Cheese 101

Queso Fresco

. The name means "fresh cheese." In this case, it's a salty cheese that's usually enjoyed crumbled but can also be sliced or melted. Use it on refried beans, enchiladas, or stuffed in chiles.

Sirene Cheese

Also known as "white brine sirene" is a type of brined cheese made in the Balkans, especially popular in Croatia, Serbia, Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Montenegro and also in Israel.

Colby Jack Cheese

Also known as Cojack, is a cheese produced from a mixture of Colby and Monterey Jack cheeses. It is generally sold in a full-moon or a half-moon shape when it is still young and mild in flavor. The cheese has a semi-hard texture

Halloumi Cheese

Also known as hellim, it is a Cypriot semi-hard, unripened, brined cheese made from a mixture of goat's and sheep's milk, and sometimes also cow's milk. It has a high melting point and so can easily be fried or grilled.

Montafoner Sauerkäse Cheese

Also known as montafonese cheese, is a sour cream cheese made in the Montafon since the 12th century. It is similar to the tyrolean grey cheese.

Muenster Cheese

Also known as munster, it is a semi-soft cheese from the United States. It is thought to be an imitation of the Alsatian washed-rind Munster cheese, introduced by German immigrants. It is distinct from the processed dairy food Sweet Muenster Cheese.

Caciocavallo Podolico Cheese

Also known as the "Horse Cheese," Caciocavallo Podolico is very popular in the southern part of Italy. Although it's nickname is horse cheese it's actually not made from horse's milk, it comes from a rare Italian breed of cow called Podolica. It is a very creamy cheese that is in the shape of pear, what's better than cheese looking like a fruit?

Danish Blue Cheese

Danablu, often marketed under the trademark Danish Blue Cheese within North America, is a strong, blue-veined cheese. This semi-soft creamery cheese is typically drum- or block-shaped and has a white-to-yellowish, slightly moist, edible rind.

Extra Old Bitto Cheese

Get your travel shoes ready, this cheese comes from across the pond—all the way from China, in fact. China actually has some of the most expensive and oldest cheeses. This cheese in particular was made by a Hong Kong importer in 1997. Old Bitto cheese is aged for up to 10 years

Affidélice au Chablis

Given that it is born in Burgundy, it bears a lot of similarity to Epoisses cheese. Made from pasteurised full cream cow's milk in spring-fall season, the cheese takes 3-4 weeks to fully mature.

Ricotta Cheese

Italian whey cheese made from sheep, cow, goat, or Italian water buffalo milk whey left over from the production of cheese.

Paneer Cheese

Mentioned in the Vedas, dating as far back as 6000 BC of India Subcontinent, Paneer is a fresh cheese frequently used in South Asian Cuisine similar to queso blanco. Chhena or Chhana is an East Indian variant of Paneer that is eaten in Bangla, Orissa region of India and also in the neighboring country of Bangladesh. Moist and soft crumbly in texture, it is used to make delicacies such as Sandesh, Mutter paneer and Rasgulla. It is a rich source of milk protein.

Dangke Cheese

Milk-clotting enzymes from papaya leaves and fruit are used to ferment cow or buffalo milk to form this cheese that belongs to the South Sulawesi region of Indonesia. To render a salty flavour to it, it is often soaked in salt water.

Parmesan Cheese

Parmigiano-Reggiano is a hard, granular cheese. The name "Parmesan" is often used generically for various simulations of this cheese, although this is prohibited in trading in the European Economic Area under European law.

Talesh Cheese

Precisely flavoured and high fat containing Talesh Cheese is a famous creation of Iran's Talesh County. The cheese is named after the Talesh tribe who prepare this cheese using native methods and unsophisticated tools. It is prepared from fresh goat milk.

Swiss Cheese

Swiss cheese is a generic name in North America for several related varieties of cheese, mainly of North American manufacture, which resemble Emmental cheese, a yellow, medium-hard cheese that originated in the area around Emmental, in Switzerland.

Yak's Cheese

The cheese is made by wrapping the curd from yak's milk in cloth and pressing it to get rid of the water. When it dries out it's cut into pieces and allowed to dry, often over a wood fire. It's earthy and tasty. The yak is the male of the species and doesn't produce milk, so it really should be called nak cheese after the female.

Easy Cheese

This aerosol-based spray cheese product is so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget just how crazy it is. It's cheese that you shoot out of a spray can like shaving cream or spray paint. It's also bright orange.

Winnimere Cheese

This creamy, gooey and soft cheese originates in the state of Vermont. As part of a tradition, this cheese is only made during the winter months.

Old Ford Cheese

This delicate, firm cheese is aged and then pressed to perfection by hand. It's made from a goat's milk that comes all the way from England. This cheese is known for its savory, salty, and buttery flavor.

Jersey Blue Cheese

This juicy, award-winning cheese was first made by Willi Schmid all the way in Switzerland. Even though this cheese has an American sounding name, it's actually a Swiss cheese that was named after a breed of cow whose milk it's made from.

Wyke Farms Cheddar Cheese

This rather expensive cheese is known for making sandwiches taste better and often pairs perfectly with wines and beers. It is actually one of the most traditional cheeses. This cheese, made in 1861 by the Wyke Farms family in Great Britain is also an award-winning cheese.

Imsil Cheese

This type of cheese is good on pizza, and it has its own theme park, called Imsil Cheese Village

Charcoal Cheese

You'll never guess what the active ingredient in this cheese is. No, it's not plain old coal. It's plain old charcoal. Just like the source material, this cheese is black on the outside and black on the inside. Still, fans say it tastes quite good and not at all like burned carbon atoms.

Abbae de Belloc Cheese

a French Pyrenees, traditional farmhouse, semi-hard cheese from the Pays Basque region, made from unpasteurized sheep milk, with a fat content of 60%

Comte Cheese

a French cheese made from unpasteurized cow's milk in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France. Comté has the highest production of all French AOC cheeses, at around 64,000 tonnes annually

Cotija Cheese

a Hispanic-style cheese named after the town of Cotija in the Mexican state of Michoacán. This hard, crumbly Mexican cheese is made mainly from cow's milk.

Prästost Cheese

a Swedish cheese with historical roots in Sweden's one-time custom of paying tithes with agricultural goods including milk. It was common for the church to make cheese from this milk from the 16th though 19th centuries.

Chura Kampo Cheese

a Tibetan dried cheese made from soft curds resembling cottage cheese.

Cabrales Cheese

a blue cheese made in the artisan tradition by rural dairy farmers in Asturias, Spain. This cheese can be made from pure, unpasteurized cow's milk or blended in the traditional manner with goat and/or sheep milk, which lends the cheese a stronger, spicier flavor. All of the milk used in the production of Cabrales must come exclusively from herds raised in a small zone of production in Asturias, in the mountains of the Picos de Europa.

Chechil Cheese

a brine string cheese that originated in Armenia. It has a consistency approximating that of mozzarella or sulguni and is produced in the form of dense strings, rolled up in a figure eight of thick braid-shaped ropes.

Lighvan Cheese

a brined curd cheese traditionally made in Iran. Having a sour flavor, and a shape covered by holes, the cheese is produced from sheep's milk. The name comes from Liqvan, a village in East Azerbaijan, where it has traditionally been made.

Nguri Cheese

a buffalo's milk cheese of Fujian province, China. It is in a ball-shape approximately the size of a table tennis ball and has a soft, leathery texture. It is made by shaping with a cheese cloth the mixture of milk and vinegar that has been marinated in a salty brine. It is served as a condiment to plain rice congee. A small bite of this condiment could complement a large mouthful of plain congee, as it is very salty.

Pule Cheese

a cheese made from the milk of Balkan donkeys from Serbia. A distinctive dairy product of Serbian cuisine, pule is reportedly the "world's most expensive cheese", fetching 1,000 Euros per kilogram.

Manchego Cheese

a cheese made in the La Mancha region of Spain from the milk of sheep of the manchega breed. Official manchego cheese is to be aged for between 60 days and two years.

Saint-Albray

a cheese which comes from the Aquitaine region of France. Invented in 1976, the cheese is a French soft cheese and roughly similar to Camembert cheese

Rushan Cheese

a cow's milk cheese of Yunnan, China. It is traditionally made by the Bai people, who call it nvxseiz, the etymology of which is unclear. It is flat and has a leathery texture. It may be served fried or grilled and rolled up on a stick.

Asiago Cheese

a cow's milk cheese, produced only on the Asiago plateau in the Veneto foothills in Italy. The cheese-making tradition in the provinces of Vicenza and Trento dates back to more than thousand years. Traditionally, it was made from sheep's milk but today it is produced from unpasteurised cow's milk.

Khoya Cheese

a dairy product widely used in the cuisine of the Indian Subcontinent, encompassing India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. It is made of either dried whole milk or milk thickened by heating in an open iron pan. It is lower in moisture than typical fresh cheeses such as ricotta.

Pepper Jack Cheese

a derivative of Monterey Jack that is often flavored with spicy chili peppers, as well as various peppers and herbs

Flower of Rajya Cheese

a firm yak's-milk cheese made in Nepal by Tibetan nomads in collaboration with the Trace Foundation. Milk is heated and ripened in big copper vats, curdled, drained and molded into 10-12 lb wheels.

Burrata Cheese

a fresh Italian buffalo milk cheese made from mozzarella and cream. The outer shell is solid mozzarella, while the inside contains stracciatella and cream, giving it an unusual, soft texture.

Cottage Cheese

a fresh cheese curd product with a mild flavor. It is mostly used when crumbly.

Blue Cheese

a general classification of cheeses that have had cultures of the mold Penicillium added so that the final product is spotted or veined throughout with blue, or blue-grey mold and carries a distinct smell, either from that or various specially cultivated bacteria. Some blue cheeses are injected with spores before the curds form, and others have spores mixed in with the curds after they form. Blue cheeses are typically aged in a temperature-controlled environment such as a cave. Blue cheese can be eaten by itself or can be spread, crumbled or melted into or over foods.

Humboldt Fog Cheese

a goat milk cheese made by Cypress Grove, of Arcata, California, in Humboldt County. It is named for the local ocean fog which rolls in from Humboldt Bay.

Gruyère Cheese

a hard yellow cheese that originated in the cantons of Fribourg, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Jura, and Bern in Switzerland, and is named after the town of Gruyères.

Roncal Cheese

a hard, creamy sheep milk cheese. It is made in one of seven villages in the Valle de Roncal of Spain.

Pecorino Romano Cheese

a hard, salty Italian cheese, often used for grating, made out of sheep's milk. Pecorino Romano was a staple in the diet for the legionaries of ancient Rome.

Grana Padano Cheese

a hard, slow-ripened, semi-fat cheese from Italy, comparable to Parmigiano Reggiano. Grana Padano has had protected designation of origin status since 1996. It is made from milk produced in the Po River valley

Époisses de Bourgogne Cheese

a legally demarcated cheese made in the village Époisses and its environs, in the département of Côte-d'Or, about halfway between Dijon and Auxerre

Jarlsberg Cheese

a mild, semi-soft cow's milk cheese of Norwegian origin. Created by Anders Larsen Bakke, it resembles a Swiss Emmental with distinctive, open and irregular 'eyes'. Many a times Jarlsberg is marketed as a Swiss cheese because of its characteristics, though it tends to be sweeter and stronger than Emmentaler.

Byaslag Cheese

a mild, unripened Mongolian cheese prepared from the milk of yak or cows.

Buffalo Mozzarella Cheese

a mozzarella made from the milk of Mediterranea Italiana buffalo. It is a dairy product traditionally manufactured in Campania, especially in the provinces of Caserta and Salerno.

Fourme d'Ambert

a semi-hard French blue cheese. One of France's oldest cheeses, it dates from as far back as Roman times. It is made from raw cow's milk from the Auvergne region of France, with a distinct, narrow cylindrical shape.

Edam Cheese

a semi-hard cheese that originated in the Netherlands, and is named after the town of Edam in the province of North Holland.

Colby Cheese

a semi-hard cow's milk cheese from the United States.

Havarti Cheese

a semi-soft Danish cow's milk cheese. It is a table cheese that can be sliced, grilled, or melted.

Butterkase Cheese

a semi-soft cheese with a golden natural rind, very popular in Germany and Austria for its creamy texture, buttery like taste. Its name, when literally translated means "butter cheese," but the cheese is butter free. However, the appealing flavour and appearance makes it a great hit on a cheeseboard. Produced in Landhaus with original cultures and traditional German production methods, it is aged for a very brief period resulting in a mild taste and flavour.

Rofquefort Cheese

a sheep milk cheese from the south of France, and together with Bleu d'Auvergne, Stilton, and Gorgonzola is one of the world's best known blue cheeses.

Zamorano Cheese

a sheep's milk cheese made in the province of Zamora, Spain. This is a hard cheese which is typically aged about 6 months. The cheeses are turned often and rubbed with olive oil, giving the cheese its characteristic dark color.

Ayib Cheese

a soft Ethiopian fresh cheese similar to cottage cheese. At meals, it acts as a simple, cooling foil to many of the complex and sometimes fiery tastes in Ethiopian cuisine.

Saint-Marcellin

a soft French cheese made from cow's milk. Named after the small town of Saint-Marcellin, it is produced in a geographical area corresponding to part of the former Dauphiné province.

Brie Cheese

a soft cow's-milk cheese named after Brie, the French region from which it originated. It is pale in color with a slight grayish tinge under a rind of white mold.

Camembert Cheese

a soft, creamy, surface-ripened cow's milk cheese. It was first made in the late 18th century at Camembert, Normandy, in northern France.

Cream Cheese

a soft, mild-tasting fresh cheese made from milk and cream. Stabilizers such as carob bean gum and carrageenan are typically added in industrial production

Kesong Putî Cheese

a soft, unaged, white cheese made from unskimmed carabao's milk, salt, and rennet. Comparable to cottage cheese, queso blanco, and paneer, kesong putî has a soft close texture and slight salty taste.

Tyrolean Grey Cheese

a strongly flavoured, rennet-free cows-milk acid-curd cheese made in the Tyrolean Alp valleys, Austria. It owes its name to the grey mold that usually grows on its rind.

Mish Cheese

a traditional Egyptian cheese that is made by fermenting salty cheese for several months or years. Mish may be similar to cheese that has been found in the tomb of the First Dynasty Pharaoh Hor-Aha at Saqqara, from 3200 BC.

Kalari Cheese

a traditional ripened cheese product indigenous to Rajouri, Poonch and Udhampur of Jammu province of Jammu and Kashmir state of India. It is a very dense cheese that is usually sautéd in its own fat and salted while serving.

Ubriaco Cheese

a traditional, Italian cheese made in northern Italy's Veneto region. Affectionately called "drunken cheese", it is bathed in gallons of dry and sparkling Prosecco wine along with skins, seeds, and leftovers from the wine making process to extract the unique sweet, delicate aroma of the wine and complex flavours.

Mozzarella Cheese

a traditionally southern Italian dairy product made from Italian buffalo's milk by the pasta filata method. Mozzarella received a Traditional Specialities Guaranteed certification from the European Union in 1998.

Sage Derby Cheese

a variety of British Derby cheese infused with sage to produce a glorious green marbling effect and subtle herb flavour. Hard to find these days, it is England's oldest and most famous cheeses originally made only for special occasions such as Harvest and Christmas.

Tomme de Savoie Cheese

a variety of Tomme cheese from Savoy in the French Alps. It is a mild, semi-firm cow's milk cheese with a beige interior and a thick brownish-grey rind. Tomme de Savoie dates back to ancient history

Gorgonzola Cheese

a veined Italian blue cheese, made from unskimmed cow's milk. It can be buttery or firm, crumbly and quite salty, with a "bite" from its blue veining.

Emmental Cheese

a yellow, medium-hard Swiss cheese that originated in the area around Emmental, Canton Bern. It has a savory, but mild taste.

Milbenkäse cheese

also called Mellnkase in the local dialect and often known as Spinnenkäse, is a German speciality cheese.

Oaxaca Cheese

also known as Queso Oaxaca, Asadero or Quesillo is a Mexican name for a semi-soft, white, string-type, Hispanic-style cheese made from cow's milk. Belonging to the pasta filata family, similar to a Mozzarella, Oaxaca is a stretched curd cheese, kneaded and sold in long ropes gently wound in balls.

Domiati Cheese

also referred to as white cheese, is a soft white salty cheese made primarily in Egypt, but also in Sudan and other Middle Eastern countries

Cougar Gold Cheese

an American Cheddar cheese produced at the Washington State University Creamery in Pullman, Washington. Like other cheeses sold at the creamery, Cougar Gold is notable for being sold exclusively in 30oz tin cans.

Monterey Jack Cheese

an American semi-hard cheese, customarily white, made using cow's milk. It is commonly sold by itself, or mixed with Colby to make a marbled cheese known as Colby-Jack. Cheddar-Jack and Pepper Jack varieties are also available.

Bandel Cheese

an Asian cheese originated in an erstwhile Portuguese colony, Bandel located in eastern India. Today, the production is concentrated in the towns of Tarakeswar and Bishnupur, Bankura, near Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Stilton Cheese

an English cheese, produced in two varieties: Blue, known for its characteristic strong smell and taste, and the lesser-known White.

Provolone Cheese

an Italian cheese. It is an aged pasta filata cheese originating in Casilli near Vesuvius, where it is still produced in pear, sausage, or cone shapes varying from 10 to 15 centimetres long.

Feta Cheese

brined curd white cheese made in Greece from sheep's milk or from a mixture of sheep and goat's milk. Similar brined white cheeses produced in Europe are often made partly or wholly of cow's milk, and they are sometimes also called feta.

Lord of Hundreds Cheese

comes from East Sussex, England and is made from local sheep's milk. This type of cheese is rustic with a slightly dry, sharp, and nutty flavor.

Piave Cheese

has a dense texture, without holes, and is straw-yellow in hue. It has a slightly sweet flavor. Once fully aged, it becomes hard enough for grating, and it develops an intense, full-bodied flavor.Piave's rind is impressed repeatedly in vertical direction with the name of the cheese.

Goat Cheese

is cheese made from goat's milk.

Kalimpong Cheese

is made in and named after Kalimpong, a hill station in the Indian state of West Bengal.

Rumi Cheese

is one of the main types of cheese in Egypt. It has a distinctive smell, and different degrees of saltiness depending on the age.

Caravane Cheese

is the brand name of a camel milk cheese produced in Mauritania by Tiviski, a company founded by Nancy Abeiderrhamane in 1987.

Caerphilly Cheese

it is a hard, white cheese originating from a town of the same name in South Wales. It was first made in Caerphilly in about 1830. Its texture and flavour bears resemblance to cheddar, which is the most popular type of cheese in the United Kingdom. This cheese is known as "the crumblies".

Sosha Cheese

it is a pungent Tibetan soft cheese made from the cream and skin that forms on the top of the milk. It is often made from the milk of animals inhabiting the mountainous regions of Nepal and Tibet, such as yak and goat. Its taste is often compared with Blue Cheese or Limburger.

Afuega'l Pitu' Cheese

it is one of the oldest Spanish cheeses. It is also famous as one of the most widespread Asturian cheeses. The cheese is produced from cow's full fat milk in towns that dot the lower basins of river Narcea and river Nalón in the central Asturias-Northern Spain. It is made by curdling in a mould at a temperature of between 20 and 25 degrees, for 10 to 48 hours. During its preparation, animal rennet is added and its interior or rind may also be salted.

Casu Marzu Cheese

literally translating into English as "rotten/putrid cheese", is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese, that contains live insect larvae.

Hushållsost Cheese

made from a Swedish cows'-milk cheese, It is a semi-hard cheese, with small granular holes, and is made from whole milk, which gives it a 26 percent fat content. There is also a version with less fat labeled "17% fetthalt".

Gouda Cheese

meaning "cheese from the Netherlands town of Gouda", is a mild, yellow cheese made from cow's milk. It is one of the most popular cheeses worldwide.

Flor de Guia Cheese

originated from Gran Canaria, the islands located in the Atlantic Ocean. Produced in the Guia and Galdar Heights in the north-western part of these islands, Flor de Guia cheese is made with a mixture of cow's and sheep's milk.

Rouge River Blue Cheese

originates from the lovely state of Oregon and was first made by a guy named Tom Vella who opened a creamery in Southern Oregon during the Depression. This firm textured cheese will definitely cheer you up with its hazelnut and fruity flavors.

Cheddar Cheese

relatively hard, off-white, sometimes sharp-tasting, natural cheese. Originating in the English village of Cheddar in Somerset, cheeses of this style are produced beyond this region and in several countries around the world.

American Cheese

type of processed cheese. It can be orange, yellow, or white in color, is mild, salty, and faintly sweet in flavor, has a medium-firm consistency, and has a very low melting point.

Chhena Cheese

ଛେନା or chhana are curds or cheese curds, originating from the Indian subcontinent, made from water buffalo or regular cow milk by adding food acids such as lemon juice instead of rennet and straining.