What purpose does American cheese serve? What problem does it solve?
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Melting without breaking. It’s cheese and emulsifier mixed together so the oils don’t separate out. People often use egg for the same reason when making cheese sauces.
Nile Red recently made some Kraft singles style cheese. It’s not plastic, y’all.
It just melts easier without separating. If you melt straight cheddar, you end up with a fuckton of oil floating on top and it’s generally not very good as a sauce by itself. Singles are basically just a cheese bechamel sauce that can solidify for shelf stability
What I find funny about this “it’s plastic!” claim* is that it’s… arguably correct. Except that by that definition every single type of cheese would be a plastic.
At the end of the day, a “plastic” is any synthetic material that is made from a polymer, that you can shape or mould into an object. And while casein (main component of cheese) might be quite complex, as proteins typically are, when it comes to cheesemaking you can simply see it as a proline polymer with some junk added it.
*or a similar claim that I see often in Brazil, regarding a local cheese (queijo prato) being plastic too.
The issue is that “plastic” has multiple meanings.
Cheese is plastic the property.
Cheese is not plastic the oil product.
Yup, it does have multiple meanings. That’s why I said “arguably”.
When people say “it’s plastic!”, they’re usually conveying that it’s made from inedible stuff, I’m aware that they don’t mean “it’s made from a polymerised substance that has been moulded while it still had some plasticity”.
It’s a bit of off-topic but your comment made me realise that it’s theoretically possible to create cheese out of petroleum, air, and salt. It would be expensive and awful-tasting, but probably edible?
I might do the synthesis route of that just for fun.
It might no even taste awful. Petroleum has a lot of interesting compounds that you could probably convert into flavor molecules if you could isolate them. This isn’t an endorsement of the practice, but chemistry is pretty cool.
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It’s cheaper to make because it contains more water, while still vaguely tasting like an aged cheese.
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It melts consistently and evenly
That’s about it. It makes a good mix in for things like queso or fondue, because the melting salts they use to make it will stabilize the mixture quite well, and the real cheese yih use will be the flavor.
Other than that, there is no point, unless you can’t afford real cheese.
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It makes Americans feel like they’ve contributed to the global gastronomy.
Everyone always asks why is American cheese, but never how is American cheese.
From what I get (I’m not from USA nor Switzerland), it’s simply a cheese derivative. Originally developed in Switzerland by two guys trying to increase the shelf life of Emmenthal through sodium citrate.
People using it nowadays might be doing it for a thousand reasons, such as being easier to melt, easier emulsification (that’s convenient for fondue), or perhaps because it’s cheaper.
I personally don’t use it because I don’t see the point*, given that the prices locally are comparable to cheese, and I like traditional cheeses better. That said I don’t see any big deal against it.
*for fondue and cheese sauces: squeeze some lime juice in it and here we go. You’re actually adding citric acid instead of sodium citrate, but given its buffer effect the difference is not a big deal.
is that lime juice in non-american cheeses to get american cheese-like properties? I don’t need an excuse to add lime juice to anything I’m just trying to understand
Yup. It’s to prevent the fondue or cheese sauce from splitting. It’ll also give it some citrus flavour but IMO that’s a bonus.
American cheese is the best cheese for a cheeseburger because it melts without splitting!
Frankly, it’s just a superior cheese for quite a lot of things.
Taiwanese breakfast food.
Those brilliant bastards made me buy american cheese, on purpose, to eat.
Danbing is made with a chewy rice flour crepe, very thin. Crack an egg on a frying pan. Break the yolk with chopsticks and swirl a bit. Mixed but still distinct, not scrambled. Put the crepe on top. Fry the egg a bit. Flip. Put american cheese on top of the egg. Let the crepe side cook a bit while the ‘cheese’ starts to melt. Roll it up. Slice the roll so the cross section is 3 spirals of chewy crepe, fried egg and melted cheese. Eat by the slice.
I don’t know why american cheese makes it better but it really does. Real actual cheese that’s good just isn’t as good for danbing.
American cheese is good for melting, either in hot sandwich-like dishes, or as a sauce additive. If it melts, american cheese will probably be nice in it.
So kraft can sell cheese that legally can’t even be called cheese because it’s so trash
You’re thinking of other processed cheese products, American cheese is just cheddar or colby mixed with a little sodium citrate as an emulsifier. It’s basically easily and uniformly meltable mild cheddar and is definitely cheese
Kraft American cheese is extremely different from (and worse than) deli American cheese.
Surplus of bodily fluids extracted by capital from suffering creatures with cruelty and violence.
You think too much.
Youre supposed to be consuming, and working, and /not asking questions/.
Then the TV opinion ‘news anchor’ stops talking directly to you and resumes talking to their guest
Capitalism
Hunger.
it’s good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aGNAxN5Z-o
Based on this video, it looks like it is a way to turn a certain amount of cheese into a larger quantity of cheaper cheese product.