How to Break Open a Big Wheel of Parmesan Cheese: A Delightful, 15-Minute Primer

It takes a year to age a wheel of fine parme­san cheese. And about 4 min­utes, of good hard work, to break it open. Above, cheese expert Car­lo Guf­fan­ti walks us through the process. The first inci­sion comes at the 3 minute mark. Var­i­ous knives come into play. Until we reach the sev­en minute mark, when the wheel of cheese final­ly breaks open. All the while, Guf­fan­ti talks about the cheese as if it’s a liv­ing, breath­ing per­son with voli­tion and feel­ings. Maybe that’s what hap­pens when you spend your life mak­ing fine cheeses. Or, maybe he’s just trans­lat­ing Ital­ian expres­sions direct­ly into Eng­lish. Either way, it’s endear­ing.

Note: Accord­ing to The Cheese Chan­nel, which pro­duced this video, what we’re actu­al­ly see­ing is “a wheel of Trent­in­grana – a parme­san-style cheese that’s from Trenti­no. The qual­i­ty of Trent­in­grana is tight­ly con­trolled by appel­la­tion law, which states that it can only be made with raw milk from cows graz­ing on pas­tures or hay (silage is banned).” View more of The Cheese Chan­nel’s videos here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Take UC Berkeley’s Free “Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion 101” Lec­ture Course, Fea­tur­ing a Pan­theon of Sus­tain­able Food Super­stars

 


by | Permalink | Comments (1) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.