What's that Smell?

LTH,

Last couple of days my refrigerator has become increasingly fragrant, and not in a good way. I checked all the obvious places, veg bins, meat drawer, nothing going the biological version of Postal. I popped in a box of baking soda, absorbs odor, and hoped for the best. No such luck.

Yesterday I went on a hard target search, took out all the drawers, checked the shelves, no luck. This morning the smell was even worse so I took everything out of the frig, cleaned the shelves, wiped the sides and then commenced to clean the drawers. Soon as I started removing things from the deli/cheese drawer I found the culprit, cheese, stinky cheese. Not just any cheese but a nice hunk of Caprine Blanc by Colorado Caprine .

This stuff was really gone, nose tingling, gag reflex inducing, over the top of the hill and back again gone. I realize cheese is a 'living' product, but is it supposed to wink at you as you toss it out?

Enjoy,
Gary

That surely brings back memories . . . .

Any tips on storing cheese for long periods (greatly appreciated, since my home cheesemaking adventures convene in the fall, when my attic storage space is cooler)?

I tried plastic wrap, parchment paper, parchment paper and unsealed freezer bags, but I just can't seem to get the long life that I desire in my cheese drawer.

Cheers,
Wade

Gary,
2&1/2 questions:

How was it stored and for how long?
I ask because I've been known to find some rather aged cheese from the depths of my refrigerator. I've found goat cheeses survive very well*.
&
Importantly, how did it taste? (i.e., would you do it again, did it taste as profound as it smelled)

*In fact I am currently 'experimenting' on aging some under different 'stress' conditions - these went into my fridge approx. a couple of months ago (I'll have to check the label for the exact date&time - will do so when I remember to take them out, or when A2Fay evicts them to make space).

The holey container with the cheese inside was placed in a brown paper bag before placing in fridge.


edit: results of this experiment in the Capriole O'Bannon thread

sazerac wrote:Importantly, how did it taste? (i.e., would you do it again, did it taste as profound as it smelled)

Sazerac,

I did not taste the cheese as it had long since past the point where, even a lover of 'stinky' cheese such as myself, would dare to tread. I think the drawer where I keep cheese got a bit of water in it as all of the cheese in the drawer had started to go funky, the Caprine Blanc was simply the most gone.

One of the other cheeses I (sadly) tossed was my new favorite blue cheese, Point Reyes Blue. To me Point Reyes Blue tastes like Maytag Blue did before they became so wildly popular. It's my opinion Maytag Blue, which is still a terrific cheese, lost a 1/2 step when they amped up production.

Interestingly the Point Reyes web site makes a point of saying their cheesemaker came from Newton, Iowa with over 15-years experience with Blue cheese. Maytag blue is made in Newton, Iowa.

Enjoy,
Gary

waderoberts wrote:Any tips on storing cheese for long periods

Wade,

My adventure in cheese aging, in this instance, was unintentional. The couple of times I've aged cheese I've used loose wrap with parchment paper, positioned, but not touching, above a folded paper towel to absorb excess moisture, in a loosely covered bowl. I've had very mixed results with this method.

When you mentioned cool attic I got this image of rafters lined with salami, hams, cheese and a side of aging beef. Actually, I wonder how far off I am.

Enjoy,
Gary

waderoberts wrote:Any tips on storing cheese for long periods

This would depend on how long 'long' is

G Wiv wrote:Wade,

My adventure in cheese aging, in this instance, was unintentional. The couple of times I've aged cheese I've used loose wrap with parchment paper, positioned, but not touching, above a folded paper towel to absorb excess moisture, in a loosely covered bowl. I've had very mixed results with this method.

When you mentioned cool attic I got this image of rafters lined with salami, hams, cheese and a side of aging beef. Actually, I wonder how far off I am.

I've had some semi-intentional experience with aging/storing cheese.
Typically for storage (≤ 3 weeks) I wrap in parchment and then loosely in foil (that keeps the parchment around but still permits breathing).

The longest I've 'aged' cheese (and eaten it ) is 7 weeks. The cheeses pictured above have been in the fridge above for longer - and they still look ok (and don't smell); I'm still undecided on when to take them out. I briefly mentioned the 'aging' setup in the capriole o'banon thread which inspired the current experiment
The setup mentioned there - cheese in a bowl inside an inverted bowl - I adapted from Alton Brown's beef aging setup. This setup allows for breathing without displacing the air around the cheese too much. I keep it at the bottom and back of the fridge (away from the fan). This time around I decided to try a brown paper bag instead of the outer bowl.
I should note that I have only aged goat cheeses (and not other cheeses) this way, though it may be suitable with any semi-soft cheese. The goat cheeses are typically covered - either with leaves or with ash. Among the (traditional) purposes of ash on cheese, is to draw excessive moisture away from the cheese while aging. Also goat cheeses, from what I've come across, are aged in conditions of fairly high humidity (70 - 90%; depending on the cheese). (Meat aging would require drier conditions.) In the home refrigerator, humidity is lower (especially with constant opening/closing and operation of the fan) - which is why vegetable storage which requires higher humidity has a closed 'crisper' drawer (away from from the fan). Therefore, short of getting dedicated refrigeration units with humidity control, cheese storing/aging in the fridge would probably be alright if the cheese was kept humid (so away from air circulation) without it getting wet.
All this is more holding or maturing than 'aging'. Proper 'aging' (>12 months) I leave to professionals.

When you mentioned cool attic I got this image of rafters lined with salami, hams, cheese and a side of aging beef. Actually, I wonder how far off I am.

You are quite close, Gary, my friend. Most of my attic is finished, but there's a 40'L x 5'W (at the bottom) x 10'H (at the highest; steep pitch) "closet" with exposed rafters and a wood floor, nice and cool in the winter. I've been, er, boning up on ham/sausage/beef curing/aging and cheese aging. I also think that I may have figured out how to add a smokehouse to my backyard (um . . . though I'm not quite sure about city codes there).

Cheers,
Wade

Here are the American Cheese Society's guidelines:

http://www.cheesesociety.org/displaycom ... ticlenbr=5

LAZ,

Thanks kindly. I'm briefly in Texas, and I just came across some old cheese-storing tips in one of my mom's old cookbooks. It called for wrapping the cheese in vinegar-drenched cloth. Has anyone else heard of this?

Cheers,
Wade

The vinegar-drenched cheese cloth is an old trick, but I have always been skeptical about how well it works and what else it does to flavor. I heard of it years ago but never tried it. Note that acidity is an ancient preservation tool and that most cheeses while aging produce some lactic acid from any remaining lactose.

LTH,

Today's What's That Smell is potatoes or, more specifically, potatoes that have dissolved into a fetid pool of decay on our kitchen counter. We keep tomato, potato, onion and the stray apple in a wicker basket on the kitchen counter. The basket is moderately large and once something drifts to the bottom it tends to say there, until needed or noticed. The potatoes got noticed this morning.

Today being garbage day I was rooting around the basket for likely candidates, when I spotted a plastic bag which had a mushy soft feel and slight musty odor. (Yes, I know, potatoes do not belong in plastic, nor do plastic bags belong in counter wicker baskets) I had the misfortune to be breathing in when I opened the bag and was, literally, overcome with a miasma of gag reflex inducing, rotted mouse in the garage, putrescent vapor.

Holding back the bile that was looking for exit I barely made it to the backyard where, eye's watering, I simultaneously retched, choked for air and gagged. When I returned to dispose of the malodorous dripping mess I found myself wishing I had succumbed to unreasonable fears and purchased a gas mask in post 9/11 anthrax fear mongering.

Here's hoping your What's That Smell this morning is fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee and toasting bagel.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:We keep tomato, potato, onion and the stray apple in a wicker basket on the kitchen counter.
(Yes, I know, potatoes do not belong in plastic, nor do plastic bags belong in counter wicker baskets)

Surely the potato plastic bag had holes. Nevertheless, potatoes shouldn't be stored near onions, they'll hasten each others spoilage. I'm not sure if it is due to the same ripening hormone (ethylene) given off by apples, but if it is, then your "stray apple" helped too.

Rotting potatoes stink. I hope a strong cup or two of coffee helped clear it.

sazerac wrote:Surely the potato plastic bag had holes.

Sazerac,

Embarrassingly, I just chucked the potatoes, while still residing in a plain plastic grocery bag, into the wicker basket. Which I'm sure hurried their trip to fetor along greatly.

Enjoy,
Gary

Ethylene is a very old method to deter sprouting in potatoes. The oldest trick used apples, which give off ethylene, stored in the same root cellar. Some potatoes will rot even under ideal storage conditions. G Wiv's were certainly in far from ideal storage conditions.

I agree that rotting potatoes generate quite a stench, perhaps just short of rotting onions. When I compost potatoes that are in submarginal condition, I cut them into fairly small pieces before mixing into the compost pile. That way the potato bits will compost quickly with essentially no odor. This is important because the two compost bins are underneath our dining porch, which we often use in good weather. We routinely compost almost all vegetable scraps and trimmings (excluding corn cobs and winter squash shells) without odor problems.

LTH,

This morning we had the most delicious aroma of roasting turkey wafting through our house. Simply a divine home and hearth smell that put a smile on both of our faces.

It's been years, maybe 4-5, since I roasted a turkey in the oven, not that I haven't cooked a flock or two of turkeys in the interim, but I smoke them on my WSM. In anticipation of one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving, I've been experimenting with various brines, today was kosher salt/brown sugar/Bufalo Chipotle hot sauce/cayenne/maple syrup/black and white pepper/ and a healthy glug of Elijah Craig Kentucky bourbon.

I'm not cooking whole turkeys, like I said I'm in experiment mode, but 4-6 on-the-small-side turkey thighs I've been buying at Cub Food, which is the only consistent source of turkey thighs I've found in Chicago.

When I went outside to start the WSM the wind was whipping so damn fast, with gusts up to 150-mph, or at least it seemed that fast, I, for the first time in years, woosied out and went oven. The turkey thighs tasted just fine, though missing the gentle kiss of wood smoke, brine was pretty good, distinctive, but still needs tweaking, and the bonus was I had drippings to make gravy, for our sliced turkey sandwiches, and that simply incredible Roast Turkey aroma.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:LTH,

This morning we had the most delicious aroma of roasting turkey wafting through our house. Simply a divine home and hearth smell that put a smile on both of our faces.

Although smoking meats is my most favorite MO, this is the main reason that for Thanksgiving, our turkey is always oven roasted. That oven cooked turkey smell permeating the house is as much a part of the holiday as is falling asleep on the couch with a football game on the TV.

I've had exactly *one* successful long-term cheese-holding experience, and the cheese was so singular that I've always figured that my experience wasn't generalizable. But lots of you know a bunch more about these sorts of things than I do, so maybe there's something to be said about what happened.

A few years ago, I bought a huge hunk of double-fat aged gouda in
Amsterdam. Simply couldn't eat it fast enough, so I took a (still largish) chunk, put it in one of the special bags and applied the wonders of my 'vac-u-seal' (or whatever it was called) device.

Put the thing into my downstairs wine- and beer-making fridge and promptly forgot about it. A little over four years later, it was a gift from the Cheese Gods to a delighted (but obviously unworthy) supplicant.

Man, was that stuff good!

Never tried the technique again--and the machine went West anyway.

But there you have it. Ideas, anyone?

Geo

1) Water activity of a gouda (already semi-hard and pressed) is very limited - mold needs moisture, oxygen). I have a piece in my fridge that is now 7 years old -- and it shows no sign of molding because it is very very dry - there is little to no water left, it is almost rock hard!(it was aged 5 years when I got it). True, flavor has faded (significantly) since I first opened the wheel, noticably so, but it isn't terrible. I keep it around should I need to pelt the neighborhood kids with something really hard.

2) Quite a bit of cheese is aged in cryovac - including the much touted but (in my extremely biased opinion) disgusting 9 year old cheddar. There is still enymatic activity but oxygen is in short supply. There undoubtedly more science to it, but the long and short of it is that oxygen and water are two of cheese's biggest enemies - the third is heat and the fourth would be lack of/too much humidity, if the cheese is cave aged. So if you deprive the cheese of oxygen, water, and heat, you will continue to age a cheese. A cheese can most definitely get too aged, but gouda (like cheddar, another cooked, pressed cheese) is a variety that does very well over time.

So back to your piece of gouda: placing it in the pseudo-cryo and keeping that at a low temp would age the cheese. If it had a leak, you would have found a nasty blue vein and it would most definitely have tasted off.

Undesirable moldy cheese advice: to prevent further molding, make a heavy brine solution and wash off the moldy cheese. You will then allow it to dry. After it has dried, cut off the cheese in the affected area - approximately a 1/2 deep. Your cheese should now be salvageable. Try to eat it sooner rather than later -- the blue mold can return if you leave it long enough.

I once drove from Boston to Chicago with a trunk full of cheese - and left it in there for two months during the height of the winter. Now that was a smelly car. On hot days I can sometimes smell the cheese....

G Wiv wrote:We keep tomato, potato, onion and the stray apple in a wicker basket on the kitchen counter.

In theory, potatoes, onions and the like are supposed to be kept in cool, dark places, which helps keep them from sprouting. However, in my house, things stored in the available cool, dark places tend to be forgotten about, resulting in unpleasant surprises.

So now I keep my spuds and onions in a three-tiered wire hanging basket out in the kitchen, where I'm more likely to see them and remember they're there to be used. If they sprout, I use those first. And if they go off before they can be used, they're more likely to shrivel into harmless, dessicated mustiness than to dissolve into pools of fetid matter.

My kitchen is (unfortunately) not very bright, so the potatoes usually don't develop green areas from exposure to direct light, and if they do, I just cut that part off. And keeping the onions and potatoes in separate tiers in the open-air basket seems to be far enough apart.

A trick I used to use was to keep them in the fridge. They keep a lot longer that way. The starch in pototoes turns to sugar when they're kept cold, making odd-tasting potatoes, but it goes back to normal if you leave them at room temperature for a day or two. I stopped doing it because I'd forget to take them out ahead of time. They also use up too much space, and the onions tend to perfume other things near them. (I still do put more perishable sweet onions in the fridge.)

Once bananas reach the stage of ripeness I prefer I stick them in the fridge, too. The skins turn black, but the fruit inside is fine.

HI,

Earlier this week I was home alone when an odd odor started creeping around the house. It was a heavy oily odor, which I thought was sesame oil. I could smell it in the kitchen, where I looked for an tipped over sesame oil bottle. Yet this odor was in the front hall, dining room and in the basement as well. I noticed it was just a bit stronger when the cat was with me. I inspected her coat and paws to find any signs of oil clinging to her.

When my family returned they were all shriveling their noses complaining a skunk had hit the neighborhood. In a flash my sensors reconsidered the sesame oil and only then did they begin to sense skunk. I grabbed the cat to give her a deep sniff, who had apparently been within shooting range of the skunk.

I still am quite surprised how I could mistake skunk odors for sesame oil.

Regards,

Cathy2--

Although all senses are susceptible to cognitive 'suggestion' (what philosophers in the biz call "the theory-ladenness of perception"), olfaction is THE most susceptible to cognitive/conceptual influence. Humans tend not to just smell aromas plain and simple, they smell aromas AS something, e.g., as a flower, as a food, as an irritant, that is the perception is a complex of conceptual category + sensory data. This is one of the reasons that professional tasting groups, esp. wine tasters, outlaw 'table-talk', since one's olfactory perceptions are so malleable to concepts.

In this case, it wasn't until you changed your concept from "food" to "pest", that your perception changed.

Vision, while better than olfaction, is certainly susceptible to precisely the same sorts of conceptual influences.

Geo

What amazes me about skunk smell is its persistence. Our dog has had the misfortune of twice encountering a skunk in our backyard, and we tried all the remedies -- store-bought "deskunkifiers", tomato juice baths, etc. -- and even though he's a short-haired dog (a basenji) the odor lingered. I found that even after many, many months, after the smell was essentially gone, when I'd take him for a walk on a damp day he'd somehow exude the smell, albeit faintly, again. Powerful stuff.

LTH,

Maybe not the worst, but still enough to trigger my regurgitation reflex, tonight's What's That Smell is cucumber. Not just any cucumber, but a liquefying green mush emitting a malodorous stench that, if bottled and atomized, would instantly become a best selling Halloween Trick.

Enjoy,
Gary

HI,

This evening I decided to try the New York Times recipe for no-knead bread. Our bread consumption has dropped quite a bit, which means any bread lingers for a while. I have been keeping a half gallon glass container of bread flour for whenever the mood struck again. This evening when I opened it, there wasn't a pleasantly neutral smell. If anything, there was a rancid odor. I never observed rancid flour before, didn't occur to me it could become rancid though the smell was unmistakable. Off to the kitchen mulch pile!

I am two plus hours into the no-knead bread with conventional flour. Can't wait to taste it tomorrow evening. Meanwhile I will try to shake off that awful odor.

Regards,

Regards,

Reminds me of something that happened a month or so ago: Sparky had some friends over, and I needed to come up with a slightly more conventional lunch than usual. (I should mention here that we had just returned from a short vacation, and I hadn't shopped yet)

Grilled cheese! I thought - so I headed for the freezer. No bread. No shredded cheese. OK - Quesadillas! I got out the tortillas, and then looked in my cheese drawer - nothing but cheese sticks and a ziplocked white cheese that might be quesadilla or rancherito.

I toasted cheese sticks in tortillas - only to find out that the side of the tortillas I hadn't looked at was moldy. Into the garbage it went.

I tried again, this time with pita bread I scrounged from the freezer. The white cheese was a little watery, but didn't smell, so I added it. Before I served the toasted sammies to the youngsters, I took a taste - and promptly spat it out, realizing it was, indeed, Rancherito that I'd bought, opened, and lost in the fridge over a month ago. Didn't smell vile, but if that taste were translated into smell, well, we'd have had to move...

I think we wound up eating peanut butter on crackers after which I cleaned the fridge with bleach and hustled to the market...

LTH,

Unloaded groceries from the trunk a week or so ago, thought I had bought a half-gallon of milk but it was no where to be found, figured I had simply left it in the grocery. I was wrong.

Got in the car yesterday morning, after a couple of warm days, and my wife goes what is that ungodly smell, we look in the back seat, nothing, pop the trunk and are assaulted by a blast of sour milk funk that made our eyes water. Worse yet fermentation loosened the cap and half the spoiled curdled milk leaked, 24-hours later the car still smells like Beelzebub's breakfast.

Enjoy,
Gary

You've got some serious scrubbing to do. I'd look into removing the carpeting from the trunk (if there is any) and wiping down the surfaces underneath with some heavy duty cleaner, then soaking the capreted areas that were spilled on with something heavy duty, and shop vac or blot dry. (I'd repeat the carpet soak and dry a few times.) From experience, the wife spilled some kind of frou frou Starbuck's frappaccino-mocha-latte-au-lait beverage - blotted it up, and thought nothing else of it until a week or so later when it started to STINK!!! It took the better part of a Saturday to get under the carpet and wipe up the spills (that had dried up to a gummy consistency, and packed a wallop of a stench) in the little pockets that you don't think are there, but you don't see because the carpet covers them. When old milk funk turns from sour milk smell to like old, nasty, feet smell, it is unavoidable. You can't just turn away from it, it will not go away. I feel for you.


Get to scrubbin.

Yikes! About 7 or 8 years ago, I forgot about 10 pounds of pork butt in the trunk of my car. After 4 warm days, it smelled very much like a dead body (according to my brother-in-law the cop). My husband still claims that he can smell it on rainy days. After all the scrubbing as seabee recommended, you could also try sprinkling around some activate charcoal, letting it sit, and then vacuuming it out. Good luck-- I think milk is the worst.
Jen

Hi,

Baking soda also helps absorb the odors.

Regards,

Many years ago we dropped our kids off at my parents house and were met by a wall of stench so bad that I'll never forget it. My parents didn't seem terribly bothered by it but they said that it started smelling a few days prior. They were having a bathroom remodeled and and there were open drain pipes in there so I attributed the smell to sewer gas, although it didn't smell that bad in there. When we picked the kids up late that night it seemed the smell was getting worse. We got out of there quickly.

Anyway, my mother calls up several days later to tell us they found the source of the smell. Some guy that was doing other work on their house had unplugged the basement freezer where my sister and her husband had stored a half-cow of beef. Yikes! They wound up throwing the entire freezer and it's contents out, and had to clean up a big pool of blood from the basement floor. I'm glad I wasn't there to see and smell that.

Another time we were going to a friends apartment every couple of days while they were away to feed their fish, and there was an awful smell in the fridge, yet there were only two things in there some frozen brine shrimp in the freezer and an unopened package of chicken loaf in the fridge part. we left it hoping the smell would go away. a couple days later the smell was worse, I checked the brine shrimp, no smell. My wife picked up the chicken loaf and we both took a whiff. I was gagging uncontrollably. Worst ever.