It doesn’t matter how the subject of cream cheese came up this morning, but when it did, I pondered that what I’d purchased in the past had been from only a handful of brands. I’d NEVER seen an artisanal or cultured cream cheese (other than whipped or flavored variants of the standards).
IS there such a thing as “better” or boutique cream cheese? Is there something to recommend it? Or is is more like canned cranberry sauce or pumpkin filling that is nearly fungible across all brands? Is there even any difference between brands?
For baking, I absolutely preferred Philadelphia…but for use on bagels and as a spread on other things and MAYBE for use in a smoked salmon OR lox spread, I MUCH preferred Temptee Whipped Cream Cheese (when I lived in the US). Way back when, it used to always say “Breakstone’s” on the label, but some photos I’ve seen on the ‘net (like in the third photo I posted) don’t show that. BTW, both are made by Kraft.
Beware, though that it usually isn’t available other than on the East Coast. And yes, it has “gums” in it, but so does Philadelphia.
In Japan I can sometimes find this Danish cream cheese which is excellent and only has 4 ingredients. I don’t know if it’s available in the US. When I can’t find it, I use Philadelphia.
There’s also the question of regular vs soft vs whipped. Mark has said that the whipped tastes like spackle. (I have no idea how he knows what spackle tastes like. )
Thanks. OK, so that’s almost exactly half of the minimum 70% required to qualify as triple cream
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
15
I made the mistake of thinking they were fungible and bought Aldi’s brand. We normally keep it in a small Tupperware-like container in the fridge, so I opened the package and put it in the tub.
Kid came home from school, cut and warmed a half bagel, put a schmear of the cream cheese on it, took a bite, went to trash, spat out bite and threw away the half bagel (I got it out and frisbeed it out into the woods).
I tasted a spoonful from the tub and would probably have eaten it, but she was right that it just wasn’t right.
To the rest of Kaleo’s question, I’ve tried many types of frou-frou boutique style cream cheeses and through they were okay, but I’m definitely happier with Philly.
Philly brick, that is. Not the softer, more “cold spreadable” stuff [1], or the whipped stuff, each of which has a different flavor.
[1] I knew a chemical engineer who worked on one of their projects to make it more readily spreadable at refrigerator temps. She said it was quite the back-and-forth, that every time they’d get it spreadable enough with good flavor, the “mouth feel” (as she put it) would be off, often grainy, then they’d get the mouth feel right and the flavor would be bad again. Then they’d get it just right in the lab, and it wouldn’t scale well.
Agreed - it has to be the brick. I have had some very good cream cheese at various delis, but I’ve never found a supermarket brand I would choose over Philly for any purpose.
Tillamook has a brick cream cheese. The ingredients are cultured pasteurized milk and cream, pasteurized skim milk, sea salt. I haven’t tried it yet, just their Very Veggie cream cheese spread. I liked it a lot.
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