Is it mold?

December 13, 2014 9:36 AM

Is this cheese moldy?

I bought some English Seaside cheddar from Whole Foods last week. It had a sell-by date of Dec 15. As recommended by Cook's Illustrated I took it out of its shrink wrap and wrapped it in parchment paper then aluminum foil and stored it in our refrigerator at 36 degrees. It tastes fine to me but my wife won't eat it because "ew, it's covered in mold."

posted by santry to Food & Drink (16 answers total)

Best answer: I used to sell cheese. That cheese is fine. It may be surface mold, which you can just scrape off (this is normal and common). It may be little bits of precipitating protein, which is also normal and common in Cheddars, especially aged ones. If your wife won't eat it, more for you!

(I would eat it, I have eaten it, I will eat it again.)
posted by rtha at 9:39 AM on December 13, 2014 [13 favorites]

Yes. You can cut it off, but clean the knife thoroughly in between each cut so that you don't cross-contaminate.

Or you can chuck it. I'm a little less willing to cut mold off/salvage soft cheeses (including aged cheddar, even) as opposed to really hard cheeses like parmesan. However, I think it makes sense to do it if you still have a lot of cheese left and don't want to let it go to waste; I also recommend using up the rest of said salvaged cheese as quickly as possible.

I've never become sick from eating cheese that I cut the mold from.
posted by nightrecordings at 9:46 AM on December 13, 2014

Best answer: If the white bits are hard and crunchy: cheese crystals
posted by XMLicious at 9:48 AM on December 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: here's one more photo of a larger block
posted by santry at 9:55 AM on December 13, 2014

It's fine.
posted by kdar at 9:58 AM on December 13, 2014

Scrape the white stuff off with a knife, wash the knife, and if you want, rub the cut surface of the cheese with a cloth dipped in vinegar. Then wash the cloth. The cheese is fine to eat. Do not eat the cloth.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:04 AM on December 13, 2014 [12 favorites]

If it looked like that when you unwrapped it and re-wrapped it, I would eat as is.

If it didn't look like that before, I'd slice so as to remove all that surface shmutz (sure, we can call it mold if your wife wants) and throw the first, shmutziest, slice away before eating.
posted by Sara C. at 10:09 AM on December 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm a little less willing to cut mold off/salvage soft cheeses (including aged cheddar, even)

Aged cheddar isn't a soft cheese, so this makes no sense, and you should definitely just eat the cheese.

I wouldn't attempt to scrape surface mold out of the inner curd of a wedge of brie, or get mold out of a log of chevre. But with any hard cheese it should be easy to just cut the mold off and enjoy the rest of the cheese.
posted by Sara C. at 10:14 AM on December 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

i'm highly allergic to mold and don't eat things that other people just cut the mold off of. i probably wouldn't eat that cheese because i'm extra super careful, but i would tell my husband to scrape that stuff of and just eat it. if your wife wants to be overly cautious she's allowed, but unless she has some sort of a health condition, i think that cheese is totally fine.
posted by nadawi at 10:37 AM on December 13, 2014

Best answer: I've bought that exact cheddar from Whole Foods and asked about that exact stuff. The cheesemonger told me that it's just crystalline buildup on the surface of the cheese, not actually mold. I mean, I scraped it off, but it was fine. Your mileage may vary, and you may still wish to be cautious because it's not like my cheesemonger looked at your cheese, but there you go.
posted by The Michael The at 10:54 AM on December 13, 2014

I believe XMLicious has it. You get that with parmesean as well as some aged cheddar. It's not mold and it's fine to eat.
posted by Diablevert at 11:11 AM on December 13, 2014

Best answer: On aged cheddar something like that's not mold, it's cheese crystals. Most aged cheddars that I've seen (that aren't highly processed industrial products) have it to some degree on the external surfaces unless they are completely enclosed in wax. here's a google image search to compare to. Here's a helpful discussion that goes a bit beyond the wiki article already linked.
posted by advil at 11:13 AM on December 13, 2014

Best answer: Cheese crystals! I have bought that cheese many times and it always develops some. I kind of like the crunch they add :)
posted by joan_holloway at 12:27 PM on December 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

Meh, I'd trim it and eat it.

Bake it in some mac and cheese.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:03 PM on December 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is it crunchy and salty? Embiggening your second pic, I really don't think it's mould. I also don't think your wife has been treated to enough good cheeses throughout her life.
posted by kmennie at 2:23 PM on December 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I worked at a specialty cheese shop for nine months and people paid $25 per pound for cheese with that white stuff. It's not mold at all. That is exactly what aged cheddar is supposed to look like. The white crunchy crystals are clusters of an amino acid called tyrosine, which is not only delicious, but good for you. If you scrape it off, you're scraping the value off the cheese (though the crystals are throughout the cheese as well.) That cheese would be especially good with a dry red.
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 3:03 PM on December 13, 2014 [10 favorites]