My family likes to enjoy a sliced cheese treat served with a tasty selection of homemade bread slices. The problem is that when we buy the cheese in bulk at our local SAM’s Club, it’s often too much to finish. As a result, we waste a good part of the product. To counteract this problem, I decided to dehydrate the rest for use in other foods at a later date.
After some thought and effort, I realized that the process was not completely different from other drying procedures that I had done in the past. To start with, I took the cheese and cut it into extremely thin individual layers. I soon discovered that the thinner I cut the cheese, the faster it dehydrated. When slicing, try to get slices of the same thickness to allow the cheese to dry evenly.
When placing the individual layers of cheese on the dehydrator plates, leave enough space between the individual slices so they do not touch each other. If you’re dehydrating any kind of soft cheese like ricotta or maybe cottage cheese, line the food dehydrator tray with a piece of plastic wrap. Next, spread a thin layer of your chosen soft cheese on top of the plastic wrap.
While the dehydration process is taking place, turn the cheese slices every hour to remove any fat that may have escaped from the cheese itself. Continue drying the cheese slices in your food dehydrator until completely dry. After the cheese has completely dried, it will exhibit a firm, hard texture while turning a dark color. Above all, make sure the cheese is completely dry before removing it from the dehydrator.
When you’re done dehydrating the cheese, set it aside for a while to cool properly, after which you should place the dried slices in a kitchen food processor and grind to a fine powder. Store the cheese powder in a tightly closed airtight container. I usually put it in a regular mason jar along with an oxygen absorber and put the lid on it. Within a short period of time, the lid will open and the can will be sufficiently sealed.
Several nifty little tricks you can do with this technique are making your own cheesy pasta flavor. Carefully dehydrate and blend one or, if desired, several types of cheese in combination to create your own individual blend of cheese powder. If you discover that your cheese has absorbed moisture while in storage, if it smells bad or has developed an undesirable appearance, it should be discarded immediately.
There you have it all in a nutshell, the simple and easy way to dehydrate cheese. Now you are bound to become the envy of all your surviving friends.
For the parish of José
Copyright @2011 Joseph Parish
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