Process cheese products typically are prepared by forming a blend of one or more comminuted natural cheeses, together with various added additives such as whey or emulsifying salts. The processed cheese products are produced by heating, melting and mixing the cheese blend to form a homogeneous emulsified molten mass, followed by cooling and solidification of the molten mass. The heating, melting and homogenizing of the blend of cheese raw materials with emulsifying salts such as sodium phosphate and/or sodium citrate in amounts of 2-3 weight percent permits manufacture of soft-bodied, easily meltable process cheeses and process cheese foods. Heating of cheese in a cooker with relatively high levels of emulsifying salts to break the body of the natural cheese to make relatively soft-bodied process cheese products has been long known in the art. However, heating of the comminuted natural cheese without proper agitation, or insufficient amounts of emulsifying salts tends to result in separation of the fat, thus failing to provide a satisfactory emulsion.
Because of their molten, easily handled form, it is an advantage of process cheese products that they are readily packaged to provide convenient consumer products. Packaging may take any one of a number of forms, for example, hot packing in a plastic film tube which is cross-sealed and cut to provide individually wrapped slices. The molten process cheese product may also conventionally be formed into slices by distributing the product upon the surface of a cooled rotating chill roll in the form of a thin layer which solidifies into a sheet which is removed from the chilled surface of the roll, cut into strips and subsequently into slices followed by packaging of the sliced process cheese product.
It would be desirable to provide a flavorful cheddar cheese product which could be melted and readily packaged like process cheese, but which would have the stringy, firm body of a natural mozzarella cheese, which did not exhibit oil separation, and it is an object to provide such a cheese product. These and other objects will be apparent from the following detailed description and the accompanying drawings.