#kingofcheese

One of my favorite things to do is crack the big wheels of cheese- I like to jokingly call parmigiano cracking my workout-of-the-day. At a whopping 80 pounds, wheels of the king of cheese weight more than half of what I weigh- but yes! I can still pick them up by myself! The only reason that they are any sort of difficult is the fact that their rinds get pretty sweaty and wet- hard to get a grip on! People are always absolutely fascinated by the process of cutting open an entire wheel of parmigiano- one of my favorite photos of my boss is a shot of him holding a half wheel of freshly cracked parmigiano over his head, while a young boy looks up at him and the cheese in ABSOLUTE awe. We had a visitor inspecting the store a few weeks ago, and he happened to be in our department while i was cracking a wheel of parm, and he absolutely could not look away- it’s almost entrancing if you’ve never seen it before! Anyway, I’m sure that a fairly large percentage of you are familiar with parmigiano reggiano  (especially because we’ve talked about it not too long ago!), but I’ll cover the details of this world-famous cheese, just in case!

Country of Origin: Italia, of course!

Milk type: raw cow’s milk

Rennet type: traditional, animal rennet, as per Parmigiano’s PDO designated standards (sorry vegetarians!)

If you’re a foodie, I highly recommend watching the show “The Chef’s Table”- in particular, the very first episode, where Massimo Bottura is featured- much of this episode revolves around Parmigiano, and what this chef did for the cheese. i won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a story that makes me want to use Parmigiano in EVERYTHING!