How should you store your cheese after you buy it? Should you store it at room temperature, refrigerate it, or freeze it? You’ve probably encountered cheese exuding whey or moisture. Proper cheese storage requires careful attention to everything from packaging to storage location.

How to Store Cheese

Natural cheese can also experience flavor changes after purchase.

This change isn’t just about maturation, which makes the cheese more flavorful; it can also deteriorate the flavor. Knowing the proper storage methods beforehand will ensure you enjoy your cheese until the very end.

Step 1 Gently wipe away moisture and grease

All cheeses, except fresh cheese, will exude whey, especially blue cheese and goat cheese. If left untreated, this can cause the cheese to spoil prematurely.

It’s recommended to use a non-woven, lint-resistant paper towel. Don’t rub it; instead, apply pressure. You can also wrap the cheese in a paper towel and gently pat it to absorb moisture and grease.

Many blue cheeses are quite watery. Wipe them clean daily before eating, and it’s best to consume them as soon as possible.

Many blue cheeses are quite watery. Wipe them clean daily before eating, and it’s best to consume them as soon as possible.

Step 2 Don’t use plastic wrap! Wrap cheese with waxed paper.

If you wrap cheese tightly with plastic wrap, it can trap moisture inside the cheese, creating an unpleasant odor. The plastic wrap’s own odor can also linger on the cheese.

It’s recommended to wrap cheese with parchment paper or baking paper, which is treated with wax. Specialized wrapping paper is also available. If the wrapping is still clean from the store, it’s fine to use it.

Step 3 Place in an airtight container or plastic bag.

Wrapping cheese in parchment paper or baking paper alone can dry it out, so store it in an airtight container or ziplock plastic bag.

If you don’t store it in a sealed container, the entire refrigerator will be filled with the smell of cheese, and you might worry about the smell of other foods transferring to the cheese. Using a plastic bag alone might still allow the smell to escape, so I recommend using an airtight container.

For white mold cheese and washed rind cheese, humidity is also essential for preservation. Storing it in a box with something like lightly soaked parsley is a way to combat desiccation.

Step 4 Place it in the refrigerator’s crisper compartment.

The location of the refrigerator is also important. While it depends on the type of cheese, the crisper compartment is the best place to store cheese, better than the colder refrigerator or freezer. Remember to change the cut when cutting the cheese and eat it as soon as possible.

Place fresh cheese in the crisper compartment, and blue cheese in the freezer.

Place it in the slightly warmer refrigerator to preserve the fresh milk flavor of fresh cheese as much as possible. Since blue cheese is aged at low temperatures, the temperature in the fresh produce section is too high for it. It should be placed in the freezer.

Goat cheese does not need to be wrapped in paper; simply place it on a draining board before refrigerating.

Since it’s better to let the skin dry, it doesn’t need to be wrapped in paper. Use a sieve-shaped container or line a container with a draining board, place the cheese inside, and cover. Once aged, portion the cheese (affine) individually as in step 3 and store in the refrigerator.