You can consider yourself a connoisseur of cheese. But the reality is that we all have a lot to learn when it comes to storing, eating, and pairing our favorite foods.
Edward Hancock, founder of cheesegeek, an online cheese retailer that delivers British artisanal cheeses directly to customers’ doors, shared his expert advice on how to make the most of your cheese-eating experience.
Speaking to FEMAIL, 39-year-old Edward revealed that there is an ideal way to create a cheese board and the order in which it should be eaten.
Edward also reveals why we should avoid sticky foil when storing cheese and how they can and should be combined with a nice bottle of white wine.
Have only four or five cheeses on a cheese board
1. Sparkenhoe Red Leicester, 2. Stithians, 3. Stichelton, 4. Comte, 5. Vacherin
When I make a cheese board, I personally like to have four to five cheeses and nice big pieces, not small pieces of more styles of cheese.
Four or five give you enough chance to show a different variety of cheeses, such as hard, soft and blue, as well as maybe goat’s or sheep’s milk cheese and some different color, like Yarg’s nettle or Old Winchester’s orange.
Start with goat cheese
Your palate is delicate and will do gymnastics as it makes its way through a cheese board.
If you start with blue cheeses or spicy soft cheeses in the style of Brie or cheeses with washed crust, then there is no going back.
You want to start with more delicate cheeses to make it easier, so make cheeses from fresh goat’s milk or cheeses like Lancashire and Cheshire.
If you end up with them, you’ll think they’re tasteless, but they’re not, they’re just more shy and need one at a time.
I would tend to choose semi-soft and semi-hard cheeses to start with, like St Helena and Kirkhams Lancashire, followed by really big ripe cheddar or aged gouda like Pitchfork or Old Winchester, then finish with soft cheese like Baron Bigod and blue cheese like Stichletton.
But I would also be very adaptable to seasonality, so around spring let’s put fresh goat’s milk cheese in front, and in mid-summer it’s hard to beat a 2-year-old Comte or a mature Gruyere.
Maybe in the winter you need a washed crust, like Epoisses, or of course the most seasonal cheese of them all, Vacherin.
Store your cheese at 8 degrees
In your stomach. As quickly as possible.
But other than that, the balance is between drying your cheese, if exposed, or sweating, if you’re wrapped in something non-breathable (sticky foil, I’m looking directly at you here).
Wrap it again in the paper in which you received it (a specialty store will use special cheese paper) and place it in a separate compartment (eg salad preparation) on your refrigerator, as the cheese may taste like other things.
Also, keep blues away from other cheeses, as they will try to turn everything else blue. If you have a closet, even better.
You want high humidity and a constant temperature of about 6-8 degrees (or a little higher at 10 degrees is good if the cheese is whole / uncut … the cheese doesn’t stay whole or uncut in my house for more than about five seconds).
Don’t despair of mold … unless it’s a cheddar supermarket!
Did you know that white wine is actually a better combination than red for your cheese board? Edward Hancock, founder of cheesegeek, an online cheese retailer, reveals how we should eat cheese
Blue cheese is moldy and you will also find fluffy mold on the surface of very soft cheeses like Vacherin and Rollright. Embrace it, it is the beauty of artisanal cheese and adds flavor and character.
YOU CAN eat cheese for breakfast
Given that breakfast falls during the waking hours, yes, I would recommend eating cheese for breakfast.
In fact, the United Kingdom is almost the only country in the world of cheese-eating that does not eat cheese for breakfast.
Continental Europe, South America, Central America, all have cheese as part of the traditional breakfast. Cheese and coffee are also a coincidence made in heaven.
My favorite dish with cheese for breakfast is Omelet Arnold Bennett (you may need a defibrillator on hand), but straight cheese for breakfast, I would prefer Mayfield and Coolea.
You will often even find blue shapes in traditional fabric-tied cheddars. This is because they are tied to a fabric, which is an imperfect way to protect the cheese during ripening.
If there are gaps and cracks in the cheese, oxygen can get into it and activate the spores of blue mold. In many cases it adds a really interesting taste and I would encourage you to try it.
At least you can cut it and eat the rest of the cheese.
After all, if you find mold on your cheddar in the supermarket, step on it with caution because it’s not meant to be there, so it probably won’t taste very good. It probably came from your fridge, not where the cheese was ripening.
How to find the best wine for your cheese
Cheese and red wine are historical, but white wine is actually a better bet.
If I had a bottle of wine for dinner and I knew there would be a cheeseboard, but I didn’t know what the cheeses would be, I would have a bottle of light oak chardonnay.
Non-lactic fermentation (malic acid, which is converted into lactic acid), which gives these wines a creamy, buttery taste, matches perfectly with the lactic acid (creaminess) in the cheese.
There are also no tannins, which can sometimes collide with the acidity in the cheese. If you are adamant that you want to stick to red wine, Pinot Noir and Game are two grapes that work really well with a wide range of cheeses.
Some cheeses should NOT be melted
“I work on the basis that melting cheese can solve most of the world’s problems”
I work on the basis that melting cheese can solve most of the world’s problems, but you will really struggle to melt many styles of cheese, as they simply do not break down smoothly, but tend to lump.
Fresh goat’s milk cheese, for example, as well as some of the fresher, younger territorial cheeses (Cheshire is not the best smelter, Lancashire is much better).
Some of the best smelters in the world are cheddar, of course (but not too old) and alpine cheeses (Comte, Gruyere, Raclette and Emmental).
Ogleshield is a great Raclette-style British smelter, but made in Somerset.
And that’s before we start baking Camembert (try Tunworth from Hampshire with a little garlic, rosemary and truffle honey) or Vacherin. I have to go to bed.
Don’t give up goat’s milk cheese!
As a group of cheeses should be goat’s milk or blue cheese.
My wife never liked either, until I dedicated my life to cheese, now blue cheese is her favorite.
There is blue cheese and goat’s milk cheese for everyone, but the problem is that mass-produced things are so one-dimensional and they all taste the same.
So if you don’t like goat’s milk cheese or Stilton’s salty mineral, then you don’t have options. But the fact is that you do!
There are styles of these cheeses that are completely different from the norms and nothing makes me happier than when you hear someone say “I usually don’t like blue cheese, but it’s fantastic.”
Edward Hancock, founder of www.thecheesegeek.com