Transcript:
MATTHEW: Cheese curds. They’re a midwestern favorite and can be found in bars and restaurants across the region. But you might be surprised to know that the history of these little guys dates back to ancient Rome with a dish called Globuli. Globuli were essentially fried pieces of cheese, very similar to what you can find today. However, the history of how the snack got so popular in the Midwest requires a bit more expertise.
ANN: So to make cheese you have to pasteurize milk and cook it until the whey separates from the curd. Then the curd is put into a mold and from that mold it’s pressed into a wheel or a block of cheese. But any curd that doesn’t make it into that block or wheel is a cheese- are cheese curds are little those little pieces of cheese that are really squeaky when they’re fresh. And so that’s essentially what it is. What I don’t know is exactly who was the first person to deep fry them because deep fried and cheese curds are also if you haven’t had them, they’re really delicious. And that is probably the most popular way you see them served in a restaurant. But as far as just like the popularity of it, I would just say that it’s probably grown in the last several decades to be really at its height right now.
KARI: I think Wisconsin people have been eating them since they were little. And so we’re very familiar with it. We know what fresh curds are. We have it, Elsworth, it comes out at 11:00 every day, the fresh curds. And we always have people waiting around for those fresh curds to come out, which is pretty fun.
ANN: I think there’s absolutely a culture. I mean, they are on so many bar food menus. They’re also at times on fine dining menus. I was just looking at a restaurant menu in Cedarburg, and it’s a place where they make their fresh pasta and they have fresh fish and they have all these really great kind of fancier dishes, but they have fried goat cheese curds on their on their appetizer menu.
KARI: We do a lot with cheese curds. We not only eat it. Canada, they put it on poutine. We, of course, batter it and deep fry it. You can use it on pizzas, you can use it in cooking. I mean, there’s just so much that you can use curds with.
ANN: Lakefront Brewery that is a big brewery right here in Milwaukee. They do a curd flavor of the week. They’ve done chocolate flavored curds. Their current flavor is spaghetti dinner. So it’s they’re omnipresent, I would say. And yes, there I mean, there is a culture and a and a demand for it, I would say.
KARI: But you’re going to find cheese curds all over the United States. It just so happens that Wisconsin being the cheese- the whole cheese state, Wisconsin actually makes over 600 different kinds of cheeses. So we are the only state that requires a Wisconsin cheese maker license to make cheese none of the other states need that Wisconsin has a master cheese maker. So you have to be a cheese maker for ten years go back to school to get a masters in each individual thing. So Wisconsin takes cheese very, very serious.
ANN: We are known for our for artisan cheese makers and big cheese makers. So yeah, I think that Wisconsin’s dairy industry is is responsible for for its popularity.
KARI: Wisconsin has always known about curds because there were so many places everybody had them. I think that curd revolution is going out across the states now. It used to be, and you still sometimes you go to a show maybe in Florida and people won’t know what a cheese curd is, but more and more people are searching you out and looking and knowing because a lot of these restaurant chains and stuff have really embraced it. And so people are getting to know what it is.
