Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Day 125 - Mozzarella Cheese

YUCK! 

We love cheese, and we like us some mozzarella.  In fact, I reviewed the Trader Joe’s Mozzarella Chub on day 17 of this blog, and it got a very solid 4 stars.  So when we were hosting our Trader Joe’s dinner party last night and wanted to put together a nice salad, we immediately thought of using some fresh mozzarella.  But since we had 6 people at the table instead of our usual 2, we picked up a larger package of the cheese, thinking it would taste just as delicious as the little chub we normally buy. 

YUCK
Wrong, wrong, wrong.  This was plain yucky.  It was hard, rubbery, sort of off-white-ish, and tasteless.  It didn’t taste “fresh” at all – it was as “fresh” as the processed orange American cheese slices in plastic wrappers.  My first clue was that when I opened the package, there was noooo liquid, where as with the normal small one we buy it gushes out.  The receipt says it was “Whole Milk”, which is what I think the little one is, too, so I do not know why this bigger one was so lousy.

I later went back to Trader Joe’s to see what the heck was different about this bigger package.  It turns out it is “low moisture”.  Apparently that makes a huge difference in the world of mozzarella!  We MUCH prefer the cutie patootie little 8 oz squishy chub you see pictured on day 17 (for $3.29).  If that is not big enough to serve everyone you are having over for dinner, but 2 of those!!  

This is the one you DO NOT want

And this is the GOOD ONE 











Do not be duped into buying this bigger, low moisture one.  We later used the rest of this hard chunk of mozzarella to make a pizza, and it was better suited for THAT use than to serve fresh.  But still, not a great product.
Trust me, it did NOT taste nearly as good as it looks in this photo
If I were going to rate this myself, I would give it a 1.75.   But since it was at the Trader Joe’s dinner party, I will now peek at what the guests wrote and average the ratings together for the final rating.  Here are the comments:
-          “Excellent character”
-          “Pleasant  texture, good saltiness”
-          “Slightly aged, tasty, nice combination with tomatoes”
-          “A bit tough”
-          “It is firm to the point of rubbery-ness, but does have some mozzarella-ish taste, and probably would due for melting on a pizza”

And once again, this product is lucky to have a TEAM reviewing it instead of just me, because instead of my rating of a 1.75, it is getting much higher.

Price - $4.99

Rating – 3

3 comments:

  1. You gave a bad review because you don't know the difference between fresh mozzarella and low moisture mozzarella?

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  2. You should really re-write this review to explain the difference between the types of mozzarella you learned about. Treat this post as a learning opportunity for your readers instead! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Why should anyone read the opinion of someone writing about something that they know zero about? If you don't know the difference between low moisture and fresh mozzarella, just don't feel compelled to explain your feelings about it. Useless.

    ReplyDelete