Sage Stirred Curd Cheddar 1

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Level of difficulty:

The basic Stirred-Curd Cheddar recipe can easily be adapted by adding flavorings, herbs, or spices. This recipe uses some fresh sage to give it a smoky, herb flavor.

Ingredients: 
  2 tbsp chopped fresh sage leaves
  Ingredients for Stirred-Curd Cheddar
 
Procedure:

  Boil sage in 1/2 cup of water for 15 minutes (adding water as necessary).
  Strain the flavored water into a bowl and cool.  Reserve the boiled sage.
  Add the flavored water to the milk in the first step for Stirred-Curd Cheddar.
  Follow additional steps for Stirred-Curd Cheddar up through the addition of the salt.
  After adding the salt, gently mix in the reserved boiled sage.
  Continue to follow all steps for Stirred-Curd Cheddar

Attempt #1 - September 27, 2006

Overall satisfaction: (I don't know yet!)

The cheese-making process went without difficulty and the curd behaved as expected. I used cheese coloring (4 drops) for the first time, and it surprisingly had zero effect on the color of the cheese. I'm not sure what happened there, but maybe the color will deepen as the cheese ages? I also didn't notice any sage flavor in the curds before pressing them, but again I'm hoping that the aging process will intensify the flavor throughout the cheese. Only time will tell. I plan to age this cheese for 4 months, which I think is a nice middle-ground.

The resulting cheese is 4" across and about 5" tall, and weighs about 2 pounds.

I let this cheese air-dry for 3 days and then waxed it and put it in the cheese fridge.

I cut into this cheese on January 19, 2007, after roughly 4 months. I removed the wax and the rind looked great, with no icky spots! There were a couple of pink stains from the red wax, but that was easy to cut away.

The cheese smelled great. I was worried it would be too dry, like the chipotle cheddar was, but it wasn't. It was nice and creamy. The problem was that it was crumbly like the farmhouse cheddar! I was disappointed, but it is still quite tasty and edible.

Oh, and it had absolutely zero taste of sage, which surprised me. I guess I didn't use enough. This cheese was also my first try at adding coloring to make the cheese yellow/orange, but as you can see from the photos, the coloring had no effect.

Photos