I decided to buy some food items as gifts for my employees and friends and some to
keep.
After reading here and other places about Cheese Curds I got five packages to give as gifts and one to keep.
I have never had cheese curds and I put them in the fridge until I checked Wiki and discovered it’s better to keep at room temp to preserve the squeakiness. I took them back out of the fridge. These are Amish Cheese Curds. I also got other cheeses, jams, pickles-both sweet and dill, peaches, pie filling, beets and I can’t even remember what else. I plan to put an assortment in a cheap basket and call it Christmas.
Did I ruin the squeakiness? Google showed that cheese curds can be used in recipes especially deep fried. Has anyone ever tried this? Tell me about Cheese Curds, please.
If you microwave refrigerated curds in the defrost setting you can regain some of the squeakyness. I have no idea how/why it works but whenever I micro’d them I always did it in defrost and it worked better than normal.
Cheese curds are best eaten fresh and not refrigerated. If you can get them directly from the cheese factory, eat them up within 48 hours. Refrigerated, they lose their squeak, dry out and turn salty.
It’s something about them being very fresh - you bite into them, and they squeak between your teeth. Like others have said, the squeakiness goes away within 48 hours, and immediately if they get cold. This is a bone of contention between Mr. Athena and I; I live 2 hours north of Cheese Curd territory, and when my relatives from Wisconsin bring me some, I leave 'em out on the counter for 2 days while I eat them, a few curds at a time. He’s sure I’m going to die from warm-cheese-curd-related illness, and refuses to eat them. I maintain they brought them for ME, not HIM, and the hell if I’m going to let him ruin my fresh curds by putting them in the fridge.
As to the OP: if you didn’t buy them from a cheese shop where they were made this morning and still warm, they’re already ruined. Well, maybe not ruined - they’ll be find to eat, but everyone will be standing around going “What’s the big deal? It’s just nuggets o’ cheese.” If you’re saying that, they’re old, or refrigerated, and you spent too much money on them. If they’re real and fresh, you will know what the big deal is about them immediately upon tasting.
And see I’m gonna go ahead and call shenanigans on the fact that refrigerated they lose their squeak.
I used to store em in the fridge for days and…again…microwaving them on defrost I was able to get them to squeak a little bit…never as much as fresh…but they WOULD squeak
Just because it hasn’t been touched on yet: deep-fried cheese curds are, indeed, a wonderful thing. They’re breaded or battered (much like mozzarrella sticks) before frying. They’re not as gooey / stringy as mozzarella sticks (and usually much smaller, as you can see from the size of the curds you’ve bought). In the past, it was unusual to find them outside of Wisconsin; now, the growth of the Culver’s restaurant chain has helped make them more popular in more of the country.
If you were to cross cheese with Styrofoam peanuts, that’s sort of the consistency of cheese curds…and sort of what they sounds like what you bite into them when they’re fresh.
The squeakiness is hard to describe, but it’s definitely there…and it’s not like Cheetos. It’s like…it’s like…squeak.
I’ve traveled a fair amount to Wausau on business, and will always go out of my way to find fried cheese curds, which (and I say this coming from the south) are sole occupants of the apex of the fried food pyramid. On one February visit we were at (what passes for) a fancy restaurant in Wausau, and horrors!, they had no fried cheese curds. Our waitress overheard us discussing this, and 20 minutes later 3 bags of hot fried cheese curds landed on our table - despite it being minus 20 with wind chill, she’d gone out to a nearby restaurant to get some. I wasn’t the one paying the bill, but I hope her tip was worthy.
A thousand times yes. There should be a labeling law so we could arrest and fine anyone who made something with shredded mozzarella and tried to call it poutine.
Cheese curds just went on my bucket list. I don’t suppose having them shipped to the East Coast would do the trick effectively, would it? Has anyone tried?
