Why does cheese melt

Examples of good melters are: cheddar, colby, Swiss, monterey jack, and mozzarella. Make it Saucy: How does all of this translate to a sauce? We need to create a fluid, pourable sauce without separating the cheese.

We need something to hold everything together in a smooth emulsion, and we found a few different methods that work well. Kenji with Serious Eats has a recipe for nacho cheese sauce that utilizes cornstarch to bind the protein, fat, and additional moisture to yield an emulsified, pourable sauce. The starch molecules swell up, thickening the sauce, while the evaporated milk adds a concentrated source of milk proteins. This helps the entire mixture stay smooth and emulsified, resulting in a creamy sauce.

He recommends tossing the shredded cheese with the cornstarch before cooking so it is evenly dispersed and does not form clumps when cooked. The resulting sauce from his recipe is beautifully pourable and delicious. Additional milk can be added to leftover sauce when reheated to return it to a smooth, liquid consistency. Ready to level up your cheese sauce game? Their primary purpose is to swap sodium ions for calcium ions bound to the casein proteins in cheese.

In doing so, they loosen these proteins and make them water-soluble. In combination with heating and stirring, these melting salts improve the emulsifying ability of the proteins in the cheese. They also tend to shift the pH of the cheese upward, which improves the texture and stability of molten cheese.

We used two different recipes. The ChefSteps recipe uses both sodium citrate and SHMP in a sous vide cooking method learn more about sous vide cooking in our post, An Introductory Guide to Sous Vide Cooking , and the Modernist Cuisine recipe uses only sodium citrate in a stovetop method. During aging, the casein molecules get attacked by ripening enzymes, which break the casein into small pieces. When an aged cheese like Cheddar melts, these little pieces of casein flow without tangling, and the cheese melts smoothly.

Finally, factors like fat content and acidity play a role in how a cheese melts. Cheeses like Cheshire and Leicester are relatively high in fat, which makes them good melters. The acid dissolves the calcium glue that normally holds a cheese together. Unlike good melting cheeses, acid-curded cheeses are held together not by calcium, but simply by the casein proteins binding to one another in microscopic clumps.

When acid-curded cheeses are heated, the protein bonds tighten, forcing out any water. Instead, the protein in the cheese solidifies further. Such products melt well because the added acid and phosphates bond to the calcium in the cheese mixture, keeping the milk proteins separate and discouraging clumping.

The phosphates also bond to both water and the casein proteins, keeping the milk proteins smooth and flowing, even when the cheese is heated past its melting point. A lot of great information! How much acid white wine or lemon juice should I add? Very useful info. Covers a wide range of melted cheese based foods from pizza to fondue.

Always wondered what made cheese fondues so tricky to properly prepare and now I can see the scientific basis. Already a subscriber? Log in.

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Add Private Note. Saved Add to List Add to List. Add Recipe Note. Most Popular. Classic Tomato Soup Recipe. Potato Gnocchi Recipe. Osso Buco Recipe. Another factor in melting cheese is the water level. Cheeses with lower water levels will not melt as well as cheeses with higher water levels.

This is because the molecules in dense cheese do not have much room to flow, even after the cheese is fully melted. Parmesan is an example of cheese that does not have a high water level. Parmesan cheese will not get runny when it it melted.

All cheese is curdled. But the manner in which the cheese is curdled can make it impossible to melt. Cheeses like fresh goat cheese and ricotta cheese will never melt because they were curdled with acid. Most cheeses, the cheeses that melt, are curdled with rennet. Because certain cheeses melt better than others, they are key ingredients in recipes that call for melted cheese.