mmm...deep fried cheese...

[sarea]

Happy birthday to sjerseytomato!

So I'm such a cheese curds newb that I didn't realize they had to be kept at room temperature, and after 12 hours or so, they are no longer fresh cheese curds but are simply "insufficiently aged cheese." But I still had a container of them, so what was I going to do?? Well ... last night I busted out my deep fryer and made Deep Fried Cheese Curds. If fat getting boiled to a crisp by more fat is wrong, I don't want to be right. They were yummy, and some of the squeak even came back!

Yay for long weekends. I might actually get some (gasp) writing done.

Comments

[sarea-okelani.livejournal.com]

I had never heard of cheese curds until Alicia mentioned them one time. They're apparently a popular item in Wisconsin. I think the rest of us don't hear of them or see them because of the nature of what they are.

"Cheese curds are fresh, young cheddar cheese in the natural, random shape and form before being processed into blocks and aged."

So basically, they're just extremely fresh cheese. After 6-12 hours they aren't even considered fresh cheese curds anymore; they're just "insufficiently aged cheese." Most places (e.g., not Wisconsin) don't have cheese being made fresh all around them, thus no cheese curds. The shop I went to makes their cheese right there, and that day they happened to have fresh cheese curds. :D

They are *not* like cottage cheese. They're soft but firm, not unlike mozzarella (the recipe I linked to even says that you can substitute mozzarella if you don't have fresh cheese curds). The trademark of fresh curds is that they squeak in your mouth when you eat them. :-) Fried mozzarella usually comes in sticks; cheese curds are small, kind of like popcorn. So you can pop them individually into your mouth, making them a very dangerous snack!