Shredding Cheese / Healthy Options – Rookie Tip

I have always shredded my cheese over the last couple of years. I buy what raw milk cheese I can from my farm weekly, but that is mainly for our “daily snack eating” (cheese cubes and apples or something), I still have to buy the big blocks from Sam’s. It’s simply what we can afford. I use a hand grater (yes, the old fashioned kind!) or my cheapie little “Salad Shooter” that I’ve had for over 10 years if I need to shred a bunch. I like the hand grater because a good run through hot soapy water and it’s CLEAN. I prefer my good quality knives to the fancy chopping gizmos for this reason to.

However Kelly – I LOVE my Bosch too, and I don’t have a slicer/shredder. It’s on my “wish list”. I imagine that once I get it, the hand grater may be a thing of the past!

Shauna

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Ahhhh, cheese, glorious cheese, one of our family's favorite foods. My husband loves cheddar slices to scoop up soft butter!

Grating cheese is a great job to give kids during dinner prep. But be sure to have extra cheese, LOL!

My 10 yo son is really, really resistant to most of my efforts to teach him to cook, unless it involves a big knife (in which case the result is a pile of tiny, irregular cuke chunk) or grating a hunk of cheese (and he eats a third of what he grates).

I can find pre-grated raw milk parmesan and romano that doesn't have added anti-caking ingredients, so I sometimes get that, but mozzarella usually has potato starch or such, so I buy balls of low moisture whole milk cheese and grate it at home just before using. A new ball of unopened mozzarella keeps a long time, too, unless it is a fresh cheese in brine. Mozzarella is pretty easy to make, too, and fun to stretch with kids. Lots of online tutorials.

And there is something very nice about passing a hunk of really good parmigiano reggiano with a hand grater at the table. Even though it is really expensive per pound, it is really flavorful, a little goes a long way, it keeps well (if wrapped properly), and hard aged cheeses have some really great nutrients (Grand Padano is a bit less expensive and also very good). In Italy, parmigiano is one of the first foods for babies. In my next life I want to come back as an Italian baby gumming on a parmigiano reggiano rind.

I'm like you, Kelly, cringing when I think of the time a while back when I loved those individually wrapped slices of processed "American" cheese, made with more vegetable oil and additives than milk. Uggh.

One of my pet peeves is improperly wrapped cheese. I hate finding a new block of cheese in the fridge, opened but put back in the original wrapper, now half dried out because of exposure to air. It's unsanitary, too.

When I buy cheese that is wrapped in plastic (wax is best but not always an option), I like to get it out of the plastic ASAP; if I am really on the ball, I do it when I get home from the store (then I don't have to rely on someone else to do it when they open the cheese. I keep a box of 500 greaseproof sandwich papers in the kitchen (from Smart & Final, a sort of non-membership restaurant supply store that is open to the public). Wax paper would work, too. I wrap the cheese loosely in the paper, then put it in a plastic bag or other airtight outer wrap. That allows any moisture or condensation to dissipate from the surface of the cheese without drying out the cheese; tight cling plastic keeps the moisture on the cheese, promoting mold growth. If I change the paper each time I use the cheese, I usually have very little mold to deal with.

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This is actually one of the worst things people can eat. Honestly I don’t even like it, how come people eat processed food of any kind while real foods are waaaaay tastier and healthy.

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Kelly, my farm is holding a cheese making class in Nov. – they’re going to teach us to make whole milk moz from our wonderful raw milk! The class is open to non-shareholders as well…. call me if you’d like info!

Shauna

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Today, at Sam’s, there was a woman who was sampling “cheese and crackers” – you know the orange spread that you put on with the little plastic knife on a “club cracker”. She was going on and on about how GREAT this was as a snack for kids after school and how perfectly it packed in lunch boxes. She kept offering me a sample (we were stuck waiting in this intersection, so I was a captive audiance!) and she couldn’t understand why I didn’t want one. I finally politely declined one final time saying “I’d rather have a slice of real cheese, thank you.” I hope that I wasn’t rude….. but I was just tired of saying “no thank you”. I didn’t even WANT to taste that….. and ***I used to buy those cheese/crackers packages for my kids all the time when they were little! GAG!

Shauna

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Liz,
You’re so close, feel free to borrow my Bosch anytime!
Kelly

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