Cheese, Muenster (American)

⚠ UNTESTED. A briefing.

🔴 American Muenster and Alsatian Munster share a name and almost nothing else.

Munster (Alsace) is a washed rind — orange, sticky, pungent, wiped with brine every few days, and one of the loudest cheeses in France. Muenster (American) is a mild, pale, springy, pressed washed-CURD cheese with an orange-coloured exterior and no washed rind at all. One will clear a room. The other goes in a child’s sandwich.

⭐⭐ And the orange coat is the most interesting thing about it, because it is a picture of a rind that isn’t there. The colour comes from annatto or paprika applied to the surface. It imitates the appearance of the washed rind on the Alsatian cheese the American one was named after — on a cheese that was never washed and never had that flora.

🔴 So it is a cosmetic descendant of a real rind, in exactly the way Morbier’s ash line is a cosmetic descendant of real soot. Two cheeses, two continents, the same shape of story: the appearance survived after the function was dropped.

That is a genuinely useful thing to know, and it is also — once you see it — quite hard to unsee on a supermarket shelf.

Ingredients

• 2 gallons whole milk (not ultra-pasteurised)
• 1/4 tsp mesophilic culture
• 1/2 tsp calcium chloride solution, if the milk is shop-bought
• 1/2 tsp liquid rennet, single strength, diluted in 1/4 cup cool unchlorinated water
• 2 quarts water at 140 F, for the wash (approximately)
• Saturated brine, calcium-adjusted — see Cheese Brine, Saturated
• 1/2 tsp sweet paprika or annatto, for the surface coat

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt · Black Pepper

1. Warm to 88 F / 31 C, mesophilic culture, 45 minutes.
2. Rennet at a flocculation multiplier of 3, cut to 1/2 inch, stir 30 minutes.
3. Wash: draw off a third of the whey, replace with water at 140 F to reach 98-100 F. Stir another 20-30 minutes. ⭐ This is a washed-CURD step, and it is the only washing this cheese gets — there is no rind wash later, whatever the name suggests.

⚠ Drain under the whey

1. Let the curd settle into a mass at the bottom of the pot with the whey still over it, press it down with your hands or a plate, and only then gather it. Working the curd under liquid is how you keep air out of it — and air trapped between curd pieces becomes a mechanical opening, a slit or crack in the finished paste that has nothing to do with gas and everything to do with sloppy draining.
2. Press moderately: ~5 PSI for 30 minutes, flip; ~12 PSI for 6-8 hours.

Brine a few hours per pound, then dry the surface.

1. ⭐ Coat the outside. Rub the dried surface with sweet paprika or annatto, dry or mixed into a little oil, to give the characteristic orange exterior. ⚠ Be clear with yourself about what you are doing here: this is colour, not culture. You are not seeding a rind, you are painting one.
2. Age at 50-55 F for 3 to 8 weeks. It stays mild, springy and pale inside. It is a superb melter — high moisture, high pH, plenty of bound calcium — which is most of why it earned its place in American kitchens.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t 🔴 UNTESTED. “Muenster” as made in America is generic with a US standard of identity. 🔴 It is emphatically not Munster AOP, which is a French washed-rind cheese and belongs with the washed rinds.

🔴 What the wash actually does Your starter eats lactose and makes lactic acid. Left alone it keeps eating until it runs out or the acid stops it, and a cheddar ends up around pH 5.0–5.2.

Washing interrupts that. You draw off part of the whey and replace it with water, which dilutes the lactose still dissolved among the curds. Less sugar means less acid, and the cheese finishes higher — around pH 5.2–5.4.

⭐ Two-tenths of a pH point is the entire family. Higher pH leaves more calcium bound into the casein network, and bound calcium is what makes a gouda bend where a cheddar snaps. It is also why these are the best melters in the section.

⭐ And the water goes in HOT, so it raises the vat temperature and cooks the curd in the same operation. One step, two outcomes — which is the neatest piece of design in the whole craft.

⭐⭐ A painted rind, and the pattern it belongs to The orange exterior imitates the appearance of a washed rind the cheese does not have. It is applied colour on a pressed, mild, unwashed-rind cheese, and it exists because the cheese borrowed a name from something that looked like that.

🔴 This collection now has three clean examples of the same shape, and they are worth holding together: Morbier’s ash line (was soot doing a job, now vegetable ash doing nothing); Edam’s red wax (was an export convention, now brand identity); and Muenster’s orange coat (was never a rind at all, and imitates one). ⭐ The appearance outlives the function, and then the appearance becomes the definition.

What goes wrong Too firm and dry — over-pressed, or washed too little. Bitter — excess rennet. The coat rubbed off — apply it to a properly dried surface, and consider a light oil carrier.

Read alongside /cheese/makes/semi-soft-washed-curd/ and /cheese/makes/washed-rind/ on the site — the second one so you can see what the name originally meant.

Sources

• US standard of identity: 21 CFR 133.160, “Muenster and munster cheese.”