SYSK Selects: The Cheesiest SYSK Episode Ever

made in just the varieties of cheese. Like you could have an entire fourteen part series on cheese, but um, as we do, we decided to cram as much as we could into one episode. So Corps and Wine cut some cheese metaphorically, actually not metaphorically, and enjoyed this episode. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles w So funny, Chuck, Brian is that a new nickname? So funny? Chuck? My

wife would beg to differ. She might say, I'm not so funny sometimes? No, okay, so Chuck, Yes, how you doing I'm great. Um, I've got an intro this time? Awesome. How long has it been? Uh? I don't know. It's been a while really since we've had a proper intro. Yes, okay, if you ask me so, Um, let me paint the

picture for you, all right. Uh. In May of two thou little newspaper called the Telegraph I believe out of London published an article about a recent survey of four thousand consumers, British consumers, um, of what were the top most important inventions ever created by man? Okay, so some of them were not surprising. The wheel came in first place. Beer is on there and it came in Was it on there? I don't know. I can tell you painkillers

were on there in place place? Um, but no, man, I didn't see beer on here, and surely it is. Maybe that was just they don't consider that an invention. Sliced bread um came in in seventy place. Um. The iPhone came in eighth place, ahead of the combustion engine. That's ridiculous. In place came calendars okay, but then right after that place came the cheese creater. M. Yeah, the greater,

the cheese greater. That makes me think. So, first of all, this is clearly one of the dumbest assemblages of four thousand people ever put together. Calendar and then cheese creator, and then ihe, um, yeah, so I think that possibly when you give him the benf of the doubt, and that they didn't assume that cheese was invented by humans, that she's greater. It was clearly invented by humans. You don't find them growing on trees. Cheese apparently you find

growing on trees. It's a gift from God. But I think had had the Polsters said, you know, I just want to remind you here that cheese is an invention, then it would it would have scored higher. At least it would have at least replaced the cheese greater. Oh yeah, I would. No. England, I don't know how they are in cheese, but the EU is real big on cheese. It is as a whole. So it's Wisconsin, so is um,

well yeah, the EU? Yeah, yeah, New York, I think a Germany and uh it's in the France, Grease, Denmark, Belgium,

they're all like in the top ten. Grease's way ahead, and well Greece comes up in some stats that are coming fright after this butt chuck Um cheese is an invention, and as legend goes, an accidental invention, right yeah, I mean they have seen it dated back to prehistory, so they can't obviously trace it back to six BC and say how it happened, Right, well, they can say that it was it was around at least as late as um BC, because it was found in the tomb of

one of the Egyptian pharaoh's cheese five thousand year old cheese, which wow um, And the idea goes. The legend goes that there was some um shepherd, some goat herder, some cow herder, which I guess you'd call a rancher um went to I guess go tend to his flock, and he had his daily milk, and he used a cowskin um or a cow stomach a calf st specifically to store the milk. And when he went to go drink it, it came out all curdled and smacked his face and he said, what is going on here? He told some

people about it and it took root. Now see I read that roc effort was invented by accident by a shepherd. Yes, I read that too, and he was he stashed his lunch in a cave because he saw a young maiden that he wanted to go get down with, and he forgot about his lunch and came back like a couple of weeks later. It was moldy and he ate it anyway, And I was like, hey, this is pretty tasty. Yeah, He's like I like this a lot. So that makes

me think these tales might be just intermingling something. Well, they are tales. There's nothing you know, specific, nothing documented. But Rokee fort Um also supposedly is from the dates to about the time of Christ. So if cheese was known to the Egyptians and c and it would have come before that. But it's possible they were invented independently accidentally. Right, that's true. A lot of shepherds run around at that time,

a lot more than these days. That's true. And rockefort is also a p d O, which is a protected designation of origin cheese. That's Truman, which means uh, it's got to be made in uh rocofort. Right. And the specifically this mountain range is small area of mountain top. You got to get the sheep from there in France, the agent the caves there, yep, or you're not eating rot. And still to this day speaking of how Rockefer has produced these these shepherds that's still kind of dressed like

they used to um during medieval kind of uh. It's but they all have beards. It's really kind of disturbing to go to go to this area. Um. They the families make the cheese from their own flox milk and then take it to um the caves where there where it's purchased by often yours, which are expert finishers of cheese and France, which means they just sit around and look at it. Yeah, they're like, come on, yeah, the

cheese is done. So that's that's just a brief sketch of cheese history, right yeah, and that's the most interesting stuff I would think. All right, well that's the podcast. All right, well let's talk let's talk cheese man. You know, these stats are interesting. Yeah. In two thousand nine, the average American consumed or the Americans consumed an average depend on which way you want to look at it, of thirty two point nine pounds a couple of years ago

per person per year. To say, let's say that on more thirty two point nine pounds. Let's just call it thirty three pounds of cheese per person per year. I love cheese, but I don't think I eat that much. I had no idea I was eating that much cheese. I might be. I love cheese. I'm gonna start paying attention. I'm gonna do a yearly cheese count. Also this, um, what was it, like, thirty three pounds per American per

year of cheese. Take a few ounces. That's part of eighty two billion pounds of cheese that America alone produces or produced I should say in two thousand and eight, and get this eighty two billion, two billions like eight to frinch stats on that. Yeah, there's a lot of different stats other it's true. I got from nine billion down to ten point one million, eighty two billion. We're all over the place with that one. I suddenly like, really, huh uh, well, okay, this is from like a cheeseboard,

probably Wisconsin. I probably would have been like the Delaware cheeseboard. I'm not listening to this, um, but uh, in nineteen seventy five, we ate fourteen pounds of cheese a person, So we've doubled our cheese and take Yeah, since seventy that's really something. What you were you born seventy six? I might have something to do with it. I knew I was destined for something, but they were. The Greeks

are up close to sixty pounds a year. Yeah. The Greeks in the French apparently score between fifty three to seventy three pounds on average per person. The Greeks in the French are tied as the world's greatest consumers of cheese. It's a lot of feta, that is and feed is probably the oldest cheese, by the way, speaking of cheese history, it's also one of the simplest. Yeah, I love crumbly

delicious feta. Right feta. If you went to Grease and made and grab some feta that some Greek shepherd farmer had just made, and you brought it back to the US, they would slap the cuffs on you. That d a wood. Oh, because it's the aging laws we have here are different. Yeah, it's a raw milk cheese, and which means it's made from it's a fresh kind of cheese, made from unpasteurized milk and um. In the US, if you make that

kind of cheese. If you make cheese using pasteurized milk, um, you have to age it sixty days at least unpasteurized milk, unpasteurized milk. So this is just this, like we just stepped into this fascinating world if you ask me, Yeah, pasteurization just quickly is uh most people know is when you take food, usually a liquid though, you heat it up really hot for a specific amount of time at a specific temperature. Then you cool it down real quickly.

And the gold there is to slow down microbial growth, but not stop it, right, because that would be sterilization. Uh, they're not pasteurization right, named after the Great Louis past two. Yeah, and if you you don't want to sterilize it because that that ruins the flavor. So that would imagine sterilized milk, sterilized cheese. Yeah, it's not good stuff. But um, not

only is pasteurization good for your health. Most would say while cheese kind of storys like the hardcore kind that have like mohawks with like Elmer's glue, right, sure, they will tell you, um that the only good cheese comes from cheese made from unpasteurized milk. Raw milk cheese. Yeah, but other people will tell you you're not really right. We can make really good cheese with pasteurized milk, and pasteurized milk makes for a an easier cheese making process.

It's more reliable, it's more predictable. Yeah, and when you're making tons of metric tons of cheese, you want there's something consistent like that. Alright, what a wham bang start. Why do you talk about milk all the time with cheese, Josh, Well, because cheese is really just a portable form of milk. Yeah, you know, it's it's basically it's like um grain represents um virtual water. Sure, you shipped grain from one place to another, you're really shipping the water that was used

to produce the grain in addition to it. Yeah. I remember seeing those commercials, like I think it was Kraft, like there are two cups of milk and every slice of craft American cheese, and I always thought that's impossible. Yeah, look at it, that little slice of cheese and look at two cups of milk. There's no way. You're probably right, though, No, they can't say that. There's like the second biggest food company on the planet. I think, yeah, I think yeah.

So You're right, milk cheese is nothing, but milk milk is about eight water. If you remove this water, you got cheese. Basically, Yeah, it's a little more complicated than that, but it's not that much more complicated. Was really surprised, like both of us apparently went our own way and um learned how to make cheese. And I have to say, like, I am strongly considering getting me and you me into cheesemaking. You can make mozzarell pretty easily. Yeah, but I'm not big.

I'm okay, I'm mozzarella. I like a good mozzarella, but more I'm into like the slightly stinkier cheeses you can pull off. Making like a limburger. Well, I wouldn't make that, but I could make like a Gouda um or a chevra. Yeah, I like that too. Speaking of limburger quickly, I don't remember the name of the bacteria, but the bacteria used in making limburgers the same one on our body that creates body odor, which is why stinks. I read that as well. Yeah, that's why people say it somes like

feet Because yes, and scientifically speaking, you're absolutely right. Types of cheese. Shall we break that down real quick. Yes we should, because there's a big contentious debate about how you classify cheese, and uh, this guy, Stephen Jenkins for this article, seems to have a pretty good handle on how cheese should be classified. Josh. He is a member of the Confrairie des Chevalier. Dude test roma. Very nice,

you very nice. I was just looking at say, like, I wonder if I'm gonna have to handle down it's cheese connoisseurs. And he's an expert, and he says you can break him down into fresh, soft, ripened, wash, rind, natural, rind, blue, veined, uncooked, pressed, cooked, pressed, and processed, and chuck um like like we were talking about already. Um, the fresh cheeses. Those are the easy, is the most basic, the most ancient kind. You've got

your fed. You have a Caeso fresco masca pone right, not marscapone, And the argoes after the sis it's muscari. It is always mispronounced. I have no idea because I thought it was Marscapone until I read it and I was like, Uh, that rolls off the tongue though more than the RS rolls off the tongue more than the This is your mascara, which isn't even cheese technically, right, No,

it isn't. It's um. You you skim the cream off of the top of the parmesan making process and add a culture to it, and you've got mascarponegult also known as ricotta, but if you're from New Jersey you might say regult. Okay, and cream cheese obviously. Yeah, and I think you mentioned Caso fresco, right, Yes, those are fresh cheeses. Yeah, those are the ones where you just basically go through step one through three of cheesemaking and then you just

start eating it. Yeah. And some of them still contain the liquid part the way, right, and they don't keep very long. And that is fresh cheeses is what you gotta eat them right away, That's right. It's a it's a portable way of preserving milk, but it's only preserving milk for like an extra day or two. It's very mild taste, pretty milky, Okay, Soft driping cheese is josh, they are semisoft. A lot of times they have a white, bloomy rind. And we're talking brie a little more flavorful

and buttery but still pretty mild. Yeah. So the rind on breeze specifically, or any kind of bloomy rind cheese is made from bacteria. Right, There's a lot of bacteria going on with cheese, right. Well, they they just rub bacteria on the outside of the cheese, um, maybe some salt, and the bacteria starts to rot the cheese effectively from the outside in. So that's what the that's what the rind is. Some people say you should eat the rind because it is cheese, but it's bacteria laden cheese. I

eat the rind, do you. I actually don't really, Yeah, I dive right into that. That Brie and um Brie, as far as smell goes, is one of the milder um bloomy rind cheeses. Most bloomy rind cheeses and most um soft ripe and cheeses are the stinky ones, like stilton, which is the king of English cheeses, Stilton, Limburger, rogue fort um. Yeah. All right, so now we are at wash rind. Those are the stinkiest of cheese is Limburger. And if we mentioned some of these is because they

overlap into different categories. Wash rind means they usually have as a reddish orange rind, and the stink comes from washing it most times in liquid like brine or wine or beer. Yeah, makes it stinky. You might make a wheel of cheese, if it's a soft ripened cheese, and just throw it in like a brine bath and leave

it for maybe six days per side. It's gonna float on top, and then you flip it, leave it for another six days and you've got it washed, and that's it stinks because of the molden bacteria that grows because of that wash. Yeah, and the beer and wine bath. Um also came from the introductions of cheese to monks. He said, Hey, we make beer, we make wine. It's

kind of what we contribute to the world. Plus you've got these caves, so um, you know that you can have a cocktailed party without cheese exactly, So there you go. It comes from natural rind moving on is uh heavier than most of other types of cheeses. It's aged usually because not all cheese is aged. A lot of them are made from raw milk. And again English stilton and chevroy our natural rind cheesus that's when the rind forms naturally. Yes, correct. Yes, okay,

so rind, I guess I should correct myself. The stinky ones almost always have some sort of bacterial induced rind, whether it's hastened along by washing or it just happens naturally. If you got a rind usually going. If you have a moldy rind, you're gonna have a stinkier cheese. Okay, okay, yes, um? And then where are we chuck? Blue vein? Blue vein, that's rope for it. Gorgon zola maytag blue. It's um. By the way, do you like these? I love blue cheese.

Love love blue vein cheese. Yeah, don't eat it all day long. It's exactly what it sounds like. Everybody's seen it. You know. You get a hunk of this and it's just like crumbling and it looks deteriorated. But that that blue or the green, the veins in it, it's mold. Yeah, pretty pretty healthy active live mold too, very tart like that's that's one of the cheeses that makes my jaw just go. Do you eat it as a dessert cheese? Uh No. I don't do a ton of dessert cheeses.

Sometimes if I'm at you know, a restaurant that has a nice dessert cheese menu. But I just you know, I like the cheese and wine thing. We'll get to that though, okay. Um. And then lastly, well it's third to lastly, we've got um. The pressed cheese is cooked and uncooked, right, So uncooked cheese is cheddar cheese, good old cheddar, just that orange block of cheese, Um is uncooked And cheddar is actually the name of a process

of making cheese. Cheddaring is taking the curds and just pressing them down on top of one another until you squeeze all the way out. Yeah, and these all all these pressed cheeses are really dry because you're just getting you're pressing the way out, like you said, and that's the liquid. So it's gonna be much dryer like your hard parmesano reggiano cheddar. And and also um, as a side note, cheese orange cheese like orange cheddar. You know

how it's like brilliantly orange. Sometimes you're like that can't possibly be a real orange? What's going on there? Apparently back in the day, uh, in the spring and summer. This is the fact of the show for me, is it? I think? So? I would say the thirty three pounds per person. That's the gross fact to the show. But if you want to it's elebrate cheese at a cocktail party. Just say what Josh is about to say, I think

you should take this now, I think you should okay. Um. Back in the day, if you had your flock out of sheep or goats or cows, and it was spring or summer, they were chewing grass. When they ate grass, they were ingesting a lot of beta carotene, right, okay, which lent a lot of that stuff to the milk, which ultimately lent a lot of it to the cheese, which ultimately died at orange. And in the in the winter months, they were eating hay, which made kind of

for paler wand looking cheese. It might have tasted as good, but people tended to prefer orange cheese. Uh. It just they just thought it was better. So over time people say, well, we're just gonna start dyeing all of our cheese orange. And that's where it came from. And to this day, apparently it's just an open secret that among cheesemakers you dye your cheese orange if you're making an orange cheese. Fact of the show yes, beta carotene, grass, summer spring history. So,

like we said, those are the press. Cheese is green air regiano. They're all pressed. It can be cooked or uncooked. Cheddar is uncooked, right, yes, yeah, But so if you take the curds and you you just press them and that's uncooked pressed obviously enough. If you cook the curds and then press them, that's cooked press and that's like grey air, Gouda yeah, Parmesan, yeah, parmegian, provolone, the pasta filada alright um. And then processed cheese we have to mention.

So yeah, we're going down the cheese chain. Yeah. Yeah. Processed cheese technically again is not a cheese. It's a byproduct of the process that can have cheese scraps, can have whey and cream and water, gums, dies, other ingredients. You can work your way further down to easy cheese. Yeah, cheese whiz velvita. You know when a cheese doesn't need to be refrigerated that it's like and it comes out of a propellant. Yeah. I was gonna say if if you have cheese and a can, that's a big giveaway.

Using sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, calcium phosphate, sorbic acid, sodium alginate, apple, I don't even know how to pronounce us apple, carrotinal, and auto. These are all things in easy Cheese. Cheese isn't easy though, so I think that should be your other giveaway. Cheese takes time. Yes, it's not easy, although you think it's easy. Although there is such a product is easy cheese, I believe. No, that's what I'm saying. That's the stuff in they can that you scored out

onto a cracker. So that's easy Cheese. That's I mean, that is the brand name. Well, what's the one where the cheese is. It's like a little plastic train. The cheese is on one, other crackers around the other, and there's like that little red plastic spreader spreader. Yeah, that's uh, I mean that's some sort of process cheese, which is

technically not cheese. Um, So there you go. And also, so you can make cheese from pretty much any kind of milk, like traditionally you've got cow, goat, sheep, buffalo, buffalo, but you can also make camel cheese and horse cheese and moose cheese. And I haven't had any of those anything with nipples. That's lactating. You can go ahead and milk and make cheese come even just the little cat you know, yeah, camel cheese. I'm interested to try that,

so maybe some day. So I don't know if anybody should try to mail that to us though, camel cheese and the mail I don't think so. Um So, speaking of lactating, right, yeah, let's talk about how cheese is made, Chuck, well, Josh, it's there's a lot of different ways to make cheese, depending on what kind of cheese like. It gets very specific. Obviously we can't say that you do this for two

hours in Agia for this long. But there are four main stages, uh, just curdling or coagulating of the milk, shaping of the kurds, draining of the kurds, salting, washing and seeding and then maturing and then we can get more detailed right now, and somewhere in there is the running of the bulls. So cheese, I'm sorry. The milk comes in, it's got to be heated to a specific temperature, yes, because again milk is nothing but curds and whey, right,

you want to separate these. That's the first step. Yeah, and the way to separate them is to create lactic acid. Milk is chuck full of lactose. Yes, but for it to lose it stability. It's a type of sugar, it's a milk sugar. But for that for milk to lose its its stability and break into curds, which are globby, semi solid masses and way, which is like basically like milky water, you need to convert the lactose to lactic acid. So apparently lactose of milk sugar holds everything together and

it converted to lactic acid. You introduce bacteria. Yeah, there's a few different ways you can do it. Uh, it could be lemon juice or vinegar, or it can be an actual bacterial culture and it doesn't take much of this. I saw the dirty Jobs micro I mean they had I think it was a five thousand pound batch of cheese that they were making this huge vat of milk and he added what looked like about the size of this mug of bacteria culture to it. Yeah, so it goes a long way. Well, there's a lot to them.

There's a whole lot going on there. Yeah. So um, if you do use bacteria You're probably going to use either a thermophilic, which is a heat loving bacteria, or a mesophilic, which is like a kind of a warm tepid um temperature bacteria. Right, But either way, they're going to go in there and they're going to go to town on the lactose and convert as a byproduct lactic acid. Right. So then all of a sudden you have curdled milk. That's step one done. Step two is where that legend

about that shepherd comes in. Yeah, with rennet, Yes, yes, rennitation. I don't know if that's what is rent rennet is. Enzymes are enzymes from the stomach lining of the cow or a sheep, or a goat, well, a young one, a kid, if you will, or a calf. Well, you wouldn't want to some old cow's stomach lining any well, it's not, it's not, it's not necessarily there anyway. The whole reason that this enzyme is in there is so a young cow can break down mother's milk and um

digest it. Exactly so when you add it to milk, Josh, it makes the caseine into kurds. And caseine is one of the proteins of milk and way is the other one. Gotcha, gotcha? Okay, and it is casing, so look that up. Well, there's other types of rennet to. Actually there's vegetable rennet everything from like sunflowers and ivy too, papaya and mallow. But I don't know if the taste is the same. I guess it is. I'm sure it's not the same. And

I've also seen that papaia and pineapple doesn't work as well. Yeah. Um, And then if you use one like stinging nettle, stinging nettle works really well, but you have to basically create like a brine that you introduce into the cheese, so it affects the flavor. So you can only use it for certain kinds of cheese. But yes, if you are a vegetarian, there is such thing as vegetarian cheese out there. And if you're not a vegetarian, there is calf's stomach

in your cheese. Yeah, but just a tiny bit. Apparently a thumbnail full is like the rule of thumb. Excuse the pine. So they kept coagulation period. It depends on what kind of cheese you're making, but sometimes it's as little as thirty minutes. Sometimes it's as much as thirty six hours. But it's sets. It's like chocolate mouse, you know, it's it looks set, but it's sort of separate underneath, like the top is solid, and then you've got the

way underneath. But if you apparently, well, there's plenty of way still left in the stuff that's set to. But I guess if you stick your finger in there, this is what I've read. If you stick your finger in there and it comes out clean, then it's set. It's like a pumpkin pie exactly, except you don't eat your finger. Um. So when you've got this thing set, you cut it with a thing called the harp, which is with a

curb cutting knife. Yeah, it looks sort of like, uh, I guess there's different ones, but it's I think that a lot of them may mayde had a fishing line. Yeah, and so you're just, yeah, like a harper guitar strings, you're just kind of gently passing it through, breaking it up, and you're cutting it usually into like little cubes, half inch cubes, that kind of thing, and that alone releases the way, right, so you drain the way off until you have just the curds and then you cut you

either use large curds, smaller curds. You may cut the curds up some more, you may use them as they are. Right then I think form mazzarella. That's about it. Yeah, you want to keep the curds separate, though, like kurds want to join back together. And so it's a I mean maybe the machines, but it's smaller dairies. You have like six or eight people in there just turning the stuff up with their hands between their fingers. Yeah, constantly. Yeah,

and that's the hardest part. I think. Yeah, so, um, you got that, you got the curds, separated them the way um, you're getting more and more way out. And then you might cook the curds. If it's a cooked um type of cheese, like cooked pressed like gouda, um, you might just start mashing them together. If it's cheddar um, and then that stuff the bacteria for cheese is like

stilton or rope ford or whatever. The bacteria that you used as a starter starts to come into play because now it's done being cooked, it's some being heated or warmed, and the bacteria is going to start to thrive because you're you're giving it a temperature um. You're putting in a climate I should say where bacteria loves like cheese is like when you first make cheese, it's not very tasty, it's kind of rubbery. You need to if it is a rip and cheese, you need to let it ripen.

And ripening is basically the further conversion of um lactosetalactic acid by this bacteria over a period of like weeks or months or years um, and that gives the cheese its flavor. It's stink too, but that's what that's what gives cheese its flavor, is that the activation of this bacteria. That's right. Another thing that helps with the flavor, and all cheese will have a salt, and salt does a

few things. It speeds up the drying process, It enhances the flavor, It helps the rind to form if if you need a rind, and it slows down the microbial growth, which is good. But all all cheese has salt, and it's at a different times too from what I've seen, depending on what kind of cheese you're making. And sometimes it's straight up salt. Sometimes it's a brine brinye wash. So it all depends on what you're doing. Yeah, when

they make a rope for it again. Um, they just take the wheel of cheese and rub salt on it on the outside of it until all the pores are closed, and then that creates the rhynd in the beginning of it. Um. So you've got your cheese ripe, and you've got it sitting in a cave like cave like environment, right, Yeah, temperature and humidity are very important down to the degree in percentage, very controlled. Yes, So before you stick it in the cave, chuck, you might want to needle it,

depending on what kind of cheese you're making. Right. Is it in the mold yet? Yeah? Okay, yes, it's in the mold. It's pressed. Uh. If you're needling it, you probably I don't know if you started to create the rind or not yet, maybe you probably would with needling in particular. Um, blue vein cheese is your favorite. They really get their kickstart from this mold. This bacteria that um loves oxygen. So you have to poke holes in

the cheese, little tiny holes. This is needling, and the bring the oxygen to the to the bacteria so they can create the mold. Needling is not a nice thing to do, unless you're making cheese, that's true, or sewing. So what you're doing is actually bringing the oxygen to the mold so it can turn into that great um blue pin cheese, which is really you realize it's rotted dairy. Is what a blue vein cheese is? I know exactly what it is. You don't like it, No, I do, Okay.

I just wanted to make sure you knew you were getting into. So that's uh, some of them, I mean some of the cheese. You can get our hairy moldy. Have you heard of casu marzo? Okay, prepare for this man. Casu marzoo is made and illegal in Sardinia, Italy. Okay. And it's this type of cheese. It's a sheep's milk cheese, which makes it a pecorina because it's in Italy. It's

what they call sheep's milk cheeses um. And during the cheesemaking process, the cheesemakers, the underground cheesemakers, allow this type of fly called the cheese skipper, to lay eggs which become maggots in the cheese. The maggots crawled through the cheese, eating the milk fat and um, creating an enzyme that putrefies the cheese, not just not just stinking it up molding,

but putrefying it. Now, if you and apparently it's absolutely delicious, you can't necessarily compare it to a taste of I've read a couple of things on it, and everybody says it's a sensation. It can burn the tongue, right, it's so acidic. Um. But if you are really to eat Kasu marzoo the right way, you eat it with the live maggots on it. And these maggots can jump six

inches off of the cheese. So if you can't stomach the idea of eating live mag gets or don't want like digestive problems for the rest of your life, um, you will put a little bit of the cheese that you're gonna eat in a paper bag, hold it up tight, and wait for the popping sound of the maggots jumping off the cheese to stop, which means they're all dead. Awesome, then you can eat the cheese. Would you eat that totally? I would eat it with the dead maggots. I don't.

I wouldn't try it. Um. I mean, it's got to taste good. It's not like they're eating something disgusting. I mean, it sounds disgusting, but the tastes disgusting. No, I would. I would definitely eat it without the maggots if I had to. If the only way to try it was with the live magots, I would. I would not be happy about it. I would strongly prefer eating it without the maggots. Okay, yeah, I just want to know. So it's Kazu marsy Man, in my opinion, the coolest cheese

ever created. And now that's just like cool cheese stuff. How to make it what it is? Types? But if you're asking practicality, guys, where's my practicality in my daily cheese life, my cheesy live life, which, by the way, the etymology of that, I look that up. They think that it's ironic reversal from nineteenth century British slang when cheesey meant fine and showy, So they think that's an ironic rehearsal. I don't know about that. I think some

sorority girls just said it and it caught wildfire. Yeah, it seems like one of those kind of yeah words like cheesy. It was just it was sitting there waiting for it to be picked up and used. Although it did in in the UH apparently in the late eighteen hundreds, that meant cheap and inferior as slang in the United States, something was cheesy and then it died for a little while.

Who knows, anyway, I was curious about that. So cutting the cheese, josh, there are ways you should cut the cheese, and you would laugh at that depends on the shape and size. And this is all from cheese dot com. By the way, your cheese resource on the web. Um, you divide the cheese, uh, so that you get an equal share of the inside and the outside, if you

want to do it properly. Makes sense. Round cheeses are cutting wedges like a cake cheese bought, and slices should be cut lengthwise, not across, and tall truckles are easier if sliced horizontally. Truckles, Yeah, it's like like a tall barrel cheese. It's like taller than it is wide, not like a big wheel. So it's a cylindrical cheese. Yes, that's a truckle. Matching cheese and wine. There are no hard and fast rules, but generally wider and fresher cheeses

go with crisper and fruitier wines. You're not a big wine guy, no I am. I I enjoy wine with cheese. Okay, I'm into h ross that's right right now. Uh, smooth, fatty cheese goes well with smooth, oily wine wine with like gloves of fat floating on the wine. Though it's an oily wine. Well, I can't think I went off the top of my head. But an oily wine, yeah, huh, I've never heard of it. Sweet wine Josh James laughing.

Contrast with highly acidic cheese, white wines usually go better than red wines, even though I love my red wine with the cheese. Um, dry fresh wines are ideally suited to soft cheese. Goat cheese, dry white, dry fresh red okay, ideally suited to soft cheeses. You can also match cheese with beer insider obviously, and they say to try regional uh combinations, Like, if the wine is from a region and cheese is from a region, chances are they probably

go well together. That's a good idea. Yeah, it's a good rule to follow. So I have a piece of advice based on my own experience. There is nothing better you can do for like an hour or a half hour, whatever you can get away with on like a Saturday afternoon when you have the time, than to go to a place that has like a real live cheese monger who knows what they're talking about and going up to them and saying, Hey, I really like this, um, this kind of block cheese. I've been eating for a while,

but I'm ready to expand my horizon. So can you introduce me to some and watch their eyes light up? Yeah, they'll they'll be uh, they'll be very happy. They usually, you know, they'll cut you some samples, they'll kind of walk you through, and um, it's not ridiculously expensive. I mean when when you look at the per pound price, you're like thirty five bucks, but you're not buying a pound, and you just buy like a quarter of a pound. Usually it's about the least you can get, but you're

you still lasts quite a while. Um. So I strongly recommend if you're sitting there eating a block of orange cheese right now, go out and like introduce yourself to the world of cheese, because there are some really awesome cheeses out there. There are many good ones, and when you buy these cheeses. You might bring them home and the next day you found that they're all hard or they're not uh like they were when you bought it, And that's because you didn't store it properly. And uh.

There are some tips here Josh for storage from cheese dot com. Unpasteurized cheese should be not sliced until it's purchased. So if you see it in a place and it's like sliced up, don't get it because that's wrong. Keep the cheese in the condition in which it matures so hard, semi hard and semi soft cheeses should be stored in temperatures from about eight to thirteen degrees celsius. What is that Fairrenheigh, I don't know. There's conversion tables on the web.

Keep the cheese in wax paper and put it in a loose fitting food bag because you don't want it to loose humidity, but you still want to have air. You don't want to dry out, so you gotta keep that balance. Blue cheeses, you should wrap really all over because it'll jump onto other foods in your refrigerator, which you don't want the mold well, and it will also uh in fact, the other foods with flavors that you

might not want. You don't want blue cheese eggs and you don't want your eggs to smell like your blue cheese, which makes sense. You should take the chilled cheeses out of the fridge about an hour to two hours before serving it. And uh wrap soft cheese is loosely. You don't want to wrap it in like plastic wrap really tight. Again, they recommend wax paper and like a loose zip block type thing. Did you anything else? Um, you know, I've got random facts. Monterey Jack comes from David Jack who

lived in Monterey, California. Pretty easy, and it's one of only four American Native American cheeses. I think it's Colby Jack Brick and the native American cheese well native like from Oklahoma, it's not from Europe or wherever. Colby Jack, Jack Brick and Cheddar. Yeah. I think of the four American cheese and the US US. The number one cheese that we produced in the US American cheese Toto cheese. That's number two mozzarella. Probably because of all the pizza.

That would definitely explain all the cheese consumption too. In Wisconsin besides, they're awesome dairy land. They had a bunch of immigrants from uh, Switzerland and Germany and Belgium and France that settled there, So that's kind of why it's. The Swiss in particular created the heart of the cheese trade in Wisconsin. They were doing it for themselves starting in like the eighteen thirties and or the eighteen forties, and by the eighteen seventies they had they were selling

outside of the state, So it happened pretty quick. The industrious Swiss. They are industrious with their knives and cheese. They go well together, I know. Uh. And finally, Josh, I would invest some money if you have any left over into craft, if you've got some despair chains laying around. Because Asia is loving their cheese all of a sudden. Oh yeah, yeah, a continent typically not very cheesy, not much Asian food has cheese. It's probably due to the

rise of the moneyed class in China. Well, it's due to a rise in pizza and cheeseburgers specifically. Yeah, they're loving pizza now and apparently South Korea is the biggest buyer and they're like they've literally doubled and tripled their cheese imports in the past couple of years, so big cheese eating going on over there now. So that's it for cheese. I guess if you want to know more about cheese, there's a really good article on the site.

Um really, honestly, it's a good initial primer to get you ready to go to you know, really learn how to make it yourself. You can just type plain old cheese ch E s E in the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which means now it's time for listener mail. Spammy listener mail. That's what I'm calling this just heard your space podcast. I worked at the Hormel Institute for six months after my PhD. You made a brief aside about the smell. Let me tell you something.

There's like nothing on earth. On days that I followed the pigs to work, I would anticipate smelling a very pungent version of newly dead flesh. Then the next day I would be overwhelmed by the smell at half cooked meat. It's most powerful smell, and two years on I can still smell it. You could not escape it anywhere in the building, even in the back room of the lab. You mentioned the recession boosting sales. I can attest that

was the case. Thankfully. I was living upstream from the factory though, so my house didn't smell of spam, but large portions of the town do actually smell of spam, particularly on certain production days. All joking aside, I was in love with Minnesota. I loved living in Austin and it's people, and would love to live there again in the future. I never made it to the museum they give away spamples, but local restaurants had uh, spam burgers,

even though she didn't eat any. So it does think as bad as you think, Josh, I can't imagine it. What did you see? Um? The other person who's who's moved to Hawaiian has been documenting. Yeah, spam displays. One of the things was macadamia nuts, but spam flavored macadamia nuts. Like to try that. I want to as well. Yeah, whoever that is or anyone in Hawaii, if you could send us some spam and macadamia nuts, that would be good.

So that's from Elizabeth, and she has a post doctorial research associate in the bio department at New Mass Amherst, New mass Smart lady. That's a Pixies song, right it is? Yeah. Um. If you want to send Chuck and I a sample of your cheese, especially camel cheese, we want it. Email us and ask us where to send it to. Right, Or if you have a cheese story, we want to hear it. This is so wide open, there's got to be something good in there. Send us an email to

Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Mhm