Ok, I know there’s a couple folks who read this who COOK, where as I CAN cook, but am generally much happier following a recipe (there are exceptions to that, but not many). Once I know a recipe reasonably well I’ll play with it, but I gotta have that start.
So, I want to make my own cheese spread. Why? Cause a really GOOD cheese spread is hard to get sometimes, and the rest kinda suck. The BEST cheese spread I can get locally I have to go rather out of my way for and it costs more than the rest (of course), its worth it, but its still money and time spent that gets annoying when I want cheese spread.
So I went looking for recipes. I’m gonna link to three, there’s lots more, but these three seem to be reasonably good examples of what I’m seeing:
So. The are some rather significant differences here, and I’m bit stumped as to which I’m likely to want to try. They all call for butter, but one also calls for sour cream. One calls for white wine (but notes that if you only have water that’ll work), the others don’t call for any liquid. The amounts I’m less worried about (though there’s some significant differences there too), I’m capable of adding bit by bit till I get the texture I want, and I can figure out flavorings myself, but does anyone have any ideas as to which recipe might be a better choice (or at least WHY this one calls for sour cream, and that one white wine….), or do you have a recipe to share that you’ve already tried?
My advice? Start with recipe #2. It defines the cheeses used, rather than an undefined “your favorite cheese”.
A dab of cream, sour cream, or milk will help make it smooth and better to spread. I personally would reduce the butter, then.
White wine will add a little acidity.
That makes sense. We've a great big block of sharp chedder so thats easy, I was thinking asiago rather than romano, shall have to play. I think then that I'll skip the wine for the moment, I don't drink, so theres none already in the house to make it easy to play with. I keep thinking I ought to buy some to try cooking with, but I'd never use up the whole bottle!
I like cooking with wine. Sometimes I get some in the food.
A little squirt of lemon juice can substitute. Or just skip it.
A warm kitchen helps.
Lol! My SIL says the same thing. I'll skip it for now, and I have lemon juice already if I change my mind.
I'd say #2 or #3 would work well. Let us know how it turns out!
BTW, you can usually pick up a small bottle of white cooking wine at the grocery. It goes in a lot of meat dishes to add acidity.
Ugh! Cooking wine is VERY salty.
You are better off getting some two-buck chuck.
You know, I never noticed that. I don't add a lot of salt to my food, so that may have helped to balance it a bit. Thanks for the info!
The story I was told years ago was that salt was poured into the cooking wine to keel the help from drinking the wine (they would get sick before drunk).
I suppose I could Google it, but I prefer sounding like a know-it-all… 😛
My SIL likes white wine (no idea what kind), I was thinking I minght see if she'd give up half a bottle.
Gonna try a small batch without and see. I don't mind playing around a bit.