The Easy Mistake That Ruins Your Feta Cheese
When it comes to the shelf life of fresh cheese, feta can seem like a gray area. If you can’t manage to eat it all in one meal or in one recipe, you have about a week to eat it once you open the package. The problem is, sometimes feta seems to spoil faster than seven days. What’s going on? The most likely culprit, unfortunately, is you. Touching fresh feta with your hands can deposit germs on the cheese and in the brine, which can cause it to spoil.
It goes without saying that you should always wash your hands before touching any food, but this is especially true when it comes to fresh cheese like feta, which is a variety of marinated curd. Each cheese is made by carefully fermenting milk with specific bacteria in a very sterile and controlled environment. Your hands, like it or not, are covered in all sorts of microorganisms that will happily roam when introduced to a cheese environment, especially fresh varieties like feta. To keep your crumbs and blocks in tip-top shape, don’t touch fresh cheese with your bare hands unless you plan on eating the whole thing. Instead, use a clean utensil or plastic barrier to touch your cheese.
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Use tongs and plastic to handle the feta
If you’ve ever visited a cheese factory, or at least watched a video online, you’ll notice that everyone is wearing disposable, sterile coveralls and gloves. That’s because milk is an ideal environment for bacteria to grow. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since cheesemakers need certain types of bacteria (like Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus) to make cheese. But unless the environment is tightly controlled, all sorts of other small organisms can also grow there and ruin the cheese. Keep that in mind when handling dairy at home.
Of course, you don’t need to suit up in a spacesuit to handle your feta (or any other cheese) at home. Most of the time, you’ll probably eat it all before it goes bad. However, the fresh variety will last much longer if you only touch what you plan to eat, because even if you wash your hands well, yeast, mold, or bacteria can still be present. If you’re making a recipe that includes feta, put on a rubber or plastic glove before removing the block from the brine, or use a clean utensil. If you plan to crumble it, place the block in a clean plastic bag and crush it inside instead of using your bare hands.
Preserving feta in brine
Your other secret weapon for preserving feta is the brine that comes with the package. The brine isn’t just there for flavor. It also repels bacteria, so don’t toss it down the sink until all the cheese is eaten. Keep in mind, though, that the brine isn’t some kind of magic solution that kills bacteria like bleach. It just slows things down, so don’t stick your bare fingers in the brine either. Remove the cheese from the brine with clean tongs or use a slotted spoon to keep the brine clean.
If your block of feta comes without brine or not enough brine and you can’t eat it all at once, you can make your own by mixing a solution of one teaspoon of salt with one cup of water. Submerge the leftover cheese in the salt mixture and you should be able to store your cheese in the refrigerator for up to a month. You can also preserve feta by submerging it in olive oil.
Feta crumbles, on the other hand, which are usually sold in a container without brine, should be consumed within a week of opening the container. It is not practical to soak the crumbs in a salty brine, as they will be difficult to retrieve. Plus, they are usually packaged this way to make the cheese easier to eat, so feel free to use them while they are fresh.
Read the original article on The Daily Meal.
