What is a Cheese Curd anyway?

What is a cheese curd?

I’m from WI. And if there is one thing we do in WI, we eat. It’s not just food in general I’m talking about, I’m talking about cheese. More specifically cheese curds. For the love, cheese curds are one of the main reasons I live in WI.

Maybe you have heard this before, maybe you haven’t?

Maybe you’ve tried just one, or maybe you’ve had one so fresh it goes squeak, squeak in your mouth?

Either way, do you even know what the heck a cheese curd is? What makes it a curd? Why are they orange or yellow? How come they taste the same no matter what color they are?

And lastly, and probably the most important question, is there anything in this world, I mean the whole entire world, better than a deep fried cheese curd?

First of all, that last question, anything better in this world? The answer to that is no. Just no, nothing better. To quote my one year old, “No, no, no, no, nooooo mommy.”

Here’s a picture of a cheese curd. A deep fried one too.

Good

Better

So they don’t look like much, but believe me, amazing.

I grew up in Mosinee, WI, and one of my friend’s family owned Mullin’s Cheese. I used to take our boat, park on the public dock and run up to the Mullin’s Cheese store and dig into a fresh cheese curd. That was how the addiction started for me.

It didn’t really sink in until I moved to New York for a year or so and every time I was missing home; I declared, “I wanted a cheese curd!” The problem that came to be for me, every time I mentioned cheese curd, people looked at me like I was completely nuts. I realized that most people had no clue what a cheese curd is.

When I moved back to WI and sent my friends in New York a goodie package (I had to overnight it so that they would still squeak for them). They too now consider themselves awakened.

Ok, what this cheese curd actually is, is fresh, young cheddar cheese in the natural, random shape and form before being processed into blocks then aged. The color depends on the American Cheddar they are using.

The reason they squeak, well that is slightly more complex. Stay with me now, when you bite into a curd, your teeth squeak against their porous bodies which have air trapped inside them. Not that any of that matters, just know when you bite into a fresh one, it’ll sound like a baby mouse is running around in your mouth.

So, that’s it. I got nothing else for you, other than, get in your car, jump on a train, board a flight and get yourself close enough to Midwest as you can and get a cheese curd. Try searching on www.LocalDirt.com and find some. There is no reason you should miss out on this. Totally worth it.