Cheese consistently lands in the top tier of consumers’ favorite foods, and for many good reasons. Cheese has it all: Flavor, nutrition, comfort, satiety, and concentrated nutrition. Best of all, there are literally thousands of varieties, with each providing a comprehensive array of flavors and endless possibilities for formulation.

In spite of this limitless versatility, too often product makers turn toward a limited selection of products that they make with cheese.

More than that, they adhere to a repetitive handful of varieties of cheese. David Feder, Executive Editor–Technical for the Prepared Foods network invited certified executive chef Barbara Alexander to present ways in which developers of products that use cheese can up their game with different approaches and different cheese types. Chef Alexander is not only a culinary educator and a consulting partner with the Culinary Institute of America, she's also a spokeschef for the California Milk Advisory Board, and they send her all over the world to educate chefs on the untapped riches that cheese can bring to foods and beverages.

Chef Alexander explains that there are “different ways to apply cheese: in a snack, a prepared meal, an appetizer, even a frozen meal or a soup. And that's just the savory approach. Cheese has a great history of being used in sweet products, but we're seeing even more that adventurous chefs are using cheese sort of outside of the box, and we definitely are seeing it being used in beverages.”

Cheese It Up!

Interview with Barbara Alexander, Culinary Educator and Consulting Partner with the Culinary Institute of America, and spokeschef for the California Milk Advisory Board.

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