Cheese Families
Find your way around cheese families through guides to milk, rind, texture and method, then explore the styles that interest you. Start with a broad introduction or choose a question below, from fresh cheeses to stretched curds and cheeses made for melting.
Start here: How to Tell Cheese Styles Apart: Milk, Rind, Texture and Method, available now: Which clues help you describe a cheese and choose what to explore next?
How to Tell Cheese Styles Apart: Milk, Rind, Texture and Method
Watch mozzarella curd being worked and stretched in hot water.
Fresh Cheeses Explained
Push your spoon through cottage cheese and the curds part; try a smooth spread or a yielding fresh goat cheese and it is quite another mouthful.
Cottage Cheese Explained
Dip in your spoon and moist white curds tumble apart, loose and lightly tangy.
Cream Cheese Explained
Sweep your knife through cream cheese.
Bloomy-Rind Cheese: A Guide to Soft, White-Rind Styles
Your knife slips through the white rind and reveals a translucent ribbon around a pale, chalky heart.
Washed-Rind Cheeses: How Washing Shapes the Cheese
First, the animal aroma reaches you.
Natural Rind Cheeses Explained
Look closely at Blue Stilton's slightly wrinkled coat.
Everything in this section
- Semi Hard Cheeses ExplainedBend a slice of young Gouda Holland and feel it give.
- Hard Cheeses ExplainedRun a grater over a wedge and watch the fine crumbs gather.
- Blue Cheeses ExplainedA needle pierces a young blue cheese.
- Pasta Filata: What Makes Stretched-Curd Cheese Different?Crumbly curd meets hot water.
- Brined Cheeses ExplainedBreak a white block of cheese and crumbs tumble from your fingers.
- Whey Cheeses ExplainedWatch a vat of heated whey and you will see delicate curds rise to the surface, ready to be lifted and drained.
- Alpine Cheeses ExplainedTrace the inward curve of a Beaufort wheel.
- Processed Cheese ExplainedHeat the cheese.
- American Swiss Cheese ExplainedCut a pale slice of American Swiss and the rounded holes come into view, followed by a sweet, gently nutty bite.
- Fromage Blanc and Fromage Frais ExplainedLift the perforated basket from a pot of faisselle and look beneath it.
- Raclette Cheese ExplainedA half-wheel faces the heat.