Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 576 kcal | 163 kcal |
| Protein | 32.7 g | 9.3 g |
| Fat | 47.3 g | 13.4 g |
| saturated | 30.1 g | 8.5 g |
| Carbohydrate | 4.4 g | 1.3 g |
| sugars | 0.7 g | 0.2 g |
| Fibre | 0 g | 0 g |
| Sodium | 887 mg | 252 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 1.6 kg parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Buy a wedge and grate it yourself rather than starting from the pre-grated tub. The tub already contains an anti-caking starch, and that starch is what makes home-dried cheese powder taste chalky.
- Grate or peel the cheese into shreds of roughly one size. Parmesan is dry to begin with, so the fine shreds will be finished while any thick curl is still greasy.
- Spread the shreds thinly over a lined tray and lay a sheet of muslin cloth across the top, tucked under at the edges. Grated parmesan weighs almost nothing, and without a cover the fan will redistribute your batch around the inside of the machine.
- Dry at 52 °C for 10 hours. Oil beads on the surface within the first hour — blot it off with paper towel, because the fat is the part that goes rancid and none of it is leaving on its own.
- The cheese is ready when a shred crumbles to grit under your thumb with no give in it and the tray has stopped smelling oily. Take a pinch out and let it cool before deciding; warm cheese is always softer than it will be.
- Chill the dried shreds in the freezer for ten minutes before grinding. Cold parmesan is brittle and shatters, where at room temperature it warms under the blade and packs into a paste around the base of the grinder.
- Pulse in short bursts rather than running the machine continuously. A long run heats the powder and brings the oil straight back out of it.
- Keep the powder in a jar in the fridge for three months, or freeze it for a year. This is the one dried thing here that does not belong in a pantry — dairy fat turns sharp on a warm shelf long before the powder takes up any moisture.
