May 4, 2025 • 10 mins
Cheesy and Fondue learn about different ways to store cheese. We're talking clay pots, caves, wax, brine, paper and cloth. We find some items you can buy. And of course, we tell a very cheesy joke!
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Why is cheddar the most dangerous of all the cheeses? Because it is very sharp!
Show Notes
amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1J3I67AG511S8?ref_=wl_share
https://cheese-store.com/history-and-evolution-of-cheese-packaging/?utm
https://www.paciottisalumeria.it/en/prodotto/il-cocciuto-caciocavallo-in-argilla/
https://academyofcheese.org/cloth-bound-cheddar/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdeón_cheese
https://www.frescaitalia.com/product/robiola-di-capra-en-foglie-di-fico
https://www.cheese.com/ficaccio/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Just Cheesy (00:02):
The podcast, presented by Just Cheesy Productions.
Hi there. I'm your host, Fondue.
And I'm Cheesy.
In this week's episode, we'regoing to learn about different ways
to store cheese. We're talkingclay pots, caves, wax, brine, paper,
(00:25):
and clay. We've even curatedour very own list on Amazon and the
link is in our show notes. Andof course, no episode would be complete
without our very cheesy joke.
So cheesy.
Stay tuned for episode 181.Wrapped, on just cheesy the podcast.
(00:50):
I don't know about you,Cheesy, but for the most part, I
don't give a second thought tothe way my cheese is packaged.
No,
most everything I buy comes in plastic.
Yeah,
but did you know that theinvention of plastic wrap was pretty
new?
Really?
It is, and it was in 1949.According to Rocketindustrial.com
some of the earlier methodsinclude clay pots, cloth, wax, and
(01:11):
cheese paper. And it seems tome that people were storing cheese
in whatever they could find.According to cheese-store.com they
stored it in things likeleaves and animal hides, and they
even covered it with thingslike bark and straw. In the Middle
Ages, they used woodenbarrels. And in the 19th century,
we see the advent of tin foil.And the biggest reason that we're
(01:35):
interested in this is becauseit actually needs to be stored in
some way. Now, obviously, theywere making cheese because milk spoiled
too quickly, and a lot of thematerials allowed the cheese a level
of protection against externalcontaminants, which made it possible
to transport it and store itfor longer periods.
Right.
Clay pots can be found all theway back to the Neolithic period.
(01:58):
Holy cow.
Cheese could be stored andpreserved in pots by either wrapping
individual wheels in salt orimmersing them in a salty brine.
And the pots could even beburied underground to protect the
contents from going bad in hot climates.
Really?
And there's even some cheesethat is stored this way today on
a website called picatesalumeria.it
(02:18):
sure,
there's a cheese that is stillmade and kept in a clay jar.
Wow.
I'm not sure how to pronouncethis one, but it looks like Coquito
is the name of the cheese.
Oh, my goodness.
And it's a stretched curdcheese, and it actually is seasoned,
and then it's protected by ashell of raw earth. And they said
(02:39):
in this case, a layer of clayis not spread directly on the rind,
but it's matured for a fewweeks and it's enclosed in a pot
that's been worked on a lathe.The reason the clay pot works so
well is that it has theabsence of oxygen and it keeps the
temperature and humidityconstant. Cheesecloth is another
method of wrapping cheese.
It is.
(02:59):
And we covered a lot aboutcheesecloth back in episode 149.
Oh, yeah.
According toacademyofcheese.org there is a cloth
bound cheddar. This cheesedates back as far as the 16th century.
Holy cow.
The cheese is made in roundtruckles using cow's milk and it's
bandaged in muslin to protectit as it matures.
(03:20):
Wow.
So we've talked about clay andwe've talked about cloth, but something
that goes back even furtherare leaves. And just like all the
other methods, one of thefundamental reasons was the protection
against external contaminants.And today there are still some cheeses
that are wrapped in leaves.
Really?
Bannon cheese is a Frenchgoat's milk cheese. It's dipped in.
(03:41):
Here comes some French eau devie, which is French for spirit or
water of life.
Sure.
It's a clear, colorless fruit Brandy.
Yum.
After the soaking in brandy,it's placed in some chestnut leaves
and it's tied with raffia.There's a Spanish cheese called queso
de val dian. This is a bluecheese and it comes from Leon. And
(04:02):
this one can actually bewrapped in either chestnut leaves
or sycamore maple. Robioladicapra is a goat moon milk cheese.
Okay.
And it is wrapped in figleaves. There's one. And again, I'm
sorry about the pronunciation.This is Italian soft cheese called
focaccio and it's also wrappedin fig leaves.
Yum.
The leaves not only protectthe cheeses from the elements, but
(04:24):
they also give them a littlebit of a taste and a lot of aroma
on the finish.
Wow.
(05:21):
Leaf wrapped cheeses are notsponsors, but if they were, they're
at would go right here. Now weknow a little bit more about some
of the other wrappings. One,of course, is wax. And Baby Bell
is a wax rind cheese.
Oh, yeah.
And Edam is also one that isstored in wax. Foil has produced
a wrapper for quite a fewdifferent cheeses. And currently
(05:43):
one is called the LaughingCow. Each little wedge is individually
wrapped in foil.
Yum.
According toparoleedeformage.com and I could
be messing that up. There's alink in the show notes.
Oh, you got it.
They talk a little bit aboutstoring cheese properly.
Really?
They talk about the obvious.The refrigerator.
Yeah.
Cheese likes to be Cold. Butdrying properties of refrigerators
(06:05):
are not good, so it cannot bein contact with the ambient air in
the appliance. It said. Okay,so you don't want to leave it unwrapped.
Oh, sure.
Plus, leaving it unwrapped canalso leave some weird smells in your
fridge.
Oh, yeah.
They suggest storing it incheese paper in the vegetable crisper.
Oh, yeah.
They also say you can put itin Tupperware, but you should wrap
each one individually in itsown box.
(06:27):
Oh, good idea.
They recommend glass as apreference to plastic. Plastic because
it allows you to keep thehumidity better and avoid aromas
and bad smells. And if youhave a cheese platter, they say keep
the original packaging if youhave the ability, because then you
could put it back in there andkeep it individually.
Oh, yeah.
So let's talk a little bitabout plastic.
Okay.
I know currently how I keep mycheeses, especially when I do American
(06:50):
style block of cheese, I wrapit very tightly in Saran Wrap.
Oh, yeah.
And I do that because I took atrip once to Cabot Creamery and that's
what they actually recommendedto keep it from getting too many
smells in the fridge andkeeping it from going moldy.
Oh, yeah.
But plastic was a relativelynew invention. Like we said earlier,
1949 was when it kind of brokeinto the industry. And as far as
(07:15):
packaged shredded cheese, thefirst one to do that was Sargento
in 1958, according toBizTimes.com Wow. And it wasn't until
1986 that Sargento introducedwhat they called a zip pack, the
first resealable packaging forits products. And that wasn't very
long ago.
No.
One of the most famous plasticwrapped cheeses didn't actually come
(07:37):
in individual slices. Originally.
It didn't.
In 1948, Kraft Americanpasteurized processed cheese came
in a two pound block. And whatI thought was really interesting
is that the slices are notactually slices off of a block.
They're not.
In 1950, Kraft introducedthese slices, but they're actually
formed separately in manufacturing.
(07:58):
Wow.
Originally, they did come inslices, but they were not wrapped
individually, which didn'thappen until they developed a machine
in 1956. At one point in itshistory, block cheese used to come
in boxes. They were first usedin 1890 to ship cheese from Europe.
They're usually made of maple,ash or hickory, and they were nailed
(08:20):
to pine wood pieces on the topand the bottom. According to the
antiquejourney.com these boxeswould actually be printed with the
name of the farm or thefactory and the type of cheese. The
boxes help the cheese fromflipping over during transport.
Nice.
Cheeses like Provel andVelveeta are what they call processed
cheese. Say what you willabout these cheeses, but they have
(08:41):
a very long shelf life. Andthe mass produced nature dramatically
lowers their costs. Most oftenthey're served in a block, but they
can also be sliced andseparated by wax paper. A couple
of newer ways to wrap orpackage your cheese is vacuum packaging.
The vacuum creates an airtightseal around the cheese.
Wow.
There's also one that welearned about called modified atmosphere
(09:05):
packaging.
Whoa.
And they say this is a gamechanger for the industry.
Really?
This replaces the air insidethe packaging with a specific gas
mixture, typically nitrogenand carbon dioxide. According to
plyveneer.com this controlsthe atmosphere and it extends the
shelf life and maintains their quality.
Nice.
We've been seeing a few reallycool things showing up.
(09:25):
We have.
According to Real Simple.com,there's a storage box that keeps
cheese perfectly.
Yeah.
To me it resembles a recipe box.
Yeah.
But there's also a few othertypes that you can buy on Amazon.
The plastic keeper is called acheese vault. There's also a wooden
one called a cheese grotto.And then there's even a pot or a
stoneware pot that keepsshredded parmesan cheese.
(09:47):
Wow.
Amazon also has some butcherpaper and some cheese storage bags.
Or you can even use parchmentpaper from the grocery store.
Oh, yeah.
We've got a link in our shownotes to our curated list on Amazon
called Cheese Storage. Youknow, we've had a couple of others.
The Gift of Cheese. We've hadone called Golden Cheese and some
of our very favorites. Soplease check it out. Out.
(10:07):
I'm ready for a joke Fondue.
Okay. Why is American cheeseso good at R and B?
I don't know.
Because it is smooth andindividually wrapped. Get it wrapped.
Yeah, it was kind of dumb.
Oh, I know it was kind ofdumb. I probably should have went
with this.
Yeah.
What's cheese's favorite music type?
Who knows?
R and Brie. That one's cliche.Maybe, but it is a little bit cheesy.
(10:37):
Thanks for listening to JustCheesy the podcast cast episode 181.
Wrap.
Thank you.
Don't forget to check out ourshow notes where we have a link to
our very favorite items onAmazon and cheesy.
Everybody.
The podcast, presented by Just Cheesy Productions.
Hi there. I'm your host, Fondue.
And I'm Cheesy.
In this week's episode, we'regoing to learn about different ways
to store cheese. We're talkingclay pots, caves, wax, brine, paper,
(00:25):
and clay. We've even curatedour very own list on Amazon and the
link is in our show notes. Andof course, no episode would be complete
without our very cheesy joke.
So cheesy.
Stay tuned for episode 181.Wrapped, on just cheesy the podcast.
(00:50):
I don't know about you,Cheesy, but for the most part, I
don't give a second thought tothe way my cheese is packaged.
No,
most everything I buy comes in plastic.
Yeah,
but did you know that theinvention of plastic wrap was pretty
new?
Really?
It is, and it was in 1949.According to Rocketindustrial.com
some of the earlier methodsinclude clay pots, cloth, wax, and
(01:11):
cheese paper. And it seems tome that people were storing cheese
in whatever they could find.According to cheese-store.com they
stored it in things likeleaves and animal hides, and they
even covered it with thingslike bark and straw. In the Middle
Ages, they used woodenbarrels. And in the 19th century,
we see the advent of tin foil.And the biggest reason that we're
(01:35):
interested in this is becauseit actually needs to be stored in
some way. Now, obviously, theywere making cheese because milk spoiled
too quickly, and a lot of thematerials allowed the cheese a level
of protection against externalcontaminants, which made it possible
to transport it and store itfor longer periods.
Right.
Clay pots can be found all theway back to the Neolithic period.
(01:58):
Holy cow.
Cheese could be stored andpreserved in pots by either wrapping
individual wheels in salt orimmersing them in a salty brine.
And the pots could even beburied underground to protect the
contents from going bad in hot climates.
Really?
And there's even some cheesethat is stored this way today on
a website called picatesalumeria.it
(02:18):
sure,
there's a cheese that is stillmade and kept in a clay jar.
Wow.
I'm not sure how to pronouncethis one, but it looks like Coquito
is the name of the cheese.
Oh, my goodness.
And it's a stretched curdcheese, and it actually is seasoned,
and then it's protected by ashell of raw earth. And they said
(02:39):
in this case, a layer of clayis not spread directly on the rind,
but it's matured for a fewweeks and it's enclosed in a pot
that's been worked on a lathe.The reason the clay pot works so
well is that it has theabsence of oxygen and it keeps the
temperature and humidityconstant. Cheesecloth is another
method of wrapping cheese.
It is.
(02:59):
And we covered a lot aboutcheesecloth back in episode 149.
Oh, yeah.
According toacademyofcheese.org there is a cloth
bound cheddar. This cheesedates back as far as the 16th century.
Holy cow.
The cheese is made in roundtruckles using cow's milk and it's
bandaged in muslin to protectit as it matures.
(03:20):
Wow.
So we've talked about clay andwe've talked about cloth, but something
that goes back even furtherare leaves. And just like all the
other methods, one of thefundamental reasons was the protection
against external contaminants.And today there are still some cheeses
that are wrapped in leaves.
Really?
Bannon cheese is a Frenchgoat's milk cheese. It's dipped in.
(03:41):
Here comes some French eau devie, which is French for spirit or
water of life.
Sure.
It's a clear, colorless fruit Brandy.
Yum.
After the soaking in brandy,it's placed in some chestnut leaves
and it's tied with raffia.There's a Spanish cheese called queso
de val dian. This is a bluecheese and it comes from Leon. And
(04:02):
this one can actually bewrapped in either chestnut leaves
or sycamore maple. Robioladicapra is a goat moon milk cheese.
Okay.
And it is wrapped in figleaves. There's one. And again, I'm
sorry about the pronunciation.This is Italian soft cheese called
focaccio and it's also wrappedin fig leaves.
Yum.
The leaves not only protectthe cheeses from the elements, but
(04:24):
they also give them a littlebit of a taste and a lot of aroma
on the finish.
Wow.
(05:21):
Leaf wrapped cheeses are notsponsors, but if they were, they're
at would go right here. Now weknow a little bit more about some
of the other wrappings. One,of course, is wax. And Baby Bell
is a wax rind cheese.
Oh, yeah.
And Edam is also one that isstored in wax. Foil has produced
a wrapper for quite a fewdifferent cheeses. And currently
(05:43):
one is called the LaughingCow. Each little wedge is individually
wrapped in foil.
Yum.
According toparoleedeformage.com and I could
be messing that up. There's alink in the show notes.
Oh, you got it.
They talk a little bit aboutstoring cheese properly.
Really?
They talk about the obvious.The refrigerator.
Yeah.
Cheese likes to be Cold. Butdrying properties of refrigerators
(06:05):
are not good, so it cannot bein contact with the ambient air in
the appliance. It said. Okay,so you don't want to leave it unwrapped.
Oh, sure.
Plus, leaving it unwrapped canalso leave some weird smells in your
fridge.
Oh, yeah.
They suggest storing it incheese paper in the vegetable crisper.
Oh, yeah.
They also say you can put itin Tupperware, but you should wrap
each one individually in itsown box.
(06:27):
Oh, good idea.
They recommend glass as apreference to plastic. Plastic because
it allows you to keep thehumidity better and avoid aromas
and bad smells. And if youhave a cheese platter, they say keep
the original packaging if youhave the ability, because then you
could put it back in there andkeep it individually.
Oh, yeah.
So let's talk a little bitabout plastic.
Okay.
I know currently how I keep mycheeses, especially when I do American
(06:50):
style block of cheese, I wrapit very tightly in Saran Wrap.
Oh, yeah.
And I do that because I took atrip once to Cabot Creamery and that's
what they actually recommendedto keep it from getting too many
smells in the fridge andkeeping it from going moldy.
Oh, yeah.
But plastic was a relativelynew invention. Like we said earlier,
1949 was when it kind of brokeinto the industry. And as far as
(07:15):
packaged shredded cheese, thefirst one to do that was Sargento
in 1958, according toBizTimes.com Wow. And it wasn't until
1986 that Sargento introducedwhat they called a zip pack, the
first resealable packaging forits products. And that wasn't very
long ago.
No.
One of the most famous plasticwrapped cheeses didn't actually come
(07:37):
in individual slices. Originally.
It didn't.
In 1948, Kraft Americanpasteurized processed cheese came
in a two pound block. And whatI thought was really interesting
is that the slices are notactually slices off of a block.
They're not.
In 1950, Kraft introducedthese slices, but they're actually
formed separately in manufacturing.
(07:58):
Wow.
Originally, they did come inslices, but they were not wrapped
individually, which didn'thappen until they developed a machine
in 1956. At one point in itshistory, block cheese used to come
in boxes. They were first usedin 1890 to ship cheese from Europe.
They're usually made of maple,ash or hickory, and they were nailed
(08:20):
to pine wood pieces on the topand the bottom. According to the
antiquejourney.com these boxeswould actually be printed with the
name of the farm or thefactory and the type of cheese. The
boxes help the cheese fromflipping over during transport.
Nice.
Cheeses like Provel andVelveeta are what they call processed
cheese. Say what you willabout these cheeses, but they have
(08:41):
a very long shelf life. Andthe mass produced nature dramatically
lowers their costs. Most oftenthey're served in a block, but they
can also be sliced andseparated by wax paper. A couple
of newer ways to wrap orpackage your cheese is vacuum packaging.
The vacuum creates an airtightseal around the cheese.
Wow.
There's also one that welearned about called modified atmosphere
(09:05):
packaging.
Whoa.
And they say this is a gamechanger for the industry.
Really?
This replaces the air insidethe packaging with a specific gas
mixture, typically nitrogenand carbon dioxide. According to
plyveneer.com this controlsthe atmosphere and it extends the
shelf life and maintains their quality.
Nice.
We've been seeing a few reallycool things showing up.
(09:25):
We have.
According to Real Simple.com,there's a storage box that keeps
cheese perfectly.
Yeah.
To me it resembles a recipe box.
Yeah.
But there's also a few othertypes that you can buy on Amazon.
The plastic keeper is called acheese vault. There's also a wooden
one called a cheese grotto.And then there's even a pot or a
stoneware pot that keepsshredded parmesan cheese.
(09:47):
Wow.
Amazon also has some butcherpaper and some cheese storage bags.
Or you can even use parchmentpaper from the grocery store.
Oh, yeah.
We've got a link in our shownotes to our curated list on Amazon
called Cheese Storage. Youknow, we've had a couple of others.
The Gift of Cheese. We've hadone called Golden Cheese and some
of our very favorites. Soplease check it out. Out.
(10:07):
I'm ready for a joke Fondue.
Okay. Why is American cheeseso good at R and B?
I don't know.
Because it is smooth andindividually wrapped. Get it wrapped.
Yeah, it was kind of dumb.
Oh, I know it was kind ofdumb. I probably should have went
with this.
Yeah.
What's cheese's favorite music type?
Who knows?
R and Brie. That one's cliche.Maybe, but it is a little bit cheesy.
(10:37):
Thanks for listening to JustCheesy the podcast cast episode 181.
Wrap.
Thank you.
Don't forget to check out ourshow notes where we have a link to
our very favorite items onAmazon and cheesy.
Everybody.
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