How to store and serve cheese
How should the cheese be stored?
Hard cheeses have been carefully selected to withstand a longer transit time. Don’t worry if it arrives a bit warm or a bit cold – cheese is durable. Hard, aged cheeses stay good for a long time. Many days for sure. Sometimes weeks. Bigger hunks of cheese last longer. If it looks and smelled as expected, it’s likely still great.
Soft cheeses and cheese spreads (like pimento and liptauer) are best eaten within a week or two of receiving them.
We wrap hand-cut wedges of cheese in a cheese bag before shipment, and you can continue to keep the cheese in that cheese bag. The next best option would be parchment or wax paper. After you open the cheese for a nibble, any remainders can be put back into the bag and closed with a simple roll or fold.
Store cheese in the fridge, ideally in the spot closest to 50 degrees. That will likely be the door of your refrigerator or in a drawer where the temperature is consistent but not too cold. Do not freeze your cheese! Cheese is a living thing. Freezing will stop the natural processes that keep cheese so tasty.
What if it’s got a little mold on it? A little mold is no problem. It’s a good sign, it means the cheese is alive. Scrape it off with a knife. But if there’s a lot of mold and it’s turning dark and funky it’s time to say goodbye.
What’s the best way to serve cheese?
Regardless of the kind of cheese, it’s best to take it out of the fridge about 20 to 30 minutes before serving it. Cheese tastes better at room temperature. It makes a world of difference: the aromas expand, becoming more complex; more of the fat spreads on your tongue, which makes the flavor more intense. When cheese is warm you’ll eat less of it and enjoy it more.
How long will cured meats stay good?
Short answer: they’re cured, so they’ll last a while!
Long answer: Curing is an ancient process that makes meat safe by keeping it inhospitable to the microbes that would otherwise cause rot. Curing is what differentiates a sausage (uncured) from a salami (cured).
Curing works its magic by eliminating bad bacteria from meat in two ways. First, by drying. Bacteria need moisture to grow and curing deprives them of it, usually with a combination of salt and some environmental measures, like dehumidified aging rooms. Second, by fermentation. Fermentation makes a salami acidic, which kills the bacteria. Not every cured meat is fermented – cured hams aren’t, for example – but they’re all dried. Once the process is complete, cured meat is safe from the bacteria that would spoil it. That means it can be stored at room temperature for a long time, until we’re ready to eat it.
Cured meats like salami, prosciutto, and ‘nduja will last for weeks or even months if stored correctly and unsliced. Slice salami as you eat it – keeping it whole will help prevent it from drying out.
What if it arrives warm?
We don’t necessarily ship cured meats with ice packs. Since it’s cured, it’s healthy and happy at warm temperatures. To prolong its life at home keep it refrigerated. But hours or even days at warmer temperatures won’t harm it a bit.
What’s up with mold on salami?
Downy white mold is as essential to salami flavor as blue mold is for blue cheese. Every good salami has mold on it at some point in its life. It’s a sign the salami is aging well; the mold protects the fat from going rancid. If you’re buying one without mold it was probably washed off at some point. It’s edible, but you can also wash it off with a bit of vinegar and water if you’d like. If a little mold returns in time it’s a good sign.
A closer look at Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese
This is the cheese that brought the spotlight back to Wisconsin artisan cheese. Fifty miles west of Madison in the town of Dodgeville sits Uplands Cheese and its cheesemaker, Andy Hatch. In 2004, Pleasant Ridge Reserve won Best in Show at the American Cheese Society’s annual awards and it hasn’t looked back. It’s only gotten better over time and is now widely considered—me included—as one of, if not the, best cheese in America.
Andy’s animals live their entire lives outdoors and he only makes cheese when the cows are in the pastures, May through October. When the grass is dried up at the end of fall it’s over, the cows go indoors and they stop making cheese. That means the cows have an amazing diet, a diverse range of grasses, legumes and herbs. That diet turns into fantastic tasting milk, which makes for a more interesting and flavorful cheese.
Many of the best cheesemakers in Europe and America follow parts of Andy’s process but few go as far as he does in each step. Andy ages most of his cheese for about a year but there’s some he holds back to age further, which he calls “Reserve.” We go even a stage further, working with him to choose exact batches of Reserve we like best, then shipping the wheels to Ann Arbor to hand cut when you order.