Cheese You Can Freeze

Did you know you can freeze some cheeses?  I don’t always freeze cheese, but it is possible to do it if I’ve got behind with eating my usual amounts – or if I spot a cheese I want to eat, but know I won’t be eating it soon.

Generally I eat and buy a lot of cheese, usually cheddar, so it doesn’t take much to get a backlog in the fridge if I switch to other foods for a couple of weeks. That’s the time when I am most likely to toss a pack of cheddar into the freezer.

Which cheese can you freeze?

• You can freeze all hard cheeses.  Cheddar, red Leicester, white Leicester.  If it’s hard, you can freeze it.
• You can freeze Gouda cheese and hard Swiss cheese.

For soft cheese, while it’s possible to freeze it, when you defrost the cheese it’s changed texture and separated.  This is fine if you’re going to beat it up again to remix it, to put into a recipe – you can use defrosted soft cheese in cheesecake that’ll be baked, or in dips, ideal for Christmas.  In the main, most people don’t freeze soft cheeses because of this problem.

How to Freeze Cheese:

You shouldn’t really freeze cheese for more than six months; it’ll deteriorate.  This is still fine if you’re using it to bake with as, say, a crumble topping, as it’ll be melted during that cooking process.

• Make sure the cheese is wrapped tightly.
• Place it in the freezer.

Freezing Grated Cheese or Lumps of Cheese:

You can freeze cheese whatever its format.  Think about how you’ll be using it when you defrost it.  If you’ll be using the cheese in smaller portions, you can cut it up before you freeze it.  If you’re using it for pizza toppings, then grate the cheese and freeze it as grated.  If you’re freezing grated cheese for, say, pizza toppings, then portion it up so you only have to defrost the amount you need at that time and not the whole lot.