{"id":8539,"date":"2017-12-31T19:51:13","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T03:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/?p=8539"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:52:07","slug":"parmesan-cheese-hard-as-brick-fixed-soft-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/parmesan-cheese-hard-as-brick-fixed-soft-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Parmesan Cheese Hard as Brick – Fixed: “Soft” Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cheese

Cheese so Hard I could barely Scrape Dust<\/strong> off of it<\/p><\/div>\n

My enjoyment of Parmigiaheno-Reggiano cheese<\/a>, more often known in America as “Parmesan,”<\/strong> is a bit above average. I’m slightly hesitant to admit how sometimes I enjoy it all by itself.<\/p>\n

Today I found a sizeable block of Italian Parmesan<\/strong> cheese waiting in my refrigerator. Was excited about using it on a new pasta sauce experiment.<\/p>\n

However, apparently it had grown tired of waiting a few months for me. The Parmesan had turned hard; brick hard. It was so stoney I could barely scrape off a few shards with a sharp cheese grater or a butcher knife. How hard was it? I’ve sculpted statutes from Cararra marble<\/a> that were easier to chew.<\/p>\n

Shame to waste what should be good cheese, so I turned to the web and found – nothing.\u00a0Even WikiHow was worthless<\/a>. The only advice was useless: Shave it, dab it with vinegar, put it in soup. Those aren’t solutions – those are what to do after you give up.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t about to give up with a simple solution simmering in my mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, by combining a couple bits of simple science – my Parmesan cheese was soon soft enough to chew and slice. In fact it only took a few minutes.<\/p>\n

Here’s how you can soften your rock hard cheese.<\/p>\n

\"Cheese

Cheese in bowl covered with Water<\/p><\/div>\n

1. Put the hard cheese in a bowl and cover it with water.<\/p>\n

(Cheese starts out mostly as water. So why not get some water back in it ? Cheese must be fairly porous or cheese makers would have a lot of trouble getting the Whey<\/a> out. Next, lets heat it up to see if that helps.)<\/p>\n

2. Put the bowl in a microwave and heat it for 3 minutes.<\/p>\n

Done. Its soft again; soft enough to bite.<\/p>\n

Ready to eat. And tasting fabulous.<\/p>\n

That’s it. My experiment worked. The only caution is it doesn’t stay soft forever. The little bit that was left over lost a bit of its softness by the next day.<\/p>\n

I’m sure this will work with any hard cheese like Asiago<\/a>, Grana Padano<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0or Pecorino<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the way, the pasta was sublime – in large part due to the revived Parmesan. But that’s for another article.<\/p>\n

You are welcome to see what other sage and useful thoughts you can find here on this website – that you won’t find anywhere else. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

# # #<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My enjoyment of Parmigiaheno-Reggiano cheese, more often known in America as “Parmesan,” is a bit above average. I’m slightly hesitant to admit how sometimes I enjoy it all by itself. Today I found a sizeable block of Italian Parmesan cheese … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[27,26,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazing","category-doing-good","category-personal-how-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8539"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9611,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539\/revisions\/9611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}