Ah, the joys of melted cheese. There are few things in life that are so pleasurable. Yet why do certain cheeses melt uniformly, while others don't? How come a few won't melt at all?
Several factors play a part in the melting process. One is fat content: the more fat a cheese contains, the more a cheese's casein molecules are able to separate, and the better it will melt. For this reason, lowfat and fat-free cheeses tend to melt into a rubbery consistency. The water level in a cheese also determines how it will melt. A cheese such as Parmesan is hard due to its low moisture level. Its dense molecular makeup means its molecules, even when melted, have relatively little room to flow — which is why Parmesan, unlike brie, will never get runny when it's melted.
A handful of cheeses — among them, fresh goat cheese, paneer, queso blanco, and ricotta — will never melt at all. Unlike most cheeses, which are curdled with rennet, these are curdled with acid. Cheese made with rennet retains a malleable structure, while acid alters cheese proteins by causing them to clump together.
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Forzieri
Citizens of Humanity
mytheresa
this is really helpful. i think that a lot of us think that we're doing something good by getting lower fat cheeses to cook with and then we find that it's not quite working out so well. i guess the key here is to figure out alternative low fat options for the other pieces in a dish and hope that the cheese doesn't counter balance it too much.
1Wow I never knew!!
2Good to know. I never buy fat-free cheese because I think it tastes like rubber and I did notice that it also never really melted right. I also noticed that whenever I use ricotta, it doesn't melt...I just kind of thought it was because ricotta's so spreadable/thin.
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