If you like sharp cheddar, the best cheese in the world is "Cougar Gold" from WSU Creamery in eastern Washington, USA, a region not known to be a hotbed of find cheeses. It comes in a can, also not thought of as a delivery vector for a great cheese, but there you have it. Tastes great out of the can or you can age it for a few years in the refrigerator. Five or 6 years is fine. I absolutely love the crystals. No mold forms unless you open the can.
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.
I just ordered two cans of the cougar gold, one of the viking, and one of the mild cheddar. If it's not good I will blame you.
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!
Not the first time I've seen it organically recommended, and I'm not surprised. A buddy has some of this stuff, he usually ages it for a minimum of a year, ideally 2+, in the fridge. Will sometimes have fantastic crystals, and even if it doesn't it's still exceptional sharp cheddar.
I'd love to try that but the only site I can see selling it here in the UK wants 85 quid a tin.
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.
Indeed, including a cave aged one actually made in Cheddar (which is amazing). Godminster and Black Bomber are both very nice, and are wax sealed so might be similar to the canned stuff. And that's before you get into the unpasteurised stuff you're not even allowed to sell in the states. (Edit: I'm wrong about that - you can if it's aged more than 60 days.)
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.
Hmmm, I'm somewhat doubtful about cheese from the USA as my experience there (only on holiday, mind) was that most cheese seems to be made of plastic. However, I fully acknowledge my lack of knowledge about good/great american cheeses and I'm sure there are small scale producers of quality products.
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?
Most of the mainstream cheese that you're going to encounter here in the US is boring and tasteless. Even most of the cheddar we get imported from the UK is terribly mediocre, I've found. It's just what many American's like, apparently. But that doesn't mean you can't get good cheese, both domestic and imported, if you frequent a specialist local cheese shop. There are quite a few farms in Vermont and New Hampshire, and also a couple in Massachusetts, that I've found make really good cheddars, rivaling some of my favorite Somerset cheddars. I'm sure there are good producers outside of New England too, I just know those ones as that's where I am.
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.
> Actually, all cheese making produces quite a bit of wastage. On average, if a dairy starts with ten-thousand pounds of milk, they’ll end up with only a thousand pounds of cheese. The remaining nine-thousand pounds ends up as whey while the curd is formed.
> 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.
Whey goes to make protein powder, whey butter, animal feed, etc. The Ag industry is so competitive that usually every little bit gets used for something.
Thanks for catching my typo, I hope more people discover their cheese. I love every variety of their cheese, but the Merlot and Tennessee Whiskey cheeses are on another level.
Is it just me or does this have a familiar "edited by Chat GPT" feel to it? I can only take this chatty writing style in moderation but it seems everyone is using Chat GPT to edit their work in the same way.
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.
https://cougarcheese.wsu.edu/DirectionsWEB/webcart_itemBuy.p...
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!
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.
Why do you choose that over looking it up? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain
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.
See https://www.eatortoss.com/how-to-tell-if-white-stuff-on-chee..., https://www.eatortoss.com/aged-cheddar-with-a-crusty-white-s....
The rule of thumb I've heard is hard white: crystal. Soft white: mold.
If you can't tell, I would dump it.
Sadly, the wayback machine has snapshots of the article going back to 2020, but doesn't seem to have archived those broken image links.
> 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.
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/sartori-cheese-rum-...
There is an extra "www." which breaks the link.
[1] https://snipettemag.com/cheese-crystals/