The Decadent Cheese You Should Avoid Freezing At All Costs

Your freezer can be a great tool for saving food and money, but when it comes to cheese, it isn't always the best move. There are actually some cheeses that hold up pretty well to freezing. However, freezing cheese primarily affects texture, so cheeses that you are planning to melt anyway are good to go. Freezing will make them more crumbly and grainy uncooked, so you probably wouldn't want to be eating a slice of cheddar straight up, but melting them takes care of all those problems. However, that texture issue becomes a bigger problem the moister your cheese gets. While that will affect a lot of different cheeses (such as cream cheese), the one you should absolutely avoid freezing is burrata.

Burrata is made up of a soft interior of cheese curds and cream, and that is exactly the texture that can be ruined by freezing. That's because freezing affects the structure of water molecules, causing them to expand and form crystals, which ruptures the protein structure of the cheese. With burrata, that will disrupt the delicately creamy texture of the interior, turning it into a watery mess. The whole point of burrata is that it's a freshly made cheese with that spreadable, rich interior, so losing that to the cold of your freezer defeats the purpose of buying it. In fact, you shouldn't be trying to hold on to burrata at all, as it's best consumed the same day that you bought it.

Burrata, like mozzarella, is not made to be a long-lasting, shelf-stable cheese. It's considered at its best within a few hours of being made, but that time table is obviously not going to work for most people (unless you live on a dairy farm). With modern packaging, you have a little extra time, and if it's sealed in the container you bought it in and still whole, burrata will keep for up to five days before its quality starts to really degrade. If it's been taken out of its packaging, it should be sealed in an airtight container surrounded by water, the same way it is normally packaged on store shelves. Stored this way, burrata will last the same amount of time as in its package.

However once you cut into your burrata, it's pretty much over. Eat it within a few hours when it's as fresh as possible. If you just can't finish a whole ball of burrata, seal it in an airtight container and finish it the next day at the latest. Once exposed to air the fillings of burrata will go sour in just a few days. Thankfully there are plenty of great ways to serve burrata to use it quickly. Make it into caprese salad, use it to top pizza or pasta, or even spread it over roasted and grilled vegetables. The reality is leftover burrata is a problem you should almost never have.