In my childhood home, around 5.30ish in the evening, the call would often come from the kitchen, "Alison! Could you please grate this block of cheese for me?"
It meant my Mum was making something for dinner which required some grated cheese, and rather than stop the other food preparations she was doing, the grating task would be passed onto me or my brother. We'd be handed a piece of cheese, a metal grater and a faded red plastic bowl (it was always the same bowl).
I remember quite liking the job, as I could never grate right to the end of the piece of cheese, and I'd make a snack of the remnants.
Of course, before our time (and well into our time) there was no alternative if grated cheese was required - grated cheese needed, well...grating.
Sometime in the 1980s however, we noticed something novel in the supermarket fridges: bags of pre-grated cheese! I can still hear my Mum's reaction. "Well," she said in her Scottish accent, "That's just the height of laziness!"
I have to confess though that over the years, I have indeed bought the odd bag of pre-grated cheese. It's just so convenient to reach into the packet and extract the exact amount of cheese required. It takes mere seconds.
However, one day I took a closer look at the bag and compared it with the wrapper on my usual large block of cheese.
This is the list of ingredients on a regular supermarket brand of tasty cheddar cheese:
And this is the list of ingredients on the pre-grated version of the same brand of tasty cheddar cheese:
Notice something? Yes, a sneaky little additive has elbowed its way onto the list.
I consulted Additive Alert, a book I like to keep on hand to check out what those numbers mean when I see them on packets. E460 is 'cellulose microcrystalline and powdered', and is used as an anti-caking agent. According to the information in Additive Alert, "Most sources regard as safe although banned in UK in baby food only". It seems to be used in many foods such as sauces, baked goods, desserts, ice creams and spreads as well as in tablet-form medications.
E460 is mostly extracted from high quality wood pulp.
It may be a harmless additive but call me old-fashioned, I like my cheese to contain, well...just cheese. Hold the wood pulp.
For the sake of a bit of child labour, I can ask my daughters to grate cheese for me and our grated cheese can be just that. Grated cheese.
So now, around 5.30ish, the call often goes out in our house too. (But I've noticed there's quite a bit of the end of the block consumed!)
Do you take short cuts with your ingredients?
24 comments:
Our household is 90% hand-grated cheese with mozzarella cheeze pre-grated for quick weekend pizzas. Perhaps I'll have to review that...off to check the ingredient list for E460.
My kids love grating the cheese (I think its the sneaky snack they get while doing it) so perhaps mozarella will have to be on their list.
The other problem with pre-grated cheese is that it requires a fair bit more packaging and you're paying to transport rather a lot of air along with your cheese.
I keep a ball of mozzarella in the freezer for slack night pizzas, you can even grate it while it's frozen and stick the rest of it back in.
The Italian deli that we go to has a wonderfully fast electric grating machine behind the counter. If you are not fond of grating super-hard parmesan for instance, you can buy a slag of proper (and very expensive) parmesan and they will grate it into a plastic tub for you.
I decline to use that service, as I like big parmesan flakes, not parmesan powder. But the local Italians love it. That machine runs day and night. OK, day only. The shop is not open at night.
As for squishy cheese like mozzarella, I cycle over to Haberfield if I have the time and buy balls of fresh buffalo mozzarella. You tear them rather than grating them.
When we go to the snow, Chook always gets the job of grating cheese when we have pasta for lunch (which is most days). It is the only cooking function he is capable of performing.
My childhood was full of skinned toes and ankles (bikes), skinned knees (running around) and skinned knuckles (cheese grating).
That should have been "slab" of mozzarella, not "slag".
I've certainly bought the grated stuff once or twice but (and I've never actually done the research here) I assume it would be more expensive than ye olde blocke and as such would be a luxury. I usually make Fixit grate the cheese. This is probably very bad for his cholesterol levels.
Did I really spell cheese with a 'z' in my earlier comment? All those zeds in Mozzarella must've got to my brain...
Yes, I well remember my reaction on first seeing grated cheese in the Supermarket!
Gradually I succumbed to the lure of a quick fix and started to buy the grated version-- until a few months ago when my young hairdresser, of all people, enlightened me to the anticaking additive ( mind you at the time she was also extolling the virtues of some hightech food processer she is agent for!)
So it is back to the metal grater and yes Fairlie, it is still the well worn red plastic bowl!!
Ah, we grate, except for mozzarella for pizza. Like the mof, I have a special bowl for catching the grated cheese.
My mother has a grater with a crank thingy on it. It looks like a giant lobster claw. One piece pressed the cheese against the grater (which was shapped like a wheel with an open middle) while one turned the handle to move the wheel. The resulting pieces of finely grated cheese fell into the bowl. This was the preferred method of grating for pimento cheese.
Don't give pre-grated cheese a first glance – never mind a second as it wouldn't have a strong enough flavour for me apart from Parmesan but "Boy-on-a-bike" is right – that pre-grated is like powder so gets ignored, too. I love cheese, but only that with the strongest of possible flavours, and use so much of it that there is always a large bowl ready grated in the 'frig.. As to short cuts with other ingredients, I'll have to think about that one. One short cut I've taken all my life is with pastry, other than short crust types. Commercial rough puff, flaky and filo are so much better than home- made because of the way factory machines blow air through the mixture before liqiud is added. I go even further and buy ready-rolled sheets for certain dishes as well as block as it saves time. Melinda's description of the "claw" sounds very like the Mouli grater I used to prepare the baby food with. I never thought of it for grating cheese so I must hunt it out and see if it would.
When I'm super organised (which is usually only in the holidays) I grate up a full block of tasty cheese and then keep it in the freezer. I had no idea about the wood pulp (yum yum) but it's cheaper by far to do it this way.
We have a grater from a company called Pampered Chef that I used to use, when I enjoyed cooking. Now I buy the packaged stuff that is probably not good for you. I had to laugh at your Mom's statement about the packaged stuff being for lazy people. So true...ha.
I tried the pre-grated cheese a few times but prefer the block of cheese, and grate what I want myself. Also, with the block of cheese, we can slice it when we want slices.
The only time I ever buy grated cheese is for homemade pizza. I must admit that I had never even noticed the extra ingredient. I had always thought pre-grated cheese to taste a bit plastic, now I realise it tastes a bit woody!
I to sometimes buy the grated cheese to keep in the freezer for quick dinners........Now it will be back to grating all the cheese, or puting out the call to someone...
I sometimes buy the nasty stuff for convenience sake. Not any more. While you may not guess it to look at me, I'm getting tired of all the crap they put in our food and am trying to eat better food. Thanks for the heads up!
Oh blurk. Just checked my Pizza Cheese pile. Has anti-caking agent AND preservative.
Have you seen that new add for something (probably a bank account) that says "Remember when things were simple...like when apple juice didn't have 9 ingredients". Laughed my head off I did, even 'though it's not really funny, of course.
Omigod, wood pulp? Am so going to check the label on the flaked parmesan we sometimes buy. I tend to get that one because you can store it in the freezer and just put a couple of flakes on your pasta at a time.
I'm ashamed to admit that I am firmly in the pregrated camp. I even have two varieties - regular grated cheese and grated pizza cheese mix.
One area where I will not buy grated is parmesan. I like it cut from a big wheel by a woman with huge forearms, no doubt developed by years of cutting into parmesan wheels.
The wood pulp thing has me thinking though. Who would have thought?
I often think the bags apple slices are the height of laziness. Also the slices don't go brown. There's got to be something radioactive stopping that.
Well, you've now got me to do something that had never occurred to me before. I bought a pack of grated mozzarella just to try it out as my curiosity had been so aroused. Seemed very expensive but ungrated wasn't available in our village supermarket so couldn't compare. It surely can't taste so much worse. I checked the anti-caking agent and found it's potato starch! I'll let you know how I feel about it the next time I make pizza which may not be too long as I'm feeling impatience to find out building up. I also have to find out why anti-caking agent is deemed necessary as mine frees itself with a little shake of the box. Like the idea of a re-use frozen ball!
I like to think the high amount of preservative in my body is conserving my youthful good looks.
a-hem
Anyhoo, have you looked into commercial wine production ?
Everything is out to either kill us, preserve us, or perhaps even both.
Just thought of another 'short cut'. Retirement means, wonderfully, more sociable suppers and subsequently more meringue making. This has resulted in some use of dried egg white as there never seems to be enough egg whites in the freezer left over from the egg yolks used in pastry. It's never the other way round egg yolks going rubbery on thawing out after freezing. I'd love to hear about other short cuts as I'm keen on "honest cheating" if it saves time and/or money. In the days when I made marmalade, I took to using cans of "prepared" oranges (called MaMade – don't laugh) as it saved oodles of time (a big consideration when a full-time working Mum etc.). It worked out a bit dearer than fresh oranges but still cheaper and definitely better than commercial marmalade. I also, on occasion use gravy granules (for reasons too convoluted to go into here) but only the beef ones. I must stop now, as I could go on for long enough on this subject feeling a PHD coming on after a life-times' study. I did Home Economics and always felt that Economics was the operativeword – in other words getting away with as little as possible!
Frogdancer had a good alternative, just grate a block and freeze it yourself - simple! i know I should buy real cheese and slice it up myself instead of using plastic cheese... this post makes me feel guilty!
I sort of like the idea of grating cheese. It's freshly gtated! And I like the process. I like eating little bits of it as I grate. My daughter has grated over the years. Now she too prefers home grated. Now that I know about the wood pulp. I like home grated even more.
I have read that the additive in grated cheese also stops it from going moldy. Personally I prefer freezing freshly grated & letting the cold do the mold stopping. Wood pulp, oh yummy. I get lazy every once & a while & go for these convenience foods, then I read the labels & feel disgusted with myself. We used to be cheese grater for Mom as my children were for me. A little blood & knuckle in the cheese must be better for us than wood pulp. I may be Canadian but a beaver I'm not!
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