(no subject)

[darchildre]

So, we are an American cheese household*. It's not the only cheese we eat, but it's my first choice for sandwiches and cheese toast** and I eat a lot of those things. We get ours from the supermarket deli.

This week, the cheese came home with an American cheese label but, when we opened the package, it turned out to not be American cheese. I have eaten a bagel toasted with American cheese for breakfast nearly every day for the past 26 years - I know how American cheese behaves when toasted and this is not that. The thing is, we can't determine what kind of cheese it is. It is a perfectly inoffensive mild cheese that makes perfectly acceptable cheese toast (if inferior to cheese toast made with American cheese) - it might be a Muenster? That's my guess, anyway, but my mom disagrees, because it doesn't have the orange bits that are always on the outside of a Muenster.

It is Mystery Cheese.




*As a preemptive measure: I am not at home to being shamed for my cheese choices, thank you.

**Because it doesn't get greasy when melted, and because I was an American child in the 80's and therefore it's the default "cheese" flavor in my brain.

Comments

[frenchroast]

Meunster is mostly off-white, with the orange edging. So I wouldn't think it would be mistaken for American cheese, because in my experience, American cheese is yellow-orange colored.

Maybe you got Colby? It's pretty mild, and looks about the same color as American cheese. It could also be butterkase, or maybe Edam (but sometimes Edam has a red rind edge)

I'm an equal opportunity cheese lover. American cheese, despite what some people say, IS cheese, and it was invented partly to make cheese more affordable/accessible for more people. And it is the ideal cheese for many applications. I like my other, fancier cheeses too, but the best grilled cheese sandwich will always be made with American cheese.

[darchildre]

I should specify that, when you can choose between white and yellow American cheese (which you often can at a deli counter), my mom always picks the white one. They don't taste different, but she likes that better, and we've been doing that so long that I forget that American cheese is yellow by default. So the color of our mystery cheese is similar to Muenster/Havarti/etc, rather than a cheddar color.

I enjoy a lot of different kinds of cheese, but yeah - some times I want the thing my brain says is the default "cheese" taste. American cheese is breakfast cheese for me and I'm not interested in my breakfast being in any way surprising or challenging.