Video Recipe: https://youtu.be/Qv-mNyOwMe0
Ingredients
300g Mild Cheddar
40g Butter
30g Milk Powder
125mL or half a cup Smoked Water (or regular water)
10g Sodium Citrate
300g Sharp Cheddar
40g Butter
125 mL or half a cup Water
9g Sodium Citrate
Equipment: immersion circulator, immersion blender (or other powerful blender), heat gun, oven/toaster oven.
To create my marbled cheese slice you are first going to need to broil/char your mild cheddar. To ensure that the consistency of the final mixture isn’t too thick, take only 200g of the mild cheddar and mix it with the milk powder and first portion of butter. Both the butter and the cheese should be in reasonably small cubes, with the mixture on a foil or parchment lined tray. Make sure your lining has some walls to it because this mixture is going to liquefy. Broil in a oven/toaster oven at a relatively high temperature, around 400°F. The timing for this is going to entirely depend on how brown/charred you want your cheese, so just keep an eye on it. Once you’re happy with the look and aroma, transfer the charred cheddar mixture into a jar. You can then add the remaining 100g of mild cheddar, the 125mL of water or smoked water, and the 10g of sodium citrate. If you charred your cheese very thoroughly you may want to add an additional 30-45mL of your liquid to compensate for the moisture loss. Also if you are comfortable working with liquid smoke you can use a few drops of that in place of smoked water. (Smoked water is simply made by exposing a tray of water to smoke for a few hours and then filtering it.)
Once all of that is in a jar you can then prepare your sharp cheddar mixture. This is simply the entire 300g of sharp cheddar into relatively small cubes, with the remaining butter, water, and sodium citrate. Each in their own jars, the cheese mixtures should be placed in a 75°C immersion circulator. Heat them for between 45-60 minutes or until they look thoroughly melted. You could attempt to do this on a stove, but you would have to be careful of evaporation and it would be difficult to get both cheese mixtures at the same temperature simultaneously. Once everything is melted, it’s time to blend the mixtures until completely smooth. I recommend an immersion blender because transferring the cheese mixture between multiple containers can cool it down to quickly. I also recommend blending the sharp cheddar mixture first so the color of the charred cheddar doesn’t contaminate it. After you blend each mixture, quickly transfer them into Ziploc bags and place them back in the circulator to stay warm while preparing everything else.
Now it’s time to pipe out the cheese, I recommend a large sheet tray with a silicone mat or parchment paper. You should also have a heat gun or powerful blow dryer standing by. The exact marbling pattern is going to be up to you. For my first attempt, I piped the cheese mixtures separately as partially overlapping blobs. I then relied on gravity, tilting/dropping the tray, and the heat gun to spread out and blend the two types of cheese. This resulted in a very distinct and large marbling pattern that I was very happy with. However, I would definitely pipe the cheeses out simultaneously next time, and make the pattern a bit smaller. Once you’re happy that the mixture is melded and level, you should place parchment paper on top and an additional sheet tray to keep things nice and flat. I then let the cheese slices solidify overnight. Once everything is solid you can slice into the desired shapes and use!