I am using the same cheese I have outlined in my previous question.
My problem is that it refuses to melt completely.
I know various cheeses are made up of different ratios of water and fat and the fatter a cheese is the less fluid is when melting. So I guess this cheese is almost completely fat, because when I try to melt it into cream or something to make spaghetti sauce it definitely melts but never completely. Even after being "cooked" for more than an hour.
What I do is this – in my Kenwood Cooking Chef mixer I put cream and chop the cheese into pieces, remove the rind, and drop them in, as well. This mixer can cook in its bowl, while its stirring, with great temperature precision, which is great because I set it to 90 degrees Celsius and set it to stir the mixture every so often. My idea was to heat the cream as much as possible, without causing it to burn or boil, while simultaneously heating the cheese a lot so it would melt (it a previous experiment, where I just dumped a piece of cheese into the bowl I found out a temperature of lower than 60C did nothing to the cheese (at least not for a while and I hate waiting 😀 ).
However even after 1h30mins most of the cheese had melted but there were still bits left (and the fat of the cream separated, but that's not important right now).
Later I tried a test – I put what I had left of the cheese into the bowl (after removing the rind) and set it to 70C. After 1h20mins (nothing else in the bowl but it gets heated quite well, so I'm sure the entire piece of cheese was well heated) it had changed its colour a bit but it hasn't melted A BIT. I cranked up the temperature to 90C thinking this is folly but sanity wasn't getting me anywhere and I had the bright idea to "stir" it with a wooden spoon. Basically it was soft inside and "mushed" or fell apart when prodded with the spoon and started to sizzle a bit so I turned the temperature down to 80C and poured some milk and turned the constant stirring on, thinking the heat does not melt the cheese but it sabotages its internal structure and you need to "agitate" it so it would incorporate into a liquid.
Well an hour and who-knows-how-long later, again, the cheese had mostly melted, but there were still little bits left. And I'm 18530% sure the mixture was REALLY hot, like 80C hot.
Why does this happen and how can I melt this insolent cheese completely?
Thank you!
Best Answer
Melted cheese is a mixture of mostly protein, fat, and water. The protein (mostly casein) will tend to clump into rubbery bits, but is held apart by the fat and water, giving the melted cheese texture you're used to.
Your cheese did melt -- you saw that yourself at 90 degrees -- but when you then cooked and agitated it for a long time, you broke up the mixture, allowing the casein to clump up. In other words, your problem is not an unmeltable cheese, but a curdled sauce. The fact that you ended up with "bits", when you started with "pieces", is evidence of that.
To solve this, use lower temperatures, less agitation, and more stabilizers. Some cheese will not produce a smooth cheese sauce (not because it won't melt, but because it won't be smooth once melted). In general, the more rubbery the cheese is to begin with, the more difficulty you'll have when using it in a sauce.