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In a well-aged cheese, all of these elements are in careful, stable balance But heat throws the whole thing off Everything may seem to be going all right at first—the cheese gradually softens, turning more and more liquid Then, suddenly, at around 90°F, the liquefied fat comes together into greasy pools and separates from the water and proteins As you continue to stir the melted cheese, the proteins—which are suspended in whatever water hasn’t yet evaporated—glue themselves together with the help of calcium into long, tangled strands, forming the stretchy curds that you find in string cheese or stretched mozzarella What was once whole and well has now completely separated into fat, protein, and water, and unless you’ve got a $5,000 homogenizer on hand, it ain’t coming back together Cheese products like American and Velveeta have stabilizers added to them, along with extra liquid and protein, to keep them stable I microwaved a small chunk of American cheese on a plate next to a block of extra-sharp cheddar The American stayed smooth, while the cheddar broke Perhaps we can learn some lessons from the former American cheese (left) has chemical salts that help it melt smoothly Cheddar (right) breaks as it melts To get a cheesy sauce that’s shiny and smooth, not greasy or stringy, requires three things: • Keeping the fat globules from separating out and pooling • Adding moisture to thin the texture • Figuring out a way to keep the proteins from breaking apart and rejoining into long strands Well, how the heck do you do all that? Luckily for us, all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again In this case, I didn’t want cheese that would go rapidly from solid to liquid I wanted cheese that softened linearly over time, which meant that a starch should be my thickener and stabilizer of choice Some cheese sauce recipes call for béchamel—a flourthickened milk-based sauce—as the base I don’t like how it works out both in terms of texture (a cheesy béchamel is ...American cheese (left) has chemical salts that help it melt smoothly Cheddar (right) breaks as it melts To get a cheesy sauce that’s shiny and smooth, not greasy... or stringy, requires three things: • Keeping the fat globules from separating out and pooling • Adding moisture to thin the texture • Figuring out a way to keep the proteins from breaking apart and rejoining into long strands... recipes call for béchamel—a flourthickened milk-based sauce—as the base I don’t like how it works out both in terms of texture (a cheesy béchamel is
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