Løgismose Ost

Cheese has to be one of the most interesting--and oldest--foods in the world. It all starts as milk from a cow, goat or sheep, but thanks to the complexity of the process there are thousands if not millions of varieties available. We visited a Løgismose cheese factory that makes white cheeses. Separate factories make the blue cheeses because the blue cheese culture would basically ruin the white cheese if they used the same equipment. Judging from the taste, it's easy to see why blue cheese culture is more aggressive than the white.

In this particular factory one batch of one type of white cheese is made each day--from cow to container in 48 hours. They were making Feta cheese the day we visited.

I'll try my best to sum up the process:
1. Milk is pumped from the 'cow truck' to storage tanks where it sits for a couple days at the longest. Different regions produce milk with different flavors and certain cheeses are made best with certain milk.
2. The milk is pasteurized and thoroughly filtered. 'Clean' milk is very important because a little bad milk can ruin a lot of cheese.
3. Once it's clean the milk is placed in vats that look a lot like giant homemade ice cream machines.
4. Cheese culture is added to the milk. This is clearly the secret ingredient. Within a couple of hours the milk has hardened and essentially spoiled. It is now cheese.
5. Revolving blades in the vats chop up the fresh cheese so that it can be stuffed into the small tubes you see above on the left. These tubes are then placed in a hot, humid curing chamber overnight.
6. The next morning the cheese is removed from the tubes, cut into little cubes, and packaged in salt water with the contraption you see above.
7. Time to eat! Actually, these cheese experts recommended letting their Feta cheese sit in the fridge for 6 months before opening it. Those little critters in the cheese die and multiply, giving your cheese more and more flavor.

By the way, Løgismose is famous for its smoked cheese. Try it if you can find it. You won't be disappointed.