What Cheese Are You Serving For Thanksgiving?


I ordered one of these boxes to try. They are in Philly, and a family friend just started working for them. Prior to that he was a cheesemonger at the Reading Terminal market. I haven’t tried them yet but will post my impressions after they arrive. Anyone in the Philadelphia area try cheese from Perrystead dairy yet? Would love to hear your thoughts.

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I’m partial to goat cheeses, because they work so well with fruity flavors.

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Is this for before or after dinner. We have been doing a cheese assortment after dinner with a aged cheddar, Stilton, and a soft ripe cheese

Anyone ever have Rush Creek Reserve from Upland cheese. Is it worth the price

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Have not heard of this dairy but I am all for supporting local dairies/cheese makers. The quality of cheese making in the US has never been higher. Even large cooperatives like Cabot make excellent cheeses (I love their clothbound cheddar), and some of the artisanal cheeses are mindblowingly good.

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You can do a search on the board, but there is an entire thread (a long one) devoted specifically to this cheese. Cleary there are many fans.

I’m somewhat of an outlier regarding RCR. I’ve had it a decent amount of times and I find that the failure/spoilage rate is exceedingly high. In a similar style, I greatly prefer Jasper Hill Farm’s Harbison. The other thing is the RCR is seasonal so it’s only available for about two months in the late fall. Harbison is year round.

Edited to add a link to the thread:

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Thanks, i didn’t realize there was a whole thread devoted to the cheese

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Just finished a wheel of Harbison last week. One of my favourite cheeses–and I learned yesterday that it won top awards at the World Cheese Awards, including Best American Cheese.

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I now buy Harbison rather than Rush Creek Reserve. Rush Creek Reserve is too often ammoniated and is therefore too unreliable at $40/wheel. Harbison is often reliably sound. It may not hit the highs of a perfect Rush Creek Reserve, but it isn’t as variable.

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This is almost my exact position. I’d add that Harbison is available year round and RCR is only around for ~6-8 weeks in the fall/winter.

I did a cheese evaluation class with Jasper Hill, and one highly illuminating exercise was Harbison at different stages of development. I believe that Jasper Hill makes great effort to release their cheeses at near optimal condition or younger, but the consumer experience will partly depend on the retailer.

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A cheese evaluation class with JH sounds awesome!

I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth retelling. My family and I ski in VT a lot. 7-8 years ago we were skiing at Stowe. At the end of the day we stopped at The Alchemist (brewery famous for Heady Topper) for a tasting and to buy some beer. They have all sorts of other stuff for sale. Often they have cheese. We had tried Harbison a few times before but we were relatively new to it. The Alchemist had wheels of Harbison that had been “washed with Heady Topper”. They had different labels to note the fact. The person at the Alchemist was telling me how rare these were. I had to have them so I bought two wheels. The plan was to bring them back to NJ to serve over the Christmas/NYE holidays. Drove back to our hotel and left the cheese and beer in the car (it was 10 degrees outside the whole week). When we went back out to grab dinner the car absolutely stunk of cheese. It was overpowering and my kids were dying. I went to the local supermarket and got tupperware and put the cheese inside two layers of tupperware like nesting dolls. This helped, but didn’t completely mitigate the issue. We still had 3 more days of skiing and I drove around with those wheels of cheese the entire time.

When we got back to NJ at the end of the trip, I made a run to my local Whole Foods because we had nothing in the fridge as we had been gone for a week. When I looked in the cheese section, there were multiple wheels of Heady Topper washed Harbison. My kids still remind me how I tortured them. LOL.

Two or three times a year I bring in raw-milk cheeses, and no sort of containers or wrapping would eliminate the pungent aromas. Makes me wonder what the French equivalent is for a separate kimchi refrigerator for stinky cheeses! However, a couple of years ago, I tried repurposing an old Fagor pressure cooker that never got any use, and it works just perfectly for this.

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Bomb shelter for cheese!!
The stink can really be bad if you don’t have a high end fridge with separate system for the fridge and freezer.

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Bomb shelter is an apt description! :grinning:

Love cheese!

We will have teleme, taleggio, Marin French Golden Gate washed rind, Morbier, Brillat Savarin, La Tur, and whatever else opos up at the cheese monger’s.!

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Big La Tur fan

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Vintage 20018 tillamook white cheddar.

Their vintage cheddars are great.

I love La Tur, and robiola in general. Many years ago I went with a truffle hunter who had the same breed of dog as I do; after the hunt we had a fresh (almost rind-less) robiola over which he shaved a freshly dug white truffle. Unforgettable.

Velveeta. My grandson’s favorite cheese. We will probably also make baked brie because it is a good appetizer that we can prepare in advance just throw in the oven. Plus something like nachos with a lot of cheese for the football games.