What Is Your Favorite Cheese?

“What is Your Favorite Cheese?”... This is a question that I hear at least once a week and always at any cheese event I host.

For someone who spends a career eating, studying and selling cheese, it’s a tough question and one with no answer… I generally answer with “The last one I ate”. However, that’s not entirely true. Like everyone else, I do have my favorites.

Were I to pick a “style” of cheese, it would be aged sheep milk cheese. The tang and

lanolin creaminess of aged sheep milk cheese is nothing short of sublime.

In 2010, I attended a seminar that featured Pacific Northwest cheeses. One of the cheeses we tasted was an aged sheep milk cheese wrapped in walnut leaves made by Sally Jackson. To this day, it remains the most amazing cheese I ever tasted. All other sheep milk cheeses I taste are measured by that one cheese. Sadly Sally Jackson failed to stay up-to-date with food safety measures and was forced out of business a few years later. (Sally got her start with a grant during the Jimmy Carter administration.)

The style that I use most often is Cheddar… from mild to so sharp “it’ll take the back of your head off”. The Man swoons when I simply mention Cheddar… gotta keep The Man happy. Our two favorite producers are Cabot and Tillamook.

For casseroles, mac n cheese and especially potato dishes, I prefer to mix Cheddar with an Alpine-style cheese, sometimes called “Swiss” here in the US. Alpine-style cheeses like Comte AOP, Le Gruyere AOP and Emmenthaler AOP are known for the meltability (a “side effect” that occurs because the curds are gently cooked after the separation from the whey). The combination of the two cheeses also stops the separation that occurs when you melt Cheddar.

But to answer the question of “What is your favorite cheese?” here are my top ten favorite cheeses, in no particular order:

 

 

• Burrata
• Flagsheep
• Comte
• Alp Blossom

  

• Ossau Iraty
• Parmigiano Reggiano
• Mt. Tam
• Rogue River Blue (duh)
• Parrano
• l’amuse signature Overjarig

There is no cheese I have tasted that I didn’t fall in love with… except  Serra da Estrala.

In addition to being a member of the Internationale Guilde des Fromagers (Jura and Garde) and an American Cheese Society Certified Cheese Professional, I am a Certified ServSafe Food Production Manager with certifications that also include ServSafe Certified Instructor and Proctor. I am available for cheese events, cheese program development, cheese training, food safety training and 3rd party food safety auditing. See my About Me and Resume pages for more details or call me at 360 921 9908 to discuss availability. 

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