The image says any cheese…
This is false.
There are two main categories of cheese, Acid and Rennet.
If the cheese is made with Rennet, it will melt, and sodium citrate will make it smooth and creamy.
If the cheese is made with acid, then it will never melt. It will burn first. Think Feta or similar.
The exception is very long aged cheeses. They don’t melt all that well, even though they’re made with Rennet.
Every Rennet cheese is aged, if only a few weeks, acid cheeses will spoil if aged.
I would like to subscribe to Cheese Facts
I seem to be dropping them all over this thread.
What about mozzarella? Can’t you eat it right away?
You can eat it right away. Fresh mozzarella is the stuff you’ll find in grocery stores that’s packed in water. It has a fairly short shelf life.
Low moisture mozzarella, on the other hand, is aged a bit. It also has a better cheese pull. Which is due to the aging.
The pedantic chemist in me can’t let me upvote this meme. It’s too forced. The “NaCHO” isn’t even the empirical formula.
Yeah, if you ignore the ratios, “NaCHO” represents every sodium salt of an organic compound containing only carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. There are many of these compounds:
Sodium acetate? “NaCHO.”
Baking soda? “NaCHO.”
Bar soap? “NaCHO.”
Disgusting! Learn to make a proper sauce Mornay, you uncultured barbarians! /s
Bechemel sauces are good, but they aren’t cheesy enough for something like queso or Mac and cheese
I see what you mean but did you in fact try to push the ratio of Béchamel and cheese in a Mornay to the limit? I got pretty satisfying results that way.
I’ve tinkered with it but past a certain point the consistency gets weird in my experience. Maybe it’s my combo of cheeses or something. I honestly think it’s the milk that fucks with the flavor moreso than the flour and butter. You can get it tasting alright but once you try to get it at the right thickness by adding more milk the taste just goes to hell
Then I guess I will have to make my own sodium citrate and have some kitchen experiments soon. Thanks for nudging me :)
Hey I hope you like it! Pro tip: if you’re doing a queso sauce, instead of making sodium citrate from baking soda and citric acid, use lime juice and baking soda instead. Gives it a citrusy pop that’s very welcome in anything Mexican/mexican adjacent
That sounds even better than using citric acid powder. What ratio of lime/lemon juice and baking soda do you recommend? Also, I thought about it some more and I assume it´s not a good idea to put more milk into a Mornay after the cheese has been added to and melted into the Béchamel.
Adding more milk is definitely not the way to go if I’ve learned anything lol, I just have a tough time nailing the consistency. I’ll make my bechemel really soupy and once all of the cheese is added, it’s too thick imo. I’ve never been able to nail a Mornay, I make them so infrequently my technique is probably terrible haha.
As to the sodium citrate thing, I honestly eyeball it. You don’t need much for the reaction to take place. I’d guess maybe 1/3 of a cup(~80 ml) lime juice to a teaspoon (5 ml) of baking soda. So 16:1 ish. It’s not an exact science. I usually juice two limes and use a spoon to throw a little baking soda in there.
Another thing you could do if you don’t want to buy/use straight sodium citrate is to throw a slice or two of American cheese in with your sauce. That shit is absolutely loaded with sodium citrate. Be careful with how much you use though as it will impart the flavor of American cheese into your sauce and if you use too much it can take away from the other cheeses you’re using
I just watched James Dingley’s Atomic Frontier video on cheese talk about this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bISFxFauTzM
Just wanted to pop by and say that the rest of the world is horrified that Americans eat this puddle of nonsense
It’s real cheese, it’s just got sodium citrate,
And you can make sodium citrate at home with 4.9 grams of baking soda and 3.7 grams of citric acid. Add about 15 ml of water to start the reaction and wait. The cool thing about this reaction is that there shouldn’t be any side products beyond some co2 and a little water.
Anyway, you’ll get about 5 grams of sodium citrate dissolved in water. (and you can safely boil off the water to get pure sodium citrate powder)
Which is far more than you need to make a pot of melty goodness.
Now, you could just make a béchamel and slowly melt a young cheese into it, but that’s never going to taste the same. Sodium citrate adds in just a little extra tartness, while also making the cheese so creamy that it’s kind of hard to describe for those who’ve not had it.
I am not a fan of highly processed, salt melted cheese in general but the technique you´re describing is very interesting for homemade cheese sauces made from quality cheese. However, I was under the impression that american cheese sauces often contain at least a part if not all fake cheese.
Nope. They almost all have real cheese. Usually a mild cheddar. It’s then melted with sodium citrate and pasteurized for a longer shelf life (while still being creamy and tender)
It tastes slightly more tart than straight cheddar, but that’s it. Well, slightly more tart than a mild cheddar. A sharp cheddar is just as tart, but it’s a slight difference in flavor.
Potentially information bleed over. You can use some American Singles cheese to smooth out cheeses in other dishes because it contains emulsifiers (I think, or another compound), but Nacho Cheese is a specific kind of cheese that should be free of American cheese byproduct
Babes, the Swiss love a bit of fondue.
Not to mention the swiss invented “American” cheese. Heavily processed food and cheese sauces are ubiquitous, this isn’t a USA thing
There is no sodium citrate in a proper swiss fondue afaik.
It’s just a form of citric acid – if you put lemon juice or wine in (which a lot of recipes, including the one my swiss grandfather uses, do) then you get the same result.
I don´t think wine melts cheese just like the salt sodium citrate but the acid from the wine combined with the extra alcohol from the Kirschwasser also solves the problem :)
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