There is a special place in our hearts for processed cheese. While we’ve explored the franken-food in its regular and spreadable iterations, we couldn’t go without taking a look at another popular category: those specifically made for melting.
Intended for topping over lasagna, stuffing into cheese sticks, mixing into sauces, and other cooking applications, these cheeses may employ particular emulsifiers and ingredient ratios that allow them to melt faster and more uniformly than natural cheese and their regular processed counterparts. Among the three brands available at our local supermarket, which cheese is the chosen one?
Magnolia Quickmelt
Taste: Perhaps the best-known of the bunch, Magnolia offers straightforward saltiness backed with just enough milkiness. It’s as simplistic (and comforting) as it gets, which is not surprising for the processed stuff—what we don’t dig, however, is the peculiar oily aftertaste also present.
Consistency: Go for this brand when you’re after the runniest, gooiest processed cheese. It feels creamy and supple to the touch, even at room temperature. When heated, it melts fast (as the name implies) to an especially oozy puddle that’s velvety-smooth, and stays that way for relatively long. But it feels a tad too liquified that it borders more on saucy than gooey, and it leaves an oily feel on the tongue that we’re not fans of.
