Parmigiano-style cheeses outside of Italy

[Fat Guy]

Why is it that there isn't any good Parmigiano-style cheese produced outside of Italy? Save for a few artisanal producers, Parmigiano-Reggiano today is a mass-produced, industrial product. It's not made from particularly special milk: the cows are generally raised in confinement. There's no secret method being used: the way to make it is public knowledge. Most of the best Parmigiano-Reggiano doesn't even make it out of Italy: what you buy at the average market in the US is totally inferior to what you can get in Italy. It can't be significantly cheaper to make anything in Italy than in, say, California. There's a huge demand for the stuff, and people are willing to pay. Any time I see a US-made cheese of this kind, for example, the cheesemonger is always like, well, it's good if you grate it and use a lot of sauce. Why aren't there competing products from outside Italy that are anywhere near as good?

[Dr. Teeth]

I would suspect that the "flavor profile," of real parmegiano comes from particular bacteria found in that area of Italy, just as the flavor of a lambic beer comes from wild yeast strains only found in that area of belgium.

And yes, that statement should smack somewhat of handwaving.

[Fat Guy]

I can't imagine the stuff is wild ripened. I assume they get deliveries of a culture powder from some factory that mass produces a "natural" culture. If so, it should be easy enough to buy or reproduce.

[slkinsey]

Part of the reason has to be because the Consorzio Parmigiano Reggiano inspects every single cheese, and there are Italian governmental regulations that have to be followed for the cheese to call itself Parmigiano Reggiano. For example, the cows may only be fed grass or hey, there may be requirements as to breed of cow, the cheese is made on a daily basis with the whole milk from the morning and skimmed milk from the evening, the milk is not pasteurized, the only additives allowed are salt (from soaking the formed cheese in brine for 20 days), natural whey starter and natural calf rennet, the cheese must be aged a minimum of 12 months, etc.

Other manufacturers take various shortcuts: The curds are not cut to the same small size (which affects texture as well as facilitating faster drainage of whey) and is mechanically pressed to expell whey. The cheese is aged for a shorter time period. The cows are fed silage and/or grain. Milk from several days is combined in one batch of cheese. The milk is pasteurized. A commercial laboratory starter is used rather than a natural culture. The size of the cheese may be smaller, which results in a saltier overall product. Etc, etc, etc.

The fact is that it takes a large dedicated setup to make cheese that can compete with Parmigiano Reggiano. It's not impossible, but the economics of competing with the Italian makers mean that most people will cut corners. It's not something you can do with a small farm and a handful of cows.

[Torrilin]

If you're looking for a product identical to parmesan made elsewhere, you're outta luck.

If you're looking for a flavorful hard grating cheese, there are some available. I've switched from parmesan to Babcock Hall (aka University of Wisconsin at Madison's creamery) Romano, since it's tasty, local, and cheap. It is *not* parmesan. But it makes for a good cheese risotto, and it exhibits some of the same melting and dissolving properties that parm has in pasta sauces. It's far superior most other Romano cheeses I've had in terms of flavor, melting behavior, and texture when raw.

What it doesn't have is the crystalline bits of intense umami flavor that real Parm has. It doesn't melt as perfectly into a sauce... if I add cheese in large quantities, the Romano tends to get slightly grainy. If I do the same with Parm, it just melts into a glassy smooth sauce. I suspect a great deal of the difference may be in how the two cheeses are aged.

I'm sure other producers here make good hard grating cheeses. I haven't tracked them down yet tho.

[CaliPoutine]

There is also Parmesean Reggianitofrom Argentina. I bought some at the whole foods in Cleveland. It was insanely cheap at 3.99lb. I think that price might be wrong though because I called the Whole Foods in Ann Arbor and it was 11.99lb there, not much cheaper than Reggiano.

[infernooo]

I think another reason is the time it takes to make a proper wheel of the cheese. If you are taking 12-24 months for one wheel of cheese, it's pretty much impossible to experiment until you get it right because it just takes so long.

With things like mozarella and young cheeses, I would imagine it is much easier to replicate. Sort of the same as good prosciutto being hard to find.

Then there is the different cow types, food they are fed hence different milk etc etc etc

But at the end of the day, I would put it down to a combination of the above and a lack of experience in non-italians.

Edited August 1, 2007 by infernooo (log)

[jackal10]

WHy would you want to anyway? Its not as though there is a shortage of the genuine article.

Perhaps you are being a cheapskate and want a cheaper cheese. If there is a market for it at the present price then why would a producer sell cheaper. In any case making and aging takes that amount of money

If its a different flavour you are seeking then its not the same cheese, as as remarked above, there are plenty of other good hard grating and cooking cheeses.

Hard Cheese! (where did that expression come from?)

[Kent Wang]

There is also Parmesean Reggianitofrom Argentina.  I bought some at the whole foods in Cleveland.  It was insanely cheap at 3.99lb.  I think that price might be wrong though because I called the Whole Foods in Ann Arbor and it was 11.99lb there, not much cheaper than Reggiano.

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I think I tried this or another one from South America and it is nowhere like the genuine article.

I agree that the crystalline bits of umami may be the most difficult thing to reproduce.

[Fat Guy]

The quality of Parmigiano Reggiano at the average American supermarket isn't particularly good. Those regulations and practices aren't resulting in uniformly great cheese. They are, however, resulting in uniformly expensive cheese. So it should be possible for someone with a little creativity to move in somewhere above the average in quality and below the average in price.

To generalize, I'd say there are three levels of Parmigiano Reggiano quality (I'm not referring to age -- you can get most of the age permutations at all three levels):

At the "A" level you've got the cheese you'd get at a good cheese shop in Reggio Emilia. This is the stuff that might actually be made artisanally, from red cows, etc. (Most P-R is not; I recommend Art of Eating no. 54, "Emilia Romagna: The Resurgent Red Cows of Parmigiano Reggiano and Other Stories from the Region Whose Cuisine Has Always Been Called Italy's Richest and Best," on this subject). My mother-in-law, who occasionally goes to the big educator's conference there, usually brings back a block and it's always far and away superior to what we get at the best American cheese shops: much, much, much better than Murray's, DiPalo's, Zabar's, Dean & DeLuca, Zingerman's, Central Market, you name it. This is the stuff where you taste it and say, hey, there's absolutely no way I'm going to grate this. I'm going to eat it like real cheese. You might, on a very lucky day, see a piece of cheese this good at DiPalo's or Murray's, but in my experience there's no guarantee of a consistent supply.

At the "B" level you've got the stuff sold by the average store in Italy, which is roughly the equivalent of what the best American places are selling (and also what I've seen in markets in places like London -- though I think you do a little better in the UK than in the US). This is edible as eating cheese, but you'd mostly use it for grating -- it's great grated.

At the "C" level you've got the stuff sold at the average American supermarket. This just isn't all that good. You certainly wouldn't want to use it for anything other than grating and melting. And it's expensive. I was just in Stop & Shop in New Haven, CT, and the mediocre Parmigiano Reggiano sold under the Il Villaggio label (which is what you see at a lot of supermarket-level places) was $16.99 a pound. New Yorkers may be accustomed to getting C-level Parmigiano Reggiano in the range of $9.99 a pound, and B-level for $14.99 a pound, but this isn't the norm. Usually, you pay $16.99 a pound for nothing special.

So what I'm saying is that it should be possible to produce above-C-level cheese in the style of Parmigiano Reggiano and price it at $8.99 a pound. Yet, it doesn't seem that anyone is doing it. Not that I know of, at least.

[slkinsey]

I take your point about the quality of Parmigiano Reggiano at your "average American grocery store." It isn't very good. I would argue, however, that the quality of the stuff I get at Fairway is "high B" quality. If you adjust for the price of importation, I wouldn't say it's markedly inferior to the cheese you get for the same price in Italy. Importing is expensive. That's why we spend 35 dollars on Tuscan table wines that can be had for six bucks outside Firenze.

Perhaps a better question might be: why does 90% of the cheese at your average American grocery store suck: Because, by and large, it does.

Grocery stores probably charge more for mediocre Parmigiano Reggiano, and make a huge profit, because they know their customers are willing to pay that upgrade over the stuff in the green can. The reason they don't sell this stuff in Italy is because Italians wouldn't buy it -- but we've had myriad discussions in these forums around the fact that culinary life and quality of food is integral to average Italian life and much more important to average Italians compared to most Americans, so it's probably not worthwhile to belabor that point.

The extreme expense of setting up for production of Parmigiano Reggiano-like cheese and the fact that it is difficult to make a meaningful profit without fairly large scale production, combined with the fact that Parmigiano Reggiano has fairly wide availability and the fact that most people don't really mind using cheese of the "Il Villaggio" quality means that it would, actually, be fairly difficult to make a profit producing and selling an American "Parmigiano Reggiano-a-like" for 9 bucks a pound. Otherwise, frankly, someone would be doing it.

[broadway]

Honestly who would buy an american "Parmigiano Reggiano". It would be possible, but only with a massive marketing effort for a niche product. There are a couple of products that have got there e.g. Grey Goose, but with that push how would it get off the ground. Surely it would be easier to import the best from italy in the first place and market from there.

[Fat Guy]

Who wouldn't buy it? The trend towards buying local is one of the strongest in high-end American food retailing. Every chef I know would, I'm sure, love to get hold of a locally produced substitute for Parmigiano Reggiano. It would simply need to be good.

[slkinsey]

Yes, but we're not talking about chefs buying a locally produced substitute (for what it's worth, I highly doubt that chefs who are shelling out for real Parmigiano Reggiano would line up to buy a substitute anything -- they might, however, go over to a different but equally good unique local cheese that could serve a similar function).

Furthermore, what you're talking about now is an entirely different proposition. We're no longer talking about a reasonably good, reasonably priced Parmigiano Reggiano facsimile that beats Il Villaggio in the Connecticut Stop & Shop. We're talking about something good enough to entice chefs and sophisticated shoppers away from the good stuff they have already been buying. Something that beats, say, Grana Padano in price, but is better than Grana Padano to the point of being competitive with the quality of Parmigiano Reggiano professional chefs are able to procure. And, on top of that, it has to compete with the name recognition and appeal of the real thing.

I have to believe that, if it were an easy or apparently feasible thing to make money producing a domestic facsimile of Parmigiano Reggiano that competes with good examples of the original available to restaurants and sophisticated buyers, someone would already be doing it. As I said before, I also think that a major barrier to entry in this game is the fact that the infrastructure would seem to make the minimum investment for entry fairly high. This doesn't seem like something one can duplicate at a small boutique farm. It takes approximately 145 gallons of milk to make a single wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano. That's the daily output of around 18 cows per wheel. So, the minimum you'd have to have is 36 cows just to make one traditional two-wheel batch. And, of course, the makers in Parma have all kinds of financially beneficial synergies where they do things like feeding the whey to (also local) pigs, etc.

[Fat Guy]

We feed whey to pigs in America too.

It takes a lot of milk to make any aged, hard cheese. Yet we make plenty of them in America.

Were it true as a general proposition that "if it could be done, someone would be doing it," there would be no progress, ever, in anything. There are plenty of great cheeses being made in the United States today that weren't being made here ten or twenty years ago. I'm sure there was somebody saying it was impossible, right up until the moment those cheeses were made.

[CaliPoutine]

Would this be the "real" stuff?

I get it at Costco in London, ON

[melkor]

I think the better question is why is real Parmigiano so much better than all the imitations - Grana Padano is nowhere near as good, why would something made in Wisconsin be better? This topic is a good example of what seems to be an eGullet specific theory that anything good in the world can be made as well or better anywhere else in the world. Let's just take a look at a few Italian products that are both made domestically and imported from Italy:

Balsamic vinegar - the domestic product is horrible.

Parmigiano - again, horrible domestic copy that bares little resemblance to the real thing.

Burrata & Mozzarella di Bufala - the domestic product is acceptable in a pinch, but not in the same league as the real deal.

Truffles - have you tried the potato flavored earth-turds from Oregon and the southeast?

Some things are just better when they're there made by the people that have always made them in the place that they have always been made.

[Fat Guy]

I guess they shouldn't grow tomatoes or corn in Italy, since those things weren't "always" there.

[Fat Guy]

Would this be the "real" stuff?

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It's real, yes. Nuova Castelli S.p.A., the wholesaler, is somewhat infamous as the defendant in the Parmigiano Reggiano trademark (or whatever they call it in Italy) case, however it's a legitimate wholesaler of the real thing. If that's $19.99 Canadian a kilogram, that's an amazing price even for C-level Parmigiano Reggiano.

[melkor]

I guess they shouldn't grow tomatoes or corn in Italy, since those things weren't "always" there.

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Eh? Since when is growing vegetables the same as making cheese?

[CaliPoutine]

Would this be the "real" stuff?

←

It's real, yes. Nuova Castelli S.p.A., the wholesaler, is somewhat infamous as the defendant in the Parmigiano Reggiano trademark (or whatever they call it in Italy) case, however it's a legitimate wholesaler of the real thing. If that's $19.99 Canadian a kilogram, that's an amazing price even for C-level Parmigiano Reggiano.

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Yep, thats the price 19.99 a kilo. Which is 9.08lb. So you're saying its C-level? It tastes pretty good to me. We maintain our Costco membership just so we can buy this.

[Fat Guy]

Growing vegetables has been the same as making cheese for as long as growing truffles has been the same as making cheese. If I understand your point correctly, you're trying to say that nobody outside of Italy should ever attempt to produce the four things you've listed. You can't possibly have such a narrow view of culinary history. Products, methods and crops from all over the world have migrated from place to place since the beginning of civilization. Maybe the American wine industry should never have bothered. Maybe we should have just said, nah, we shouldn't make wine here, because "some things are just better when they're there made by the people that have always made them in the place that they have always been made." Maybe we shouldn't make any olive oil in California, or any foie gras in the Hudson Valley, or any cheddar cheese at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. Maybe those things should have been left to the people who had always been doing them.

[melkor]

Growing vegetables has been the same as making cheese for as long as growing truffles has been the same as making cheese. If I understand your point correctly, you're trying to say that nobody outside of Italy should ever attempt to produce the four things you've listed. You can't possibly have such a narrow view of culinary history. Products, methods and crops from all over the world have migrated from place to place since the beginning of civilization. Maybe the American wine industry should never have bothered. Maybe we should have just said, nah, we shouldn't make wine here, because "some things are just better when they're there made by the people that have always made them in the place that they have always been made." Maybe we shouldn't make any olive oil in California, or any foie gras in the Hudson Valley, or any cheddar cheese at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. Maybe those things should have been left to the people who had always been doing them.

←

Cultivated truffles from Oregon are no closer to foraged truffles from Alba than Wisconsin Parmesan is to Parmigiano Reggiano. You're deliberately twisting my words to make an absurd indefensible point. Why are there no good bagels on the west coast? There are lots of culinary mysteries... The recipe for good bagels as I understand it is, some flour, a little malt, a bit of water, and a Jew. I've got the first three and was born the fourth. Still, no good bagels within a thousand miles. Then again, I don't recall ever having a decent bagel in Israel either...

You've argued elsewhere on the site that there is no good soft cheese available in the states, you're arguing here that all imported Parmigiano is 'grade C' - when did you last spend time in Italy or France shopping for cheese? The Parmigiano Reggiano reserva that I get at Dean and Deluca isn't as good as the best I've had in Europe, but it's not far behind. I'd agree that all the domestic alternatives are horrible, but I for some reason don't find that surprising.

[Fat Guy]

Yep, thats the price 19.99 a kilo. Which is 9.08lb.  So you're saying its C-level?  It tastes pretty good to me.  We maintain our Costco membership just so we can buy this.

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I wouldn't be able to say for sure without tasting it. We get B-level cheese here in New York for $8.99 (US) a pound at the place I shop, so it's certainly possible to sell pretty good Parmigiano Reggiano at that price. And if anyone has the buying power and cleverness to do that on a large scale, it's Costco. However, in the US, outside of New York City, I've never actually seen it happen.

[Fat Guy]

You're deliberately twisting my words to make an absurd indefensible point.

What words am I twisting, and what absurd indefensible point am I trying to make?

You've argued elsewhere on the site that there is no good soft cheese available in the states, you're arguing here that all imported Parmigiano is 'grade C'

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I never said either of those things. I've had amazing soft cheeses made in the US, for example from Bobolink, and have written exactly that on the topic you're referencing. However, I also think the overall state of the soft cheese business is pretty dismal, so I mostly buy hard cheeses. But I don't think we should give up and just buy all our soft cheeses from Europe forever. Eventually, I hope we'll figure out how to do a better job. Don't you hope so too? As for the quality of imported Parmigiano, no, I didn't say it's all C-level. I said most of it is, and surely that's correct. I haven't been to Italy in forever, but as I mentioned above I get occasional hand deliveries from cheese shops in Reggio Emilia and I have never, ever had Parmigiano Reggiano in America that has been as good. I think it's correct to say that most Parmigiano Reggiano sold in the US is C-level, some is B-level, a very little bit of it is what Sam calls high-B-level (that's what you get at the better New York cheese places), and none that I've seen has been A-level. There may be some out there, but if it is out there it's pretty rare because I do get around to a lot of the best cheese shops and it has never crossed my path.