Advantages
Processed cheese has several technical advantages over unprocessed cheese, including extended shelf-life, resistance to separation when cooked, and uniformity of product. Its production also enjoys significant economic advantages over traditional cheesemaking processes, most often through the ability to incorporate any of a wide variety of less expensive ingredients.
The use of emulsifiers in processed cheese results in cheese that melts smoothly when cooked. With prolonged heating, unprocessed cheese will separate into a molten protein gel and liquid fat; processed cheese will not separate in this manner. The emulsifiers, typically sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, tartrate, or citrate, reduce the tendency for tiny fat globules in the cheese to coalesce and pool on the surface of the molten cheese.
Because processed cheese does not separate when melted, it is used as an ingredient in a variety of dishes. It is a popular addition to hamburgers, as it does not run off, nor does it change in texture or taste as it is heated.
Read more about this topic: Processed Cheese
Famous quotes containing the word advantages:
“When the manipulations of childhood are a little larceny, they may grow and change with the child into qualities useful and admire in the grown-up world. When they are the futile struggle for love and concern and protection, they may become the warped and ruthless machinations of adults who seek in the advantages of power what they could never win as children.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“There are great advantages to seeing yourself as an accident created by amateur parents as they practiced. You then have been left in an imperfect state and the rest is up to you. Only the most pitifully inept child requires perfection from parents.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)