A lot of what people call American cheese, isn’t. But the term has become used for anything yellow and in a package, despite there being regulations about what is and isn’t allowed to be called cheese.
So I’m not going to waste time covering all of that, and I’ll focus on the versions that are cheese, or at least were at one point.
So, waaaaay back, long before processed cheese was a thing, American cheese existed in other usages. As far back as colonial days, “American” cheese was just the term the English used for cheddars or other cheeses made in the colonies that also existed in England.
Time passes, and it turns out that American cheese makers grew in skill and range. But there was still “American” cheese. This was usually a form of mild cheddar, often uncolored. You can still find that kind of cheese, if you don’t mind it being called mild white cheddar.
So, some bright lads in Switzerland were looking for a way in the early 1900s to make cheese more shelf stable. They were not the only ones, but they were the first. They used ementhal.
Here in the states, James Kraft was working on the same thing, but found a different way there, and using a different base cheese. That base cheese? A mild cheddar.
Essentially, the process in “processed cheese” is taking actual cheese, heating it, stirring it, and adding an emulsifer. That’s it. The process just takes regular cheese and makes it both shelf stable, and smoother.
Essentially, when you make any given cheese sauce for something like homemade mac n cheese, and you use flour as the emulsifier, you’re doing the same thing to it. It isn’t as shelf stable, obviously, but you’re processing the cheese.
So, Kraft not only made shelf stable cheese, he did it using “waste” cheese. When you’re cutting cheese up for shipping and sale, you end up with little chunks and slivers that are not saleable as they are.
This meant that Kraft’s process was inexpensive to produce overall, though it did eventually stop being made of only waste cheese. That led to what’s still called “government cheese”. It was literally given out by the government in various ways.
Now, the ugly side of things.
Even cheese waste is more expensive than oil and chemicals. So the Kraft company (and pretty much every other mass cheese making company) started fucking with it. Adding in more than just cheese, emulsifiers, and stabilizers. There’s shit on the market that gets labeled now as “American slices”. But that shit ain’t cheese any more than vegan cheese is. That gradual race to the bottom by international conglomerates looking to give as little value in their products as possible fucked up the “American cheese” goodness.
And the original processed cheese was a boon. Shelf stable even without refrigeration, well blended for use in multiple applications, and meeting a bare minimum of flavor requirements. It’s the shit that came later that developed the reputation that tarnished all processed cheeses.
If you go shopping, you can still find real cheese that’s been processed. Look at the label. It should have nothing but cheese, sodium citrate (or a similar chemical) and maybe something like tocopherol (aka vitamin e) as a preservative. That’s it. That’s all the good stuff has. There may be annato listed as a colorant, since that’s how many cheeses are made yellow.
Typically, you’ll only find it in the form of a blend of cheddar and Colby, selected for a mild flavor and easy, consistent melting. Salt levels can be higher than with an unprocessed cheese, so check for that if you’re sodium restricted.
But what purpose does it serve? The same as any cheese. It just does it while melting in a smooth, homogeneous way, and lasts longer without going bad
It can also reduce waste, though it has become a product in such demand that chest is produced in quantity just for processing. But there are smaller dairies that process their own out of waste pieces. My uncle used to do so, though after he retired, my cousin took the farm a different way and reduced the things they sell, so he only supplies the family now .
The problem processing solves has already been covered, but I’ll sum it up again. It solves shelf stability as the primary, with melting ease being a secondary benefit. The process using heat means that the cheese is pasteurized when it’s finished. So it can sit for very long times compared to unprocessed cheese, and even longer than that refrigerated (which also extends unprocessed cheese life)
Refrigeration does solve storage life for unprocessed cheese as well. And, it is dead simple to add emulsifiers when cooking, so the melty factor isn’t as big a deal as it used to be.
It is also a very good option when you want a mild, even, predictable taste.
So, check your labels. Make sure you’re getting actual processed cheese rather than “cheese food” or (gods forbid) “american slices”. That being said, “cheese food” is still mostly cheese, and the rest is typically going to include more dairy products than other things . Those shitty “slices” have no cheese at all, and are not allowed to call themselves cheese here in the US.
Now, this is already long, and there’s going to be some short attention span asshole complaining about it.
But let me finish with a fact. All cheese is processed. Period. The only differences are in exactly what processes are used. You take milk, and you use chemicals (be they sourced from something “naturally”, or via a lab) to change that milk. Rennet isn’t exactly dripping from trees, ya know. It is not somehow superior to sodium citrate by virtue of originally being taken from calf stomachs.
Oh, you didn’t know that’s how cheese is made? Yeah. Back before labs, rennet was a side product of calf processing. But no matter what’s used to do it, you can’t make cheese without curds. And making curds means curdling milk. Which is inherently a chemical process.
Personally, anything labeled “product” or “slices” isn’t worth the money. However, the stuff labeled “product” can be okay for something like a grilled cheese if the budget is tight. It will melt, and there is some flavor there.
The stuff labeled “slices” doesn’t even melt right at all, and is almost always cheeseless, replacing that with processed oils and trace amounts of dairy products. The worst of those are nothing but oils, colors, and some artificial flavoring.
As always, check your labels. The ingredient list will usually be an accurate guide, whereas front labels sometimes use font sizes and design to hide exactly which designation it is.
Which version? Kraft makes several types. That’s the point of focusing on labeling and ingredients, so that no matter what their marketing department changes, anyone that cares can find what they actually want.
Serously. Kraft makes something like 5 sliced cheeses for different markets. Might even be more than that.
That being said, I did the work for you, despite the sense of entitlement.
The Kraft “American cheese slices” that have a front label that says “kraft singles”, and specifies 2% milk is a cheese product rather than a pasteurized processed cheese. The ingredient list of cheeseless, but does include dairy.
The “deli deluxe” has cheese as the first ingredient, and has added water and milk alongside the standard emulsifiers, colorants, and preservatives. It is American cheese rather than a cheese food or a cheese slice, though it obviously isn’t as good as it once was. Years ago, when they came out with the deli deluxe, it was only cheese, sodium citrate, and salt. The cheese itself had the colorants, but no extra preservatives.
The Kraft singles branded without the specified 2% milk on the front has cheese as an ingredient, but it is the second ingredient, with the first being milk. It also has a longer list of ingredients, including dairy products. This it in between the other two, and (iirc) is classed as a cheese food.
Out of those three, the deli deluxe is as close to the original version James Kraft made as you’ll get today.
Having used all three at various points, the 2% is crap. It does melt well on a hot sandwich, but fails in other applications because it gets a little separated over time when heated. The non 2% labeled is fine for most purposes, and has a better taste imo. Both the non 2% and the deli deluxe can be used for cheese sauces that include other cheeses, as there’s enough sodium citrate to emulsify a decent enough amount of unprocessed cheese.
Imo, the best option available at a chain grocery is boar’s head. It’s essentially the bare minimum of ingredients for yellow American cheese. Barring that, the Kraft deli deluxe is the best commonly available brand. I haven’t tried every brand out there, and not all brands are available everywhere, so there may be plenty that are as good as boar’s head, and I just haven’t had them.
Out of the chain stores, the only one I like is publix. Their basic cheese is the same as deli deluxe. harris teeter, and giant eagle are acceptable, as well, but publix melted the best and tastes the best to me. The rest of the chains fell short in other ways, or didn’t even have cheese as an ingredient.
Borden sucks. Worst name brand cheese I’ve ever had.
Horizon organics is crap too. You’d think a brand focused on organic milk would do better, but it’s bland and melts poorly
The good stuff is what you get if you actually go up to the deli counter and ask for American cheese. Anything where the slices are individually wrapped is pretty much just slightly firmer velveeta.
There’s an entire food science behind flavor and melt temperature for processed cheese products. The cheese used at nearly every large fast food chain are not off the shelf options like you have at the store, they are custom made for their specific methods and product line. What melts well with a broiler won’t be the best with a flat top.
Some slices melt in one temperature range and sort of plasticize in another. That said, if you have it sitting on a burger and not holding it in the flame of a propane torch, it should melt. If it doesn’t, like light cheese where I live, there are better options out there.
I’m not sure why you mention government cheese here. Government cheese was cheddar, and not made from waste products/offcuts. It’s entirely unrelated, but fascinating story.
The government cheese I’m aware of was American. It was made from cheddar, a mild unaged cheddar, but was processed. Now, maybe there were regional differences, I don’t know about that. But I know it was here, and all of the common sources I used to verify my memory specified that it was the low cost/calorie density ratio of American cheese that led to it being distributed.
Some vegan cheese is actually cheese. Same microorganisms, same process. If it’s not cheese then any number of other things you’d like to call cheese aren’t either.
It’s not made from milk though, right? It wouldn’t be vegan if it has any animal products. And if it isn’t made from milk, it’s just not cheese, even if the microorganisms are the same.
No, no, it isn’t. By definition, cheese is a dairy product. It doesn’t have to come from cows, but it does require milk from an animal. Ergo, cheese cannot be vegan, which means that vegan cheese is an oxymoron.
If anyone can’t find an online dictionary like Webster’s, the oed, or other generally accepted authoritative source to see the range of standard definitions outside of regulatory of industry terminology, well, you probably shouldn’t be online at all. But, even the ones that include fake cheeses will state that it’s a non standard usage.
Plus, you can call smegma dick cheese all you want, but it’s still not actually cheese.
Aight, lets set some terms.
A lot of what people call American cheese, isn’t. But the term has become used for anything yellow and in a package, despite there being regulations about what is and isn’t allowed to be called cheese.
So I’m not going to waste time covering all of that, and I’ll focus on the versions that are cheese, or at least were at one point.
So, waaaaay back, long before processed cheese was a thing, American cheese existed in other usages. As far back as colonial days, “American” cheese was just the term the English used for cheddars or other cheeses made in the colonies that also existed in England.
Time passes, and it turns out that American cheese makers grew in skill and range. But there was still “American” cheese. This was usually a form of mild cheddar, often uncolored. You can still find that kind of cheese, if you don’t mind it being called mild white cheddar.
So, some bright lads in Switzerland were looking for a way in the early 1900s to make cheese more shelf stable. They were not the only ones, but they were the first. They used ementhal.
Here in the states, James Kraft was working on the same thing, but found a different way there, and using a different base cheese. That base cheese? A mild cheddar.
Essentially, the process in “processed cheese” is taking actual cheese, heating it, stirring it, and adding an emulsifer. That’s it. The process just takes regular cheese and makes it both shelf stable, and smoother.
Essentially, when you make any given cheese sauce for something like homemade mac n cheese, and you use flour as the emulsifier, you’re doing the same thing to it. It isn’t as shelf stable, obviously, but you’re processing the cheese.
So, Kraft not only made shelf stable cheese, he did it using “waste” cheese. When you’re cutting cheese up for shipping and sale, you end up with little chunks and slivers that are not saleable as they are.
This meant that Kraft’s process was inexpensive to produce overall, though it did eventually stop being made of only waste cheese. That led to what’s still called “government cheese”. It was literally given out by the government in various ways.
Now, the ugly side of things.
Even cheese waste is more expensive than oil and chemicals. So the Kraft company (and pretty much every other mass cheese making company) started fucking with it. Adding in more than just cheese, emulsifiers, and stabilizers. There’s shit on the market that gets labeled now as “American slices”. But that shit ain’t cheese any more than vegan cheese is. That gradual race to the bottom by international conglomerates looking to give as little value in their products as possible fucked up the “American cheese” goodness.
And the original processed cheese was a boon. Shelf stable even without refrigeration, well blended for use in multiple applications, and meeting a bare minimum of flavor requirements. It’s the shit that came later that developed the reputation that tarnished all processed cheeses.
If you go shopping, you can still find real cheese that’s been processed. Look at the label. It should have nothing but cheese, sodium citrate (or a similar chemical) and maybe something like tocopherol (aka vitamin e) as a preservative. That’s it. That’s all the good stuff has. There may be annato listed as a colorant, since that’s how many cheeses are made yellow.
Typically, you’ll only find it in the form of a blend of cheddar and Colby, selected for a mild flavor and easy, consistent melting. Salt levels can be higher than with an unprocessed cheese, so check for that if you’re sodium restricted.
But what purpose does it serve? The same as any cheese. It just does it while melting in a smooth, homogeneous way, and lasts longer without going bad
It can also reduce waste, though it has become a product in such demand that chest is produced in quantity just for processing. But there are smaller dairies that process their own out of waste pieces. My uncle used to do so, though after he retired, my cousin took the farm a different way and reduced the things they sell, so he only supplies the family now .
The problem processing solves has already been covered, but I’ll sum it up again. It solves shelf stability as the primary, with melting ease being a secondary benefit. The process using heat means that the cheese is pasteurized when it’s finished. So it can sit for very long times compared to unprocessed cheese, and even longer than that refrigerated (which also extends unprocessed cheese life)
Refrigeration does solve storage life for unprocessed cheese as well. And, it is dead simple to add emulsifiers when cooking, so the melty factor isn’t as big a deal as it used to be.
It is also a very good option when you want a mild, even, predictable taste.
So, check your labels. Make sure you’re getting actual processed cheese rather than “cheese food” or (gods forbid) “american slices”. That being said, “cheese food” is still mostly cheese, and the rest is typically going to include more dairy products than other things . Those shitty “slices” have no cheese at all, and are not allowed to call themselves cheese here in the US.
Now, this is already long, and there’s going to be some short attention span asshole complaining about it.
But let me finish with a fact. All cheese is processed. Period. The only differences are in exactly what processes are used. You take milk, and you use chemicals (be they sourced from something “naturally”, or via a lab) to change that milk. Rennet isn’t exactly dripping from trees, ya know. It is not somehow superior to sodium citrate by virtue of originally being taken from calf stomachs.
Oh, you didn’t know that’s how cheese is made? Yeah. Back before labs, rennet was a side product of calf processing. But no matter what’s used to do it, you can’t make cheese without curds. And making curds means curdling milk. Which is inherently a chemical process.
What are the worst offenders that we should be looking out for? Anything with Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product? “American Slices”?
Do these things even have cheese at all? Or is it all just textured vegetable oil?
Personally, anything labeled “product” or “slices” isn’t worth the money. However, the stuff labeled “product” can be okay for something like a grilled cheese if the budget is tight. It will melt, and there is some flavor there.
The stuff labeled “slices” doesn’t even melt right at all, and is almost always cheeseless, replacing that with processed oils and trace amounts of dairy products. The worst of those are nothing but oils, colors, and some artificial flavoring.
As always, check your labels. The ingredient list will usually be an accurate guide, whereas front labels sometimes use font sizes and design to hide exactly which designation it is.
Ffs, are you talking about Kraft Singles, or not?
Which version? Kraft makes several types. That’s the point of focusing on labeling and ingredients, so that no matter what their marketing department changes, anyone that cares can find what they actually want.
Serously. Kraft makes something like 5 sliced cheeses for different markets. Might even be more than that.
That being said, I did the work for you, despite the sense of entitlement.
The Kraft “American cheese slices” that have a front label that says “kraft singles”, and specifies 2% milk is a cheese product rather than a pasteurized processed cheese. The ingredient list of cheeseless, but does include dairy.
The “deli deluxe” has cheese as the first ingredient, and has added water and milk alongside the standard emulsifiers, colorants, and preservatives. It is American cheese rather than a cheese food or a cheese slice, though it obviously isn’t as good as it once was. Years ago, when they came out with the deli deluxe, it was only cheese, sodium citrate, and salt. The cheese itself had the colorants, but no extra preservatives.
The Kraft singles branded without the specified 2% milk on the front has cheese as an ingredient, but it is the second ingredient, with the first being milk. It also has a longer list of ingredients, including dairy products. This it in between the other two, and (iirc) is classed as a cheese food.
Out of those three, the deli deluxe is as close to the original version James Kraft made as you’ll get today.
Having used all three at various points, the 2% is crap. It does melt well on a hot sandwich, but fails in other applications because it gets a little separated over time when heated. The non 2% labeled is fine for most purposes, and has a better taste imo. Both the non 2% and the deli deluxe can be used for cheese sauces that include other cheeses, as there’s enough sodium citrate to emulsify a decent enough amount of unprocessed cheese.
Imo, the best option available at a chain grocery is boar’s head. It’s essentially the bare minimum of ingredients for yellow American cheese. Barring that, the Kraft deli deluxe is the best commonly available brand. I haven’t tried every brand out there, and not all brands are available everywhere, so there may be plenty that are as good as boar’s head, and I just haven’t had them.
Out of the chain stores, the only one I like is publix. Their basic cheese is the same as deli deluxe. harris teeter, and giant eagle are acceptable, as well, but publix melted the best and tastes the best to me. The rest of the chains fell short in other ways, or didn’t even have cheese as an ingredient.
Borden sucks. Worst name brand cheese I’ve ever had.
Horizon organics is crap too. You’d think a brand focused on organic milk would do better, but it’s bland and melts poorly
Can’t recall any other brands that stand out.
If you’re not already a native I think you’ve earned the status of honorary Wisconsinite Cheesehead for your dedication.
Now that’s a honor :)
The good stuff is what you get if you actually go up to the deli counter and ask for American cheese. Anything where the slices are individually wrapped is pretty much just slightly firmer velveeta.
Great Value slices don’t melt on the BBQ
There’s an entire food science behind flavor and melt temperature for processed cheese products. The cheese used at nearly every large fast food chain are not off the shelf options like you have at the store, they are custom made for their specific methods and product line. What melts well with a broiler won’t be the best with a flat top.
Some slices melt in one temperature range and sort of plasticize in another. That said, if you have it sitting on a burger and not holding it in the flame of a propane torch, it should melt. If it doesn’t, like light cheese where I live, there are better options out there.
I really didn’t think I’d be reading such a good write-up on cheese, but that you for that!
Excellent writeup!
Thank you for typing this out. Very interesting read!
I’m not sure why you mention government cheese here. Government cheese was cheddar, and not made from waste products/offcuts. It’s entirely unrelated, but fascinating story.
The government cheese I’m aware of was American. It was made from cheddar, a mild unaged cheddar, but was processed. Now, maybe there were regional differences, I don’t know about that. But I know it was here, and all of the common sources I used to verify my memory specified that it was the low cost/calorie density ratio of American cheese that led to it being distributed.
Thank you for that. Very interesting!
Some vegan cheese is actually cheese. Same microorganisms, same process. If it’s not cheese then any number of other things you’d like to call cheese aren’t either.
It’s not made from milk though, right? It wouldn’t be vegan if it has any animal products. And if it isn’t made from milk, it’s just not cheese, even if the microorganisms are the same.
No, no, it isn’t. By definition, cheese is a dairy product. It doesn’t have to come from cows, but it does require milk from an animal. Ergo, cheese cannot be vegan, which means that vegan cheese is an oxymoron.
Edit:
Found a site that links to a pdf covering what is and isn’t a cheese, legally. www.cheesesociety.org/events-education/cheese-definitions, and covers some of the terminology around cheese and cheese making.
If anyone can’t find an online dictionary like Webster’s, the oed, or other generally accepted authoritative source to see the range of standard definitions outside of regulatory of industry terminology, well, you probably shouldn’t be online at all. But, even the ones that include fake cheeses will state that it’s a non standard usage.
Plus, you can call smegma dick cheese all you want, but it’s still not actually cheese.
I vote you can say that about vegan yogurt, but not vegan cheese. Yogurt is much more defined by the culture vs the medium compared with cheese.