Culinary Blog
Culinary dishes with Melted cheese
Melted cheese is something that people around the world have long adored. It’s a simple, tasty, and utterly wonderful thing that has been added to dishes for centuries. Soft, warm, salty, and rich, we love eating a dish where melted cheese is the centerpiece. We’ve rounded up five of our favorite melted cheese dishes, and in this article, we’re going to talk about each one of them, and what makes them great.
BEIRUT KICK-Eric's specialty-
Beirut Kick is a Lebanese dish in which a thin wrap of flatbread is filled with assorted different toppings according to what the customer might prefer. Naturally, we love to use cheese! In Eric's recipe, Akkawi cheese is used for making the Saj melted cheese. It’s a solid, crumbly cheese that’s made, stored, and transported in brine. If you struggle to get that, a very similar counterpart would be feta cheese - they have similar flavors, in that they’re both very salty. Akkawi cheese is actually so salty that a number of recipes suggest that you should rinse the salt content from the cheese by repeatedly soaking in freshwater - we would recommend this if you’re unaccustomed to the taste of Akkawi cheese.
CHEESE WHEEL PASTA
The Cheese wheel pasta is the newest trend in show-cooking the past couple of years- We enjoyed watching it being made in front of us for the first time! Essentially, the dish is simple. Cooked pasta is added to a semi-hollowed wheel of cheese, where it is tossed in cheese that has been freshly grated from the wheel it is sitting in. The cheese melts and intermingles with the pasta, creating a wonderfully cheesy dish. The cheese used is typically parmesan. This is an Italian hard cheese that is somewhat granular and crumbly. It is made from cow’s milk and is generally aged for at least twelve months to give it the distinctive flavor that you would recognize. It is typically quite salty, as well as being very sharp, and a little fruity. The cheese is generally used to sprinkle on top of assorted different pasta dishes, so it’s right at home in this dish.
FONDUE
Fondue is a famous dish that has risen to popularity among cheese lovers because it’s one of the few dishes that’s as obvious as it is about the fact that cheese is the centerpiece. Fondue is a melting pot of a number of different types of cheese and seasoning. Together, the meal is a rich and uniquely flavored affair that cheese-lovers cannot get enough of. The dish is typically from Switzerland, which means that a number of swiss alpine cheeses often go into the fondue pot to be shared by anyone that’s eating there. With that said, though, everyone has their own recipe. Generally, the two kinds of cheese that are used the most in fondue are Gruyere and Emmentaler. Gruyere varies a lot over the time that it takes to mature and age, though the general tasting notes are that it is fairly sweet, while also being a little salty. Emmentaler, though, is a yellow, medium-hard cheese from the Emmental region of Switzerland. Emmentaler has a savory taste that, while fairly distinctive, isn’t too strong in a piece of the cheese itself. When mixed with Gruyere and seasonings, the final fondue pot is generally considered to be quite savory, cheesy, and rich, without being overly pungent.
QUESO FUNDIDO
Queso Fundido is a dish that you may not have heard of - it’s quite obscure, even among lovers of Mexican food. The dish is often compared to fondue, and we can see the similarities between the two cultural icons of food. The dish is made from a combination of hot melted cheese and a meat sauce. The meat sauce is typically a mixture of chorizo, onion, chili, and other typically Mexican ingredients, while the cheese sauce is typically made from Oaxaca cheese. The dish originates in the northern regions of Mexico, as well as the Southwestern United States, where it was originally made as a simple campfire dish. The two sauces are made fresh at the same time and then combined immediately before serving. The cheese sauce is often grilled just before serving or served en flambe. This results in the cheese being melted, while also having small, crispy charred spots on top of the dish. It is typically served in a metal or ceramic dish, to better distribute the heat through the food. Oaxaca cheese is common in the making of this dish, though the actual cheese blend used varies from chef to chef. Oaxaca is a white, semihard Mexican cheese. It’s made from cow milk and is produced in a similar way to mozzarella, to make a cheese that tastes quite similar, while having a similar texture. It is creamy, rich, and stringy when melted.
