Samin Nosrat Has An Antidote For Your Homemade Cheese Sauce Nightmares
Cheese sauce has such potential. Just thinking about this glorious goo is enough to make your mouth water and your eyes fill with tears of joy. Unfortunately, cheese sauces have a tendency to curdle, the oils and solids separating to form a greasy and grainy disaster. Cook’s Illustrated explains the science behind this, noting that cheese is mostly composed of fat and water, which are held together by a network of proteins. The proteins in turn are bound by calcium, forming a mesh that keeps all the elements of cheese together. When cheese meets heat, the fat liquifies and starts to ooze. For the cheese to melt smoothly, the protein network must be able to stretch along with the liquid, keeping the fat and water together.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in aged cheeses like sharp cheddar or Gruyère cheese. That’s because the aging process causes much of the water in cheese to evaporate while the proteins tightly clump together. In one sense, this is good because it concentrates the flavor of the cheese, making it more intense. However, when you melt these cheeses, the tight protein network cannot expand with the liquified fat, causing the grease to separate while the protein forms grainy clusters. This is particularly frustrating because many of the most flavorful cheeses are susceptible to this problem, making it difficult to achieve a cheese sauce that is both smooth and delicious. That’s where sodium citrate can help (per The Cheese Professor).
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