Can you freeze cheese? 9 practical tips for you!

We all know the problem. We buy fine cheese on vacation or on a trip, miscalculate at brunch with the family or at raclette night and are faced with the question of what to do with all the leftover cheese. We have looked into this question, asked around and give you valuable tips on what to consider when freezing cheese. Our tips are based on personal experience and recommendations from cheese professionals, but are not intended to be exhaustive.

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TYPES OF CHEESE

Before we look at our tips individually, we need to make a small digression into cheese. Broadly speaking, there are the following types of cheese:
- Extra hard cheese (e.g. Sbrinz, Grana Padano)
- Hard cheese (e.g. Emmentaler, Gruyére)
- Semi-hard cheese (e.g. Appenzeller, Raclette)
- Soft cheese (e.g. Brie, Camembert)
- Cream cheese (e.g. mozzarella, cottage cheese)

In principle, any cheese can be frozen, but we do not always recommend this. Depending on the type of cheese, freezing cheese makes more sense and the loss of taste and texture is greater or lesser. 

9 tips

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Cheese in one piece, as you can get it from cheezy.ch, is better suited to freezing than sliced cheese.

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Cream cheese becomes "crackly" and flakes after defrosting. Edible, but who wants that? Therefore not recommended

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Anyone who has ever frozen a soft cheese (e.g. Brie, Camembert) knows that the cheese becomes mushy and we therefore do not recommend this.

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Hard cheese (Emmentaler, Gruyère) and raclette cheese as well as extra hard cheese (Sbrinz) are types of cheese that are best suited to freezing. However, if stored correctly, they can also be kept in the fridge for many weeks.

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Extra tip for raclette cheese Wrap the cheese slices individually between cling film to keep them "fresh".

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Fondue mixes (grated cheese) can be vacuum-packed and frozen well.

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Pack cheese in freezer bags for freezing. The more airtight the packaging, the better, see also tip 5, also works for other cheeses.

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Semi-hard cheese such as Appenzeller is not recommended to be frozen and if it is, the rind should be cut off (cheese continues to ripen in the freezer, even if less quickly).

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It's actually far too bad to freeze cheese, so our last tip is simply to invite friends and family over and enjoy the cheese together, then you don't have to freeze anything.

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