The Other American Cheese

The other American food-- craft-brewed beer, artisanal cheese, and artisanal bread made with locally grown grain. How authentic can you get?

When I was a kid in Fulton, New York, my mother made us toasted cheese sandwiches quite often. A toasted cheese sandwich and a bowl of Campbell's cream of tomato soup was considered a very nice lunch. The sandwiches were made with Velveeta. Imagine my astonishment in middle age to discover that Velveeta is not considered to be cheese! The product that is called Velveeta is a "processed cheese food" made with cheese, milk, salt, preservatives, artificial colorings, and whatever else the company chooses to put into the mix. Velveeta is orange, because-- well, because someone thought it ought to be orange, just as many cheddar cheeses are orange, but "American cheese" can be white, too. It just isn't cheese in the strict sense because it contains additional ingredients that give it the texture and melting quality that the manufacturer wants. And that's what American cheese is all about. It may not taste like much of anything, but it melts beautifully in toasted cheese sandwiches, on top of a hamburger, or in macaroni and cheese, and that's what it is supposed to do. Americans love it. Kraft Foods, to mention just one manufacturer, sells millions of dollars worth of their cheese product every year.

So, if "American cheese" as I know it from my childhood isn't really cheese, is there any real American cheese? The answer is yes, more and more of it, and some of it is considered to be very good indeed. Ordinarily, you cannot say the words "big cheese producer" and "artisanal cheese" in the same breath, because artisanal cheese is not made in big batches. It is not a mass-produced product. However, a mass producer of cheese may also make an artisanal cheese. One example of this comes from the Cabot Creamery Cooperative in Vermont, which makes an aged, cloth-bound cheddar. Cabot describes this as "single breed, small batch cheddar." The cheese is cave-aged in Jasper Hill Farm's cellars. Jasper Hill Farm, located in Greensboro, VT, produces its own hand-made, raw-milk cheeses. Jasper Hill Farm cheese is made from cow's milk, but many sheep's milk and goat's milk cheeses are made in America, too.

At this point, perhaps I should explain what makes cheese "real cheese" and not "cheese food" or "processed cheese." Cheese starts with milk, which may be raw or pasteurized, which involves heating the milk to kill bacteria. Then the cheese must be curdled, which involves separating the milk solids from the remaining liquid, using a natural ingredient such as rennet. Remember little Miss Muffett eating her curds and whey? That's cheese solids(curds) and liquid (whey). The curds are separated from the whey and drained, then salted or seasoned and put into containers to give them a shape and pressed. After that, the cheese must be aged. The aging could range from a few hours for a fresh cheese, such as ricotta, to two years for Parmigiano Reggiano, to even longer. Cabot Creamery sells a cheddar that is aged for five years, for example. The aging gives the various cheeses flavor and texture, and that is what they are known for. "Real" fontina cheese doesn't taste like "real" swiss cheese or "real" cheddar cheese. What it comes down to is that real cheese consists of milk, the substance that curdles the cheese, and salt. It might also contain other natural flavorings, such as herbs. But that's it. And that's why Velveeta isn't cheese.

Artisanal cheese is specialty cheese made by hand in small batches. It is usually made using milk from a specific known producer, such as the milk produced on the farm where the cheese is made, which makes the product farmstead cheese. In the United States, artisanal cheese may be made from the milk of cows, sheep, or goats, and it may be made from milk of a specific breed of cows, sheep, or goats. Cheese has to be aged in a temperature-controlled room, and artisanal cheesemakers are now turning to cellar-aging or cave-aging to try to make a more authentic product. A number of cave- or cellar-aged cheeses are produced in Vermont. Lest you conclude that artisanal cheese is a Vermont kind of thing, artisanal, or hand-crafted, cheeses are made from Maine to Texas to California.

The manufacture of artisanal food products, from cheese to beer to bread, has grown in the United States in recent years because of the greatly increased interest in food and food culture and the fact that more people have had the chance to taste the "real thing" and want to have more. But the catch is that artisanal food products are not cheap. Making a food product by hand in small batches and, in the case of cheese, storing it during the aging process, takes time and money. At this point, one is not likely to encounter artisanal cheese at the local supermarket in Oswego, New York. Fortunately, we can buy industrially made cheeses that are real cheese (i.e., no "extra" ingredients or additives), just produced on a larger scale than artisanal cheese. They may not taste like the best artisanal cheeses, but they are several cuts above "American cheese" and much more reasonably priced than hand-crafted cheese. It might be a Cabot cheese or an Alpine Lace industrial cheese, but just look carefully at the label. If it says "processed," or contains ingredients you can't identify, it isn't real cheese. And hold onto your pocketbooks, because artisanal cheeses, local and imported, are becoming big business in the United States. So, dump the Velveeta and try some real cheese!