THIS IS AN ANTI-CAKING AGENT HATE ACCOUNT. MY CHEESE WON’T MELT PROPERLY >:{

ERADICATE CELLULOSE AND STARCH IN MY BAGS OF SHREDDED CHEESE RRRAAAHHHHHHHHH

  • First Majestic Comet
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1759 months ago

    Okay that’s fine then, you can just buy a block of cheese and grate it yourself. There are these things called cheese gradters which exist for that very purpose.

    You can even, get this, use them to slice the cheese thinly using the slicing part of them.

    I know wild right.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      15
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Wait a second, these are made for grating cheese? And that’s their main purpose?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      119 months ago

      Highly recommend getting a hand grater like the ones they use to shred Parmesan cheese in restaurants. Doesn’t work well with soft cheese but it’s great for things like old cheddar

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
      link
      fedilink
      89 months ago

      I don’t like the box graters like this one. OXO and Ikea both make nice ones that fit over a container to catch the grate. The OXO has eaten bits of my fingers, though.

      • ozebb
        link
        fedilink
        English
        39 months ago

        There’s a trick to using box graters that most people don’t know (I certainly didn’t until recently)

        • Lay a towel or some parchment paper in a sheet pan (optional)
        • Lay the grater on the pan
        • With your non dominant hand, hold the handle of the grater and the rim of the sheet pan
        • With your dominant hand, grate, pushing away from you + into the countertop

        The mechanics of pushing down/away are much better than holding the thing upright, dangling it over a bowl or whatever. Easy to just push with your palm too (and keep your fingers out of the way).

    • 56!
      link
      fedilink
      59 months ago

      I just chop the cheese into small bits. One less thing to wash, and pretty much just as fast.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          69 months ago

          You ever try to hand wash a grater? It’s not impossible but I’ll take a chopper to wash any day of the week.

        • 56!
          link
          fedilink
          39 months ago

          I usually chop other stuff as well as the cheese. I started doing this when I didn’t have a grater, and discovered it wasn’t as slow/awkward as I had assumed. The result isn’t the same as grating, but it does the job most of the time.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    769 months ago

    Just buy a brick of cheese and shred your own! It’s not that hard and you get more cheese for the same money.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    709 months ago

    I, too, hate anti-caking agents in my cheese, also cheese without anti-caking agents, and even cheese with caking agents. I am vegan btw, I don’t eat cheese.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        219 months ago

        we can only be friends if you keep eating the exact same amount of cheese or less, I’ll not have my stance be nulled by some renegade.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          129 months ago

          Fair point. I’m not eating more cheese to spite you, I’ll just eat any extra unwanted cheese you (being any hypothetical vegans I might eat with) got served that would have to go to the trash otherwise.

          But I respect your cause, and while I’m not fully vegan I do try to eat animal products mindfully and reduce my consumption of them.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          39 months ago

          How do you feel about precision fermentation to make milk products. Presumably this will eventually make cheese we can purchase made entirely without animals. Will you partake in this cheese or just keep the no cheese lifestyle?

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            59 months ago

            I absolutely will. I am actually really interested in a lot of food science stuff and was wondering whether or not you could mimic the sort of processes that create milk and stuff, and lo and behold people be doing it! Pretty neat stuff. Although I still get the feeling you could probably make some decent “cheese” by aging various types of tofus, but I’ve yet to begin experimenting there. And am also scared of poisoning myself.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    509 months ago

    If you’re not getting anti caking agents in shredded cheese, then what do you expect the pre-shredded cheese to do?
    Might as well get a block and shred it yourself.

  • Th4tGuyII
    link
    fedilink
    439 months ago

    If you didn’t have the anti-caking agent, the cheese would just cake up into one solid mass, making the whole “pre-shredded” part literally meaningless…

    If you want shredded cheese without anti-caking agents, just shred your own - it’s cheaper, and only requires a grater and a bit of extra time over pre-shredded.

    • Norah - She/They
      link
      fedilink
      English
      25
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      It literally doesn’t. Like yeah, it sticks together into clumps, but you can easily break them back up into shreds with your hands. Source: I’ve worked a bunch of pizza jobs, both on the high and low end. Guess what, it literally is not cheaper to pay the labour for someone on staff to shred it, at least here in Australia where we pay real bloody wages.

      Also, to the OP, “pizza mix” cheese usually is your best bet. They’ll sometimes label it as “meltable mix”.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        59 months ago

        Ive worked pizza jobs and I can’t think of why you WOULDNT slice the cheese in-house, it takes less than five minutes to do!

        At least at our place it was the same machine that stirred the dough. Cut a block into 1/8 slices (a 2 min job max) and then feed each chunk into the chute and let gravity do it’s thing

        Fresh sliced cheese for pizzas in five minutes or less, and it adds like 2 dishes to the pile

        To add further to what makes “pizza mix” or “meltable mix” better is that it uses LOW MOISTURE mozzarella cheese. Regular mozz is super wet and doesn’t melt the way you expect pizza cheese to

        I make my own mix at home using 1/4 lb blocks of low moisture full fat (can get at Walmart shockingly often) and 1/6 lb of a sharp cheddar

        • The How™
          link
          fedilink
          49 months ago

          Home pizza hobbiest here. I use low-moisture part-skim pre-shredded mozz, but put it on the pie frozen. As long as there’s not too much grease from the toppings I rarely get problems with the cheese splitting.

        • Norah - She/They
          link
          fedilink
          English
          3
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          The places I worked had floor mixers, running on 3-phase, that could do 50kg of dough at a time. They have mesh guards that lower into place, without which they won’t run. Because they will pull your entire arm in and break each bone in a dozen places before you can even blink. I have never, ever seen one with an external powered attachment drive like a kitchenaid, or at least never seen it used. A shredder that powerful would almost certainly be illegal under our workplace safety laws (Australia), it would probably rip someone’s face off if their hair got caught.

          Besides that, it is still labour cost and time to do. When that person could instead be doing something better. The highest end pizza place I worked at would cook everything in wood-fired ovens. Pre-shred was used on the cheaper pizzas. It was used as a base on pizzas that had things like pulled pork and shredded lamb too. We had real, buffalo mozzarella on some, as well as bocconcini & fresh, local goat’s cheese. We’d also go through 4-5 full hotel pans of it on a Friday and Saturday night. Would make our own pasta in house every day too. There Was Not The Time. Yet it never stopped us packing a 120 top three times over with dozens of orders for takeout per hour every weekend. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

          Also, I’ve never seen anything other than low moisture mozzarella sold shredded. Maybe that’s just me.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        49 months ago

        But almost no one would buy it if it looked all clumped up like that in the package in the store.

        • Norah - She/They
          link
          fedilink
          English
          29 months ago

          I don’t know, I live in Australia, maybe Americans are just that whingey about it? But outside of the cheapest supermarket home brands, most shredded cheese here hasn’t got caking agents. As far as I can tell, people buy it just bloody fine mate. Imagine being this stuck up about shitty, horrible cheese.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            29 months ago

            Yeah, I’m not defending any cheese choice; everyone can do themselves. I was just remarking that food appearance heavily influences sales, and everyone is susceptible to that bias.

    • Cris
      link
      fedilink
      English
      59 months ago

      Not sure if you were joking, but you can actually do that, and it works great for applications like scratch stovetop Mac and cheese when you don’t have any block cheese but don’t want a grainy sauce. Just add your pre-shredded cheese to a cup with milk and stir periodically until you’re ready to use the milk. Pour the milk with dissolved starch into the sauce, and then add the cheese when ready

  • Snot Flickerman
    link
    fedilink
    English
    16
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

    There Is No Ethical Consumption of Cheese Under Capitalism!

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        29 months ago

        Sorry, friend. Didn’t get that from the pics

        It looks like you crossed out pictures of caked cheese

        So clumpy. Mmmmmm

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    19 months ago

    that’s interesting, I didn’t know there was addtl starch in shredded cheese. that might explain why that recipe we tried failed. I suspected that we added too much starch