Infuse Olive Oil With Leftover Cheese Rinds
Photo: New Africa (Shutterstock)
Saving cheese rinds from Parmigiano Reggiano and the like is a classic, time-honored, no-waste hack. (Lifehacker first covered it more than a decade ago.) It’s delightfully surprising, then, to find a new use for the cheese butts, but that’s just what the clever people at Food52 have done. I’m not saying you should stop chucking them in soups and sauces, but you should probably set one aside for some olive oil.
This tip comes from a collection of rind-focused tips, but it’s the only one I hadn’t heard of before:
If you’re a fan of infused olive oil, you’ll love this trick! Take a pecorino Romano cheese rind and add it to a jar of extra-virgin olive oil. Let this mixture sit for a few days so the flavor of the cheese infuses the oil. You can also add other herbs and aromatics such as thyme, rosemary, and garlic for an extra kick. Serve alongside crusty bread as the perfect aperitivo snack!
It’s so simple, so elegant, so something I want to eat. I immediately went to my freezer to fish out a parm rind to chuck into oil, only to realize I had used the last one in a broth. That’s alright. I eat a lot of cheese.
Once you’ve got a rind, give it a rinse and dry it off with paper towels, then chuck it in jar with enough oil to cover. Let it sit for a few days, then remove the rind and use the oil.
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Beyond dipping, which is sure to be lovely, this cheesy oil can and should be used as the base of a vinaigrette, or emulsified with a little pasta water to make a simple sauce, or drizzled on grilled vegetables and meats, big bowls of rice, or anything else you would usually finish with olive oil. I’m also going to suggest you use it to pop popcorn (then grate some cheese on top of that popcorn).
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