Serious Eats
Thank You, Cows, for Giving Us Cheese
Picture where you’ll be a little more than a week from now. It’s Thanksgiving afternoon. You’re on your feet in a hot kitchen preparing a gazillion different dishes, including the Marshmallow Sweet Potato Casserole you’re obliged to make because your Aunt Linda has threatened a boycott unless you serve one. To be sure, part of the joy of Thanksgiving is the Herculean effort involved in all the preparation, but wouldn’t it be great to have one, just one, course be ready-made? And no I’m not talking about a frozen corn soufflé. I’m talking about mankind’s oldest convenience food: cheese.
I always say that cheese has a really high satisfaction-to-effort ratio, and Thanksgiving is perhaps the best time to take advantage of this. All it requires is unwrapping and placing on a board, perhaps adding some dried fruits and nuts to complement. Cheese is also incredibly versatile; it works well as either a starter course or a dessert course (or both!). Last, there’s so much other food to go around on Thanksgiving that a small amount of cheese can go a long way. To that end, here are some suggestions for a Thanksgiving cheese plate.
- Vermont Butter & Cheese Bonne Bouche – A relatively new offering from Vermont Butter & Cheese, the Bonne Bouche is a deliciously tangy aged goat cheese with an ash rind and a smooth and creamy paste. ($8.99 for a 4 oz. wheel on igourmet.com)
- Old Chatham Hudson Valley Camembert – I’ve never eaten a cloud, but I’m sure it would taste like this sheep’s milk Camembert. Its buttery, slightly mushroomy paste is velvety heaven when it simply dissolves on your tongue. ($9.50 for a 4 oz. square at Artisanal Cheese)
- Meadow Creek Grayson –This is one of my favorite American cheeses. Similar to Taleggio, it’s got a washed-rind so it’s on the stinky side, but it’s milder than, say, Époisses or Pont L’Evêque. Made from raw cow’s milk its texture is somewhere between elastic and unctuous, and its fruity, buttery flavor will blow your mind. ($19.99/lb at Murray's Cheese)
- Beecher’s Handmade Flagship Reserve – An American holiday begs the presence of a great American Cheddar. This raw milk cheese won the award for Best Aged Cheddar at the 2007 American Cheese Society Competition, and for good reason. Bandage-wrapped and cave-aged for at least 12 months, it is nutty, fruity, and tangy just like its British cousins. ($25.99/lb at Murray's Cheese)
- Jasper Hill Farm Bayley Hazen Blue – Even people who say they dislike blue cheese like this cheese. It’s a raw cow’s milk blue from Vermont, with gorgeous blue-green striations of mold coursing through its crumbly interior. Simultaneously sweet and salty, this cheese is certain to be a crowd-pleaser. ($20.50/lb at Artisanal Cheese)
I’ve tried to stick to cheeses that are easy to find at most good cheese shops or via online mail-order, and I’ve also chosen only American cheeses, Thanksgiving being a distinctly American holiday, after all. You may be wondering how much to get. Because there’s going to be so much other food, you don’t need to buy that much. Assuming you will buy four to six different cheeses, a half ounce of each cheese per person should do the trick. So in other words if you are serving a total of 8 people, you should buy roughly a quarter pound of each cheese.
Or maybe you have some other ideas for how a Thanksgiving cheese plate should look. If you're planning a completely different cheese plate than the one above, leave a comment below and let everyone know your thoughts!
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.