Hard Swiss Appenzeller cheese with a high content of nutrients. Influence on the human body, use in cooking. Interesting facts about the fermented milk product.
Appenzeller is a hard Swiss cheese made from cow's milk. The texture is elastic, the consistency is dense, due to which the product is easily cut into thin translucent pieces. In the pulp there are small, uneven eyes, located at a considerable distance from each other. Color - light yellow, “straw”; smell - sour, with a hint of yeast; taste - creamy-fruity-nutty, aftertaste - insignificant. Head shape - flattened cylinder, weight - 4-7 kg. The pungency depends on the degree of exposure. During production, the cheese mass is boiled and pressed, and when ripe, the heads are impregnated with white wine (or cider) with spices and herbs.
How is Appenzeller cheese made?
It is impossible to make this fermented milk product at home - the recipe is kept secret. The variety is patented, and to cook Appenzell cheese, like others, having received the right to use the technology, has not even worked out for Swiss cheese makers living outside the cantons of Appenzell-Innerrhoden and Appenzell-Ausserrhoden.
To get an original taste, milk from cows of only one breed is used - Simmental. The composition of the thermophilic starter culture is not known exactly; rennet is introduced for curdling. After cutting, the curd is washed with boiling water and boiled. It has been suggested that calcium chloride is not used as a preservative. That is why the shelf life of the finished product is limited to 4 months, even for aged cheese.
Only technologists know how aging is going on. It is known for certain that one type of alcohol is used to form the crust - white wine or cider infused with alpine herbs with a spicy taste. But how this composition is used - the heads are soaked, washed or rubbed daily - is unknown.
Trying to cook an analogue of Appenzeller cheese at home, they adhere to the average technology for hard varieties, and then soak for 3 days in a 20% saline solution with herbs - sumac and marjoram. It is impossible to call it a brine in the full sense - salt is dissolved in cider. Then the heads are laid out on a drainage mat in a container and left in a chamber with a temperature of 6-8 ° C. After 3 weeks, a dense crust is formed interspersed with greenish mold.
Then, for 2 months, the head is washed with wine brine with herbs. The taste of the analogue resembles the original one, but so far no one has succeeded in repeating the recipe exactly.
