You don’t have to go to a fancy shop to find great cheddar. In recent years, inexpensive supermarket cheddars have taken top honors in international cheese competitions, beating out much-pricier artisan brands. Supermarket cheddar comes in a few varieties—mild, medium, sharp, extra-sharp—but we reach for sharp cheddar when we need a cheese that’s complex enough for snacking but versatile enough for cooking.
But what exactly is “sharp” cheddar? In general, cheese gets sharper the longer it ages, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) doesn’t regulate cheddar labeling, and it’s up to the manufacturer to determine what’s sharp. We’ve found that most manufacturers consider the aging time frame for sharp cheddar to be six to 12 months.
We selected seven nationally available products to test: five cheeses labeled sharp cheddar and two “aged” cheddars that fall within the six-to-12-month time frame. Since many brands offer both orange and white sharp cheddars, we asked each manufacturer to identify its best-selling color and ended up with an almost equal mix of orange and white cheeses.
Texture was a nonissue: Most products were “creamy” and slightly “crumbly,” just how we like sharp cheddar; in grilled cheese they were pleasantly “melty” and “gooey.” Flavor differences were more apparent when we tasted the cheeses plain. While we liked most of the cheddars, a few fell to the bottom of the pack for “funky,” “sweet” flavors that, while not necessarily unpleasant, were unexpected. We preferred products with the familiar “bright” and “buttery” flavor of “classic” cheddar.
Tasters preferred sharper cheeses. But when we contacted manufacturers to find out how long each product is aged, we learned that our top-ranked cheeses actually age three months less than lower-ranked products, for nine versus 12 months. While time is one factor in flavor, how well a cheese ages also depends on how it was made and stored. Most cheesemakers weren’t willing to share those secrets, so we sent the cheeses to an independent lab to learn why some younger cheeses tasted sharper and more complex.
Here, things started to line up: The longer-aged cheddars at the bottom of our rankings had higher pH values (meaning they were less acidic) than top-ranked cheddars. According to Dean Sommer, cheese and food technologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a high pH is a good indication that the product didn’t age well. Many factors during production can influence the pH of a cheddar—what the cows were fed, the type of bacteria used to culture the cheese, how long the milk was heated and to what temperature. Whatever the cause, Sommer said cheddar that begins life at a high pH will typically end up overfermented, off-flavored, and sweet by the time it’s ready for sale.
When the cheeses were melted into grilled cheese, however, the funky flavors mellowed. In fact, tasters thought that the “fruity” and “grassy” flavors of lower-ranked cheeses added a nuanced complexity to an otherwise mild sandwich. Only one product, which tasters found mild when tasted plain, mellowed even more when melted, becoming “boring” and “bland.” Here, moisture was the problem. According to our lab tests, it contained the highest percentage of moisture in the group—roughly 37 percent moisture compared with 34 percent to 36 percent moisture in winning products. High moisture content, like high pH, can prevent the development of flavor and cause the cheese to age poorly. With the exception of this one product, most cheeses made grilled cheese that was “nutty,” “buttery,” and “rich” enough for our tasters.
Ultimately, we ended up recommending six of the seven cheddars we tried. Our former winner once again took top honors for its complex nutty flavor and balanced sharpness.
