Grating cheese in a business looks like a simple job. The cost of that job, though, involves several lines beyond the price per kilogram.
What makes up the real cost of grating?
Four lines.
The first is labour; grating ten kilograms takes one person forty-five minutes.
The second is waste; the edges of a block and what stays in the machine produce a loss of three to five percent.
The third is equipment: the grater, its cleaning and its maintenance.
The fourth is inconsistency; cheese grated by hand comes out at a different fineness every time.
| Line | Grating in-house | Frozen grated |
|---|---|---|
| Labour | 4-5 min/kg | None |
| Waste | 3-5% | 0-1% |
| Equipment needed | Yes | No |
| Consistency of the grate | Variable | Fixed |
| Unit price | Low | 12-20% higher |
What does frozen grated mozzarella solve?
The product arrives grated and blast-frozen.
The only job in the kitchen is taking the quantity needed.
No thawing happens; the product goes onto a pizza or a toastie straight from frozen.
The fineness is fixed, which makes the melting behaviour predictable.
Portion control gets easier; a weighed quantity gives the same result every time.
What does the anti-caking agent do?
Grated cheese clumps because of moisture on its surface.
That makes it hard to scatter and makes the melting uneven.
A starch or cellulose-based powder coats the shreds and stops them sticking together.
The level usually runs around two percent.
The additive barely affects melting; at higher levels, though, melting slows and a powdery residue shows on the surface.
How does mozzarella melt in an oven?
Mozzarella carries around forty-five percent moisture, which counts as high among cheeses.
It softens at fifty-five degrees and begins to flow at sixty-five.
Above ninety the protein structure tightens and the fat separates, pooling on the surface.
That is why cheese can sit under or among the toppings rather than on top in a pizza oven.
Overcooked mozzarella turns rubbery and loses its pull.
Does freezing affect the melting?
Freezing turns the water in the cheese into ice crystals.
During thawing those crystals loosen the protein network a little.
The result melts slightly faster than freshly grated cheese.
For most uses that is an advantage; the pizza bakes in less time.
The milky aroma that slices of fresh mozzarella give, though, reads weaker in frozen grated product.
How does it get used on pizza?
A hundred to a hundred and twenty grams for a thirty-centimetre pizza.
It gets scattered straight from frozen with no thawing.
The cheese goes onto the dough after the sauce.
The toppings go on top of the cheese, which stops it burning.
The oven runs at two hundred and eighty to three hundred degrees for six to eight minutes.
How does it work in toasties and pasta?
Twenty-five to thirty grams per slice of bread in a toastie.
The cheese goes right to the edge; cheese that melts and caramelises at the rim gives a texture people prefer.
For a pasta gratin, forty grams of cheese to a hundred grams of pasta.
In an oven gratin the cheese goes on top and bakes ten minutes at two hundred degrees.
Where it goes into a sauce, it joins after the heat comes off; in a boiling sauce the protein splits.
How does the portion calculation work?
The product gets measured in grams; a scoop or a handful produces deviation.
A hundred and ten grams counts as standard for a thirty-centimetre pizza.
A kilogram gives nine pizzas.
That number forms the denominator of the menu cost.
Used unmeasured, the deviation runs twenty or thirty grams a pizza, which makes a clear difference across a month.
How does frozen grated mozzarella get stored?
At minus eighteen degrees it waits to its printed date, generally nine months to a year.
Once the bag opens the product moves into a lidded container and stays in the freezer.
Thawed product does not go back; a second freezing makes clumping unavoidable.
Product moved to a fridge gets used within three days.
Temperature swings cause clumping, so it does not sit on the door shelf.
What is the nutritional value of frozen grated mozzarella?
Energy in a hundred grams lands between 280 and 320 kilocalories.
Protein runs 21 to 25 grams.
Fat sits at 20 to 24 grams.
Calcium reaches 550 to 700 milligrams, the clearest contribution of dairy.
Sodium runs 550 to 750 milligrams, following the salt in the cheese.
What gets checked on a mozzarella label?
Cheese content comes first; a quality product passes ninety-eight percent.
The second line is the anti-caking agent, shown as starch or cellulose.
The third is the milk source; cow's milk is standard, buffalo milk a different product.
The fourth is the phrase cheese analogue; where vegetable fat replaces milk fat that declaration is compulsory and the price runs clearly lower.
The fifth is the fat figure, given as fat in dry matter.
It should not get confused with analogue cheese
Analogue cheese replaces milk fat with vegetable fat.
Its melting behaviour resembles mozzarella and its cost runs low.
Its aroma and nutritional profile differ, though, and the protein can run lower.
The label reads cheese analogue or vegetable fat product rather than cheese.
Describing it as cheese on a menu counts as misleading information.
Which businesses does it make sense for?
Businesses using more than two kilograms of cheese a day come first.
Menus built on pizza and toasties already run high consumption.
In small cafés a block still makes sense; where consumption is low, a bag of grated product gets opened too often.
In chains consistency decides it; every branch has to give the same result.
The decision comes from keeping a record of daily consumption.
