If all cheese is aged, and most are flavored from bacteria and mold, how does one determine when cheese goes bad? I’ve always sliced off the unexpected colors on light colored hard cheeses, and assumed the rest, not having beent exposed to bad bacteria, was okay. But what about blue cheeses or really foul smelling cheeses like feta? At what point does cheese go bad?
Bad cheese is in the eye of the cracker-holder. If it doesn’t look or smell right, remover the part that doesn’t look or smell right. You’ll want to cut at least 1/2 inch below mold since the mycotoxins can penetrate that deep and some mycotoxins are the most potent carcinogens ever tested. For soft cheeses, which is anything spreadable, discard the whole thing. For cheeses that are already supposed to be moldy, look for yeasts or molds of a different color (like pink spots on a blue cheese), an unusual smell, or textural changes, like oozing or wetness that isn’t normal for that type of cheese.
When it gets its own cable TV series.
Tonight, on “When Cheese Goes Bad”, we explore the lives of two troubled cheeses, abandoned at birth and put up for adoption, who became delinquents and would later go on to pull one of the biggest bank heists in history…
(seriously though, that’s a good question and I await the answer as well)
Unless it’s swiss. then you’ll probably want to chuck it. With the holes, the mold will be able to travel much faster.