Why is blue cheese blue?

Is it because it’s one of the most under-appreciated cheeses because folks with tender tastebuds find it too pungent? Is it because it’s sad it had to fight so hard for its founding father, roquefort, not to be banned from the United States years ago? Is it because it’s been mushed into a dressing and served along flavorless iceberg lettuce and called salad? Probably.

But it is also because its milk has been spiked with a mold called Penicillium roqueforti.

How blue cheese is made:

After milk for blue cheese has been pumped into a cheese vat, cultures are added to the milk to start the fermentation process. Then the famed mold Penicillium roqueforti is sprinkled over the milk, allowed to rehydrate, and stirred in. Next, cheesemakers pour in rennet, and the curd is left alone to firm.

After the curd has solidified enough so it feels like a bouncy flan, it’s sliced and diced into curds.

Then the blue cheese curds are tossed with salt and stuffed into a cylinder mold to take on that famous shape.

This is when the blue cheese magic starts to happen.

A couple days to weeks after the curds are packed into the cylinder and a solid shape forms, a cheesemaker takes a wheel and pierces it with a pronged instrument that looks like a tiny stainless steel medieval torture device. Each individual prong forms a vein in the cheese. (If you’re a small cheesemaker you use knitting needles instead of the machine—how cute!) Oxygen rushes into the hollow veins.

And everywhere the oxygen flows turns blue! It’s a chemical reaction. Meaning if your cheese is more blue, it’s been pierced more times.

Or, it’s curds haven’t been packed as tightly so oxygen snuck it (so stealth)

So the next time you have blue cheese, guess how many needles or prongs made it the hue it is!