheel of cheese is like a little biome or green house or garden in a bottle. The rind of the cheese is the wall. It allows the cheese to breathe, but in a way that preserves the life inside it. Once the wheel is cut, the bottle is broken, and while the cheese can be kept for a time, it will start to degrade. The humidity (~80-85 %) is important so the cheese does not dry out and it does not become a nice home for unwanted mold, bacteria and fungus. The temp of ~55 F is also important so that the little things can live but don't start over growing.

If it comes from a wheel where it was aged, almost any cheese is good - depending on your particular taste. The aged ones with crystals are great, especially Dutch ones, but "local" cheese is almost always wonderful.

I was in Colby, Wisconsin a couple of times and I found the local Colby cheese to be good. Many locally made cheese are good, but again if they are bagged in plastic then they do not compare with the "real" thing.

You missed the joke ;)