Cheesy Appetizer Ideas

A recent visit to a local restaurant reminded me how far-reaching the cheesy appetizer category is. My friends ordered cheese fries. French-fried potatoes with melted cheese on top—that was the extent of the recipe. And it is a hit with the calorie-unconscious at this restaurant and many others.

The category encompasses a simple appetizer like this to more-upscale products, like a blue-cheese tartlet. No matter what the market, it helps to look at ingredient fundamentals to optimize the product design.

Going natural

“Selection of the cheese depends on the application,” says Dean Sommer, cheese and food technologist, Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison. “They all have their advantages and disadvantages.”

Natural cheeses, such as Cheddar, blue, Swiss, Parmesan and Asiago, provide a wider range of flavor opportunities, Sommer says. But the melt of the natural cheeses is less controllable than that of processed cheeses. Some melt very well, but others, like “baker’s cheese and cottage cheese, don’t melt because of pH issues,” he says.

For non-melting applications, such as frying, the Hispanic-style cheese queso para frier is particularly well-suited. Caribbean fried-cheese recipes, for example, require cubes of cheese to be heated in a hot frying pan. The cheese browns and becomes soft, but it resists melt and retains its shape.

Fried mozzarella sticks require melt and stretch—but not too much. “If you get too much melt, then you can have blowouts when you deep-fry those,” cautions Sommer. “That’s a big problem for restaurant chains.” Luckily, product designers can control the melt and stretch. “The pH of the cheese has a dramatic effect on melt,” he continues. “In general, the higher the pH of the cheese, the less it will melt and flow. Most mozzarella is made to a finished pH of 5.20 to 5.35. Once the pH is above 5.4, you start to get melt restriction, and as it approaches 5.5, the melt restriction becomes very pronounced.”

Other aspects affect melt, particularly age: The younger the cheese, the less it melts. “That is why most pizza makers want their mozzarella at least two weeks old prior to use,” explains Sommer. “Otherwise, even if it is in the correct pH range of 5.20 to 5.35, it doesn’t melt and flow properly. This is because of lack of proteolysis, as well as lack of solubilization of the calcium phosphate in the cheese, which serves as a glue to hold the casein strands together. So, this means if an appetizer manufacturer wanted to restrict melt, they could also obtain very young mozzarella and freeze it, and it won’t melt and flow well, either.”

Milk homogenization also helps restrict melt and flow. “This is a different scientific phenomenon where homogenization breaks up the fat globules and coats them with an additional layer of protein molecules, which results in a lack of melt and flow,” says Sommer. “So, if you homogenize some of the milk prior to cheese-making you will restrict the melt, and if you homogenize all of it, then the melt will really be restricted.”

Natural cheeses may provide appeal, but one disadvantage is a tendency to oil-off more readily than processed cheese. They are also less shelf stable and less tolerant of freeze/thaw.

Natural blue cheese can be a challenge to work with. Its crumbly characteristics can be nice for topping salads, but it is less appealing in appetizer applications. “Feta is also very crumbly, for different reasons than blue,” says Sommer. “Feta is crumbly because it is extremely acidic, typically around pH 4.7.” Feta’s high salt content also makes the cheese crumbly. But, “In the case of blue, during the initial making of the cheese, the pH is also allowed to drop very low,” he says.

“However, during the aging and the formation of the blue veining, the pH rises dramatically to levels higher than most cheeses due to the action of molds on breaking down the protein structure and releasing alkaline byproducts. But the initial damage has been done, so to speak, during the period of time the cheese was at the low pH, and the cheese will remain crumbly.” Blue, too, is also typically high in salt.

Processed performance

When it comes to melt control, processed cheese reigns supreme, with products available in every gradient, from high to low melt. And, because it melts well with little oiling-off, processed cheese produces a smooth, more-shelf-stable selection than natural cheese.