What Is the Best Way to Store and Preserve Cheese? Good Questions

Q: We often get different types of cheeses to have with wine, but we always seem to end up throwing away leftover cheese because it becomes hard in the refrigerator. It feels awful to keep throwing out these expensive and yummy cheeses.

Any tips on how to store these, especially the ones that are packed in cellophane kind of plastic?

Sent by Archana

Editor: Archana, yes, we do have some good tips on this! You should always take cheese out of plastic immediately, as it creates a funny taste and doesn't allow the cheese to breathe. Here's a step-by-step tutorial on how to take care of your cheese when you bring it home:

• How to Store Cheese: What To Do When You Get It Home

Also, even if cheese does get a little hard and crusty around the edges, you can just cut those bits off and enjoy the rest of the cheese. Cheese rarely spoils all the way through; it's very long-lived!

Readers, any other tips for Archana?

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Comments (10)

If you store opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil it will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

This is the #1 reason I have a vacuum food sealer. I've never had to throw away cheese that I've stored that way (though it will probably go bad after a few weeks).

What about "wet" cheeses? I bought a small block of feta and it came wrapped in its own juices (similar to how mozzarella would). Would you also store that in the parchment paper and plastic wrap??

For feta, I store it submerged in a tub of salt water. Change out the water each week - it keeps quite well. If it does go bad you will notice a slime on the outside and a spoiled odor.

Just started trying the foil method for hard cheeses and based on my initial results - seems to work.

The only kind of cheese I have any problems storing is soft goat cheese (chevres like Montrachet). I haven't come across any good solutions for that yet and it's a cheese that never seems to be addressed when people talk about storage.

Does this mean I should stop freezing my giant hunk of parmesan cheese and using it over the course of a month?

kwatkins, I doubt you even need to freeze your parmesan--I find it lasts *forever* in the fridge. Like literally a couple months at least. (I usually keep it in a ziploc bag, so it's in plastic but not tightly wrapped. Maybe will try foil or paper in the future...)

this advice from a French person ... Cheese should not be stored too cold! Many in France that don't have too hot a kitchen (or the old school way for people who had pantries in old old homes with thick walls) is actually to store cheeses out outside the fridge. Yes, even the creamier camemberts and brie. If you have a cellar for instance, that's a great place. But in any case, you do need to keep the cheese wrapped and separated enough that the flavors of one don't mix up with another. You don't want your goat cheese to smell like roquefort!

Don't throw out those old bits of cheese! My Dad always used up the old bits of dried out cheese in pasta sauce, whiche gave it a wonderful flavour.

if you have odd bits of cheese, another great use is jacques pepin's "fromage fort"... delicious with just about ANY combination.

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/fromage-fort