Moldy cheese

[iwasjustwondering]

I am in the midst of a debate with my SO about a giant block of cheddar that I'd had in the fridge for a couple of weeks.  I was about to make macaroni and cheese.  There were a few blue-green moldy spots around the outside of the cheese. 

SO says we should just cut off the outer bits till we see no more mold, and use it.  We're going to cook the cheese, anyway.  I say the cheese is dead to me.  We have tons of cheese, so it's not like we have to run out or anything. 

Thoughts? 

[HPstache]

Nothing wrong with cutting it off in my opinion...  But I can appreciate the phobia of seeing the mold and not wanting anything to do with it.

[Jack]

Cut out the moldy bits.

[seemsright]

I agree just cut the moldy bits...cheese IS mold...a controlled mold but still mold.

[Frankies Girl]

Yup. I'd cut off the moldy stuff and use the rest. But I've been told my my husband that this is gross, so I no longer tell him if that has occurred. :D

[StashthatCash]

Being from Wisconsin this is a common occurrence... cut it off, it's still perfectly fine.

[WildJager]

Throwing in my two cents.  Cut off the mold from the mold and use it.  No need to contribute to more food waste!

[Papa bear]

Hard cheese, cut off the mold.  Soft cheese, may want to throw away.


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[Bracken_Joy]

So I'll start by saying that I am majorly and easily skeezed out by bad food. I have about a 3 day window in which I will drink milk, and then it gets an off flavor to me and I can't drink it after that.

That said, I have no problems with cheese that has had the outside "bad" parts cut off. I do leave a pretty decent buffer, in case it infiltrates a little bit, but I don't throw the whole thing out.

[nobodyspecial]

USDA advice  http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/molds-on-food-are-they-dangerous_/


Hard cheese
(not cheese where mold is part of the processing)   Use. Cut off at least 1 inch around and below the mold spot (keep the knife out of the mold itself so it will not cross-contaminate other parts of the cheese). After trimming off the mold, re-cover the cheese in fresh wrap.   Mold generally cannot penetrate deep into the product.

Of course they also add the less useful advice:

Cheese made with mold
(such as Roquefort, blue, Gorgonzola, Stilton, Brie, Camembert)   Discard soft cheeses such as Brie and Camembert if they contain molds that are not a part of the manufacturing process.

[Zikoris]

I don't eat cheese, but if I did I would throw the moldy thing out and give myself a facepunch to do a better job of grocery shopping and meal planning in the future, so as not to have food sitting in the fridge long enough to turn into a science experiment. With all the people starving in the world, there's really no excuse for buying and wasting food.

[dragoncar]

USDA advice  http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/molds-on-food-are-they-dangerous_/


Hard cheese
(not cheese where mold is part of the processing)   Use. Cut off at least 1 inch around and below the mold spot (keep the knife out of the mold itself so it will not cross-contaminate other parts of the cheese). After trimming off the mold, re-cover the cheese in fresh wrap.   Mold generally cannot penetrate deep into the product.

Of course they also add the less useful advice:

Cheese made with mold
(such as Roquefort, blue, Gorgonzola, Stilton, Brie, Camembert)   Discard soft cheeses such as Brie and Camembert if they contain molds that are not a part of the manufacturing process.

This is what I do.  You end up with surprisingly little cheese left after cutting away 1 inch, but to me it's worth avoiding a single bout of food poisoning.

And on that topic, note the problem isn't just the mold itself.  You can cook it and kill the mold, but metabolic byproducts of some molds are toxic and the toxins are not destroyed by heat.  So you can still get sick -- depends on the mold and how much toxin it generated.  A tiny spot is probably harmless while a large portion could make you sick.  Why risk it?

[Monocle Money Mouth]

I'm in the toss it camp. The only way I would cut off the moldy part and eat it is if I was in starvation mode with no readily available fresh food.

I would toss it and be more mindful about consuming the cheese before mold starts to grow in the future. I've had food poisoning a few times. Saving a few bucks on cheese isn't  worth days of diarrhea.

[patrickza]

Cut it off and eat it!

I'm glad the majority agree with me here. I don't cut an inch around the mold, maybe a quarter inch. I've even done it on mozzarella (the pizza kind not the buffalo kind), but I don't know if that's considered a hard cheese or not.

[elaine amj]

Cut it off. I've been doing that for years with no ill effects.

Question: recently when I opened my tupperware of shredded mozzarella cheese, it had a strong smell. There was no mold that I could see so I cooked with it. However, when we ate the food, it tasted "off" and we ended up giving it to the dog. I was watchful for mold but haven't really run into a situation where the cheese has gone "off" without going moldy. Is this normal? I had it in an airtight container like I usually do, but this time noticed a lot of condensation on the inside. Also, we did touch the cheese to hand-shred it (so some oil from our hands) and it sat in the fridge a little longer than normal (a couple of weeks).

[rtrnow]

I teach safety and sanitation to culinary students. It is perfectly acceptable and safe and meets servsafe standards to trim to the 1" rule and use. It is done (and legal) in food service all the time.

[GuitarStv]

GuitarStv's moldy cheese routine:

Cheese mouldyCheeseRoutine(Cheese yourCheese)
{
    while ( yourCheese.quantity > 0)
    {
        cut_a_little_off_the_edges( yourCheese );

        if (false == yourCheese.TastesMoldy() )
        {
            return yourCheese;
        }
    }
}

[AZDude]

Cut if off. If you knew what cheese really was and how it is made, this would not be an issue. To make cheese you take milk, add bacteria to it and rennet(stuff that makes the milk partially digested). The milk turns thick and sour and looks sort of like really old milk left out in the sun. The chunks are squeezed together and aged and voila! You have cheese.

So really... is cutting off mold that big a deal? You are eating partially digested chunky sour milk with added bacteria.

[Shinplaster]

Cut off the mold.  Use what you need, and shred the rest.  Put it in the freezer in a freezer bag - it will keep for weeks, and you can use a bit at a time without worrying about mold.

[Gone Fishing]

I'm in the cut it off camp.   I have accidentally consumed moldy cheese and bread, a time or two,  as well as jerky once with no ill effects.  They did taste pretty bad though.  Maybe I should look at my food a little closer! 

[JLee]

Another vote for the cut-it-off camp.  I've never gone to a whole inch, either...I remove what seems reasonable to make sure there's no visible mold.

I generally follow the 'if it doesn't look/smell bad, it's fine' philosophy. It seems to work well.

[dragoncar]

GuitarStv's moldy cheese routine:

Cheese mouldyCheeseRoutine(Cheese yourCheese)
{
    while ( yourCheese.quantity > 0)
    {
        cut_a_little_off_the_edges( yourCheese );

        if (false == yourCheese.TastesMoldy() )
        {
            return yourCheese;
        }
    }
}

Cheese mouldyCheeseRoutine(Cheese yourCheese)
{
    if (yourCheese.TastesMoldy() )
        {
           yourCheese = cut_a_little_off_the_edges( yourCheese );
           yourCheese = mouldyCheeseRoutine(yourCheese);
        }
    else {
        return yourCheese;
    }
}

[GuitarStv]

whoops.

[partgypsy]

In college we bought big blocks of (good) cheese) from a co-op. and yes sometimes a bit of mold would show up. No way in heck we were going to throw out a whole bunch of perfectly good cheese. Just cut off the mold. Never have gotten sick from doing this and I have eaten a lot of cheese in my life. For dairy the sniff test is useful. So if milk doesn't smell right, cheese looks normal but smells off, best to toss it.

[rocketpj]

Cut it off.  Cheese doesn't last long in our house, but on the rare occasions a piece gets hidden behind the pickles or something we cut off the moldy bits and eat away.  40 years in and no health effects as of yet.

Moldy liquids are gone though (i.e. salsa or jams).

[dragoncar]

whoops.

I just refactored it into something a little less efficient :-)

[Rural]

 Cut it off, and No need to cut an inch out, either. Cheddar in particular is just fine afterwards. Been doing this for decades with no ill effects, just like my mother and my grandmother before her.

[Pigeon]

In high school I worked for a Hickory Farms back when they had permanent real stores. We used to look over the cut cheeses every day. We would trim off any mold with a cheese plane or small melon baller (Swiss type cheeses), re weigh and re wrap a and back in the case it went. We took off much less than an inch.

[Catomi]

I'm team trim the cheese. If it's significantly moldy then I will trim all surfaces, though I take much less than an inch. If it still tastes moldy, then I'll trim more/toss it. If it's moldy enough to look like it'll get mold everywhere if I open the package, then I toss it and scold myself for not monitoring my food closely enough.

Caveat: I do not trim soft cheeses (ricotta, cottage cheese, also yogurt). Any sign of mold and those get chucked in their entirety. With those the tendrils can grow down into the cheese much more easily, and scooping the surface is not enough.

[RetiredAt63]

Trim.

And for future reference, hard cheeses freeze well.  When old or very old cheddar is on sale, I buy extra and freeze it.  Or if the piece is really big, I cut it in half - one half for the fridge, the other half well-wrapped (and then in a freezer zip-lock bag with no air) into the freezer.  If you let frozen cheese thaw in the fridge instead of rushing it, it tastes fine.

[BlueMR2]

I don't eat cheese, but if I did I would throw the moldy thing out and give myself a facepunch to do a better job of grocery shopping and meal planning in the future, so as not to have food sitting in the fridge long enough to turn into a science experiment. With all the people starving in the world, there's really no excuse for buying and wasting food.

Life happens.  We bought a big chunk of cheese with our meals all planned out to use it throughout the week.  Then we kept getting nailed with unexpected events that kept us from eating at home for the next week and a half!  Moldy cheese...  I just cut off the outside skin like I always have before.  If anyone would have problems, it would be me, I'm suspected to have mold allergies (and I'm allergic to penicillin).

[o2bfree]

I would toss it and be more mindful about consuming the cheese before mold starts to grow in the future. I've had food poisoning a few times. Saving a few bucks on cheese isn't  worth days of diarrhea.

Same here, twice, both times from cheese that wasn't moldy, but hadn't been consistently kept cold. The illness was awful and quite painful. I don't take cheese camping anymore. Cheese can get moldy even when kept cold enough, but I don't take chances with it.

[sheepstache]

I don't eat cheese, but if I did I would throw the moldy thing out and give myself a facepunch to do a better job of grocery shopping and meal planning in the future, so as not to have food sitting in the fridge long enough to turn into a science experiment. With all the people starving in the world, there's really no excuse for buying and wasting food.

Maybe they were trying to do an Andrew Jackson Giant Block of Cheese Day thing and nobody showed up.

Personally, I say cheese never goes bad, it just turns into a different type of cheese.