Title.
It feels like such a waste.
EDIT: This is the type of cheese I am referring to. It comes wrapped in a piece of plastic then bundled together with x more and all of them get covered in plastic
That’s how it’s made. They melt cheese with emulsifying salts, squirt it into a plastic envelope, and it cools into the shape of the wrapper.
thanks, i’m immediately going to continue never eating the disguising “cheese” slices ever again.
I think this idea comes from the old Kraft Singles commercials that were bragging about how KRAFT american cheese is made of MILK!! Good good good. And OTHER brands are made of OIL!!! Bad bad bad. I don’t think any brands are made with anything but cheese, divided milk and emulsifiers, but here we are.
Kraft Singles: Cheddar Cheese (Cultured Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Skim Milk, Milkfat, Milk Protein Concentrate, Whey, Calcium Phosphate, Sodium Phosphate, Contains Less than 2% of Modified Food Starch, Salt, Lactic Acid, Milk, Annatto and Paprika Extract (Color), Natamycin (a Natural Mold Inhibitor), Enzymes, Cheese Culture, Vitamin D3.
I think I can answer this. I remember when the singles came out. Used to be they had American cheese in a block. Sort of. They were sliced and stacked. This was the same American cheese/cheese product used in the singles. Exact same dimensions. The package was not re-sealable though. So I always put my block in a quart zip lock after opening. People were too fucking dumb to do this so their block of American cheese would go stale. And they complained about slices getting stuck together. Why in the world did Kraft decide to make the singles instead of changing the packaging be resealable and have wax paper like every other cheese? I have no idea.
Why in the world did Kraft decide to make the singles instead of changing the packaging be resealable and have wax paper like every other cheese?
Because unfortunately, the average American is that stupid and lazy.
Source: am American and forgot how to spell camplekated words so I ju
In Australia, the only cheese you could buy in the supermarket in the 1970s was Kraft in the little blue packets sold in the dry goods section.
To buy “real” cheese you had to go to a dairy, or go to the city centre and buy cheese cut off the block and wrapped in greaseproof paper from a contintental delicatessan.
Polyethylene film was not available.
So when it came out and you could buy real cheese in film from the supermarket, Kraft responded by bringing out "more convenient " Kraft Singles, which you didn’t have to laboriously (?) cut from the block.
That’s not cheese. It’s “cheese product.”
To my understanding, it is actually made of cheese, just cheese that has been melted, pasteurized to extend shelf life and then cooled back into solid cheese again.
It’s American cheese. The objectively superior cheese for melting on a burger.
only because it’s easy to melt, not because it actually taste better than other cheese options such as cheddar, swiss, or pepper jack.
Kenji Lopez-Alt has a cool video where he uses American cheese as the emulsifier to make some less-melty cheeses participate in a grilled cheese. I have been using it more for its emulsifying agents than anything lately: https://youtu.be/CD8UTr5mMVk?si=n5xOumvtBqromQtB
American cheese apparently melts so at least it makes some kind of sense.
Kraft singles in Australia are basically made from the same plastic as the packaging and are in no danger of melting or being mistaken for cheese.
Do they not use milk to make Kraft singles in Australia the way they do in America? 🤔
Food tech is kinda my area, so I went and did a little research and it turned into quite a ride. For cultural context, grilled (broiled in the US, I think) cheese and Vegemite is kind of a traditional Aussie snack. Just a slice of white bread with butter and Vegemite, slice of cheese on top, stick it under the grill.
The Kraft singles I remember from my childhood absolutely did not behave like anything resembling real cheese when you did this. It melted on the inside, sure. But the outside just dried out and turned into a kind of plasticky skin, then bubbled and burned. So you were left with this partially blackened and crunchy cling-film like skin disguising a thin layer of vaguely dairy-adjacent molten plastic goop that was guaranteed to stick to and sear the roof of your mouth. Then the skin came off in one piece and slapped you on the chin with the equally hot residue of said plastic goop. For some reason kids loved this.
I’m not sure when OP last ate them, but the Kraft singles I know got axed in like 2017 when Mondelez sold their cheese line to Bega. That makes it incredibly hard to track down the original formula to figure out what in the world they were really made of. They have, however, since been re-released and claim to be at least 45% cheese, which I suspect is a lot more than the ones I remember, probably does melt, and falls pretty squarely into the “processed cheese” definition according to FSANZ. There’s no way in hell I’m buying some to try it though.
There is a How It’s Made episode showing how Kraft singles are made somewhere. It’s still cheese, but they also add more milk to make it meltier, as well as things like preservatives. It’s kind of like a solidified bechamel.
Other brands of similar processed cheese slices tend to made entirely with oils with zero dairy. There is a definite difference in taste and texture comparing Kraft Singles, off-brand singles, and just plain cheddar though.
Makes them easier to separate.
If you buy cheese sliced by your grocer, they generally won’t put anything between the slices, maybe just some wax paper.
But harder to unwrap.
Let’s be honest here, we aren’t talking about cheese. They are packed per slice because they melt easily. If they weren’t you would end up with an orange blob when it hits room temperature.
They are also packed per slice because they last a lot longer. Plastic cheese or not, cheese slices have a lot of surface area and get funky relatively quickly. Also, every time you reach into a regular bag of deli sliced cheese, you introduce funk-generating organisms.
you realize that cheese is already “funky”? that’s how it’s made in the first place… by letting milk curdle. so, cheese doesn’t really go bad/spoil, as it already has gone bad when it was milk. over long periods of time (months), it can grow mold if stored improperly.
