[00:00] This is a 100 month or 8 and a half year old wedge of Parmigiano Reggiano that I brought back from a trip to Italy. Now, to put it into perspective, this block of cheese is older than this YouTube channel
[00:13] and it also costs $53 per pound, which is roughly a 165% price increase over the standard 24 month Parmigiano that many of us have probably bought from the grocery store before.
[00:27] And a lot of times, there's this assumption that the more expensive or older an ingredient is, the better it must be. But is that actually true for Parmigiano? Well, to find out, I didn't just buy the 100 month old Parm.
[00:40] I also brought back a 24 month, a 40 month, and a 60 month aged Parmigiano. And by the end of this video, I have three big questions that I want to get to the bottom up. The first one is simple.
[00:53] What do these actually taste like side by side? Because visually alone, there are some massive differences, and as soon as I open up the package, I could tell each one had a unique aroma. The second question is why do they taste different?
[01:06] Like, what happens to Parmigiano as it ages that causes it to change? Why is the color a deeper yellow? And what are those crystals that I can literally pluck out of the cheese? And finally, to get back to reality, are any of these actually worth it?
[01:20] Is there any real cooking or flavor utility here that would make me consider buying a 40s, 60, or 100 month aged Parm? Or are these mostly a novelty product that tourists buy on vacation?
[01:32] I mean, I certainly fell for it, but should you? Now before I start unwrapping, slicing, and tasting all of this Parm, we should probably do a quick crash course on how it's actually made.
[01:44] What's fascinating here is that all of these cheeses started the exact same way. They are literally just separated by time. According to the consortium, Parmigiano Reggiano can only be produced in a tightly defined region of Northern Italy.
[01:59] The provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Maldina, and parts of Bologna and Mantua. And in these zones, dairy farms rely on the same local forage, which feeds the cows, and gives the milk its distinct regional character.
[02:13] And each wheel of Parmigiano starts with a massive amount of that milk. It's estimated it takes roughly 550 liters of the raw unpasteurized milk for each large wheel of Parmigiano, which typically end up being around 80 pounds.
[02:27] And the process begins by partially skimming the evening milk, then combining it with whole morning milk in a large bell-shaped copper vat. And this blend, part skim and part hole, is one of the signatures of Parmigiano Reggiano.
[02:40] So, into the milk, the cheese maker adds calf rennet along with a way starter from the previous day's batch. And these cultures start acidifying the milk, and together with the rennet, we'll set it into a firm curd.
[02:52] Once the curd forms, the master cheese maker then breaks it apart into tiny, rice-sized granules, using a traditional tool called the Spina. And this is a crucial step, because the smaller the curd pieces, this means more moisture can be cooked out of them later on.
[03:07] And this is part of the reason why Parmigiano becomes such a dry, crystalline, hard cheese compared to something that uses much bigger curds where there's more water left in. So, after breaking up the curds, the vat is then heated to around 131 degrees Fahrenheit or 55C, which causes those curd granules to shrink in size, tighten and expel that moisture.
[03:27] And eventually, they sink to the bottom and fuse into a single mass. And after about 50 minutes, the cheese maker lifts this giant slab from the vat and cuts it into half, forming a pair of twin wheels of Parmigiano.
[03:40] And each wheel is then wrapped into linen and fitted into a circular mold that shapes it into its final form. And during the stage, the iconic Parmigiano Reggiano Ryan markings are also pressed into the exterior, which we can see in the finished product.
[03:54] And after forming comes one of the most interesting parts to me, which is salting through osmosis. Instead of having the salt mixed directly into the curds, like you would for a cheddar cheese, for example, the massive wheels of Parmigiano rest in a saturated brine, about 26% salt by weight for 20 to 25 days.
[04:13] And during this time, the brine pulls water out while drawing the salt inside to give Parmigiano its signature evenly salted taste. And additionally, this process helps form that thick protective rine that Parmigiano is known for.
[04:27] After brining, the wheels are then moved into the aging rooms. They're stored on wooden shelves and flipped and brushed regularly. And this is kind of where the magic happens and is the whole point of this video.
[04:40] By law, Parmigiano Reggiano must age at least 12 months, but as you all know, it can be aged much, much longer. And before we talk about the science of aging, I figured let's just do our taste test, and then we can talk about why aging changes this process so much.
[04:59] Okay, so before we talk about the science of aging and why these differences happen, let's answer that first question and figure out what do these actually taste like side by side. So in front of me, I cut off some samples of the 24, 40, 60, and then 100-month-age Parmigiano Reggiano.
[05:18] Now, I also cut off a slice of a 12-month Parmigiano that is made here in the US because I think it does add a little bit more context to the story. So let's give these a taste, and I'm going to go pretty methodically here and talking about the taste or Roma texture in sight of each of the samples.
[05:34] I'm actually going to start nose-close for this. Kind of as you would expect, just much milder. So from a texture perspective, it's kind of soft and still pliable, almost similar to like you would see an aged cheddar around the same age.
[05:48] Like, it's softer and pliable. It doesn't really feel like, you know, that more kind of dryness you get even in the 24-month. And then from a taste perspective, it's salty, but pretty mild, right? Because there's going to be probably more water in this, so it's just like a mild salty taste.
[06:05] And then the aroma as well, it's like, it kind of reminds you of it, but you can just tell that there's a big aroma development that still needs to happen. So even in the aroma, it's pretty standard. And then as we can see, visually with the sight, this is going to be pretty pale, especially when we get down to the darker ones down here.
[06:26] So now let's move to our 24-month and kind of go through that same process. And right away, you can tell the texture is much more kind of drier here. That was really cool to compare those, too. So like I said, texture right away, drier, but still a little bit of that creaminess, like you can definitely tell it would still melt quite well.
[06:47] Taste perspective, too. You can definitely tell it's getting saltier, right? Side by side, it's like, ooh, my mouth is starting to water a little bit more. Then from an aroma perspective, you really, this is like Parmesan or Reggiano.
[06:59] I'm sure most of you have probably chied. Sometimes you can see 30, 36, but I think by far 24, especially in the US, is the most common. And this is the one that most of you probably know and love. It is great, but now let's move up to 40. And again, texture is going to be different. And then, too, at the 40-month, I'm starting to see more of these crystals, which we're going to talk about in a little bit.
[07:21] Wow, that is an interesting comparison. Okay, so first up, texture, obviously again, it's drier, a little bit more crumbly, but I still was able to, you know, kind of get a nice slice off with my knife there.
[07:33] Visually, it's darker as well. Aroma and taste, I think there are some differences here, for sure. So at 40 months, again, 12 to 24, saltier, right?
[07:45] You would think this would be even more salty, but I think we get some introduction of some new taste. And that is umami. And the umami balanced with the saltiness. So I'm actually perceiving it as less salty because I'm kind of balancing the two and even more mouthwatering at this stage with the 40 month.
[08:05] Aroma-wise, there is definitely a difference, too. It's like if I had to kind of say like 24-month almost feels a little bit brighter to me, whereas the 40 feels kind of a little bit more like darker in a way.
[08:21] But yeah, very different kind of aroma profiles. And then the taste, there's definitely a big difference in that taste. So let's keep on moving up. And here we have 60, again, bigger crystals in these, again, drier from the texture, you can easily see that. And this one's really dark. It's almost darker than the 100. I don't know, could just be happy to be the wheel. Let's give it a taste.
[08:43] Okay, 60 was pretty interesting. It really felt quite dry. That was the one where I feel like it was almost like almost a little chalky in my mouth in a way.
[08:55] So texture-wise, yeah, definitely drier and darker from the visuals. Well, taste the aroma. For me here, the aroma and the taste is kind of fundamentally different. But from 40 to 60, it more just felt like I'm amplifying what's happening in the 40 into the 60.
[09:12] Kind of interesting. Let's move all the way up to the 100 month, which as you can tell, I couldn't even get a clean slice off. This thing is like super dry and fractured. It looks really quite beautiful, too.
[09:29] Whoa, that's intense. I don't even know how to describe that. Let me try to find some words for this one. So texture, obviously the driest of all of them by far, feels really kind of crumbly. It barely touched it and crumbles in your mouth. But because of that, it feels a little gritty and chalky. It doesn't really melt nicely in your mouth.
[09:51] Then from a taste and aroma perspective, whereas the 60 felt more concentrated overall, this feels like there's a slight bitterness to it in addition to the umami and the salty.
[10:05] It feels like there's just a little bit of bitterness and I'm assuming that's probably because we've lost water, which we're going to talk about. A aroma wise, too, feels like it has a little bit more funk. It's not like a stinky cheese, nothing in that realm, but definitely has more funk, especially if you go back to the 24 month.
[10:26] Wow, it's honestly crazy when you go back. I think this is drier when you go to 12 to 24. But then when you go to 100 to 24, it's like, oh, this feels like soft and creamy.
[10:42] Okay, so I have my first question of the video answered. And now I'm really wondering what's going to happen when I start grading these on different types of food. However, we're going to get to that in part three because we first need to answer question two. Why do these taste different?
[10:57] Remember, these cheeses are just separated by time. So I'm wondering from a food science perspective, what is happening during aging that makes the 24 month a little saltier, but then the 40 and 60 month taste more savory and also have very unique aromas.
[11:12] Now, this can get pretty complex when you get into the details, but from a big picture level, there are kind of four main things happening as Parmigiano Ages. And the first one is simple moisture loss. And one of the most underrated questions you should always ask when you're trying to understand how food changes is what's happening to the water.
[11:35] So obviously a ton of water was removed from the milk during that initial par making process. But after coming out of the brine and moving to the wooden shelves, those massive wheels of cheese are still around 34% water.
[11:49] And as they sit for months and then years to come, some of that water will leave and continue to dry out the cheese. And there isn't a perfect study out there, but based on the current evidence, reasonable estimates are around 38% water before brining, 34% water after brining.
[12:07] Then after 12 months of aging, it's going to be around 30% after 24 months, around 29, after 40 months, 27, after 60, 25% and then after 100 months, it may be as low as 20%.
[12:21] The numbers may go up and down a little bit, but the simple point is as water disappears, everything else becomes concentrated and we just saw evidence of this in the taste test.
[12:33] Each cheese got drier, firmer and eventually pretty crumbly. The color darkens because the pigments become a little bit concentrated. And then from a taste and aroma perspective, the salt from the brining process, the existing protein, fat molecules, and aroma compounds from the curd all become more concentrated.
[12:51] So it's just important to keep in mind that moisture loss is happening as the aging goes on. But at the same time, there are many other chemical changes going on as this cheese ripens on the shelf.
[13:03] And one of the biggest ones that really defines the ultra-aged Parmesanos is protein breakdown. So when the cheese is young, the milk proteins, which is mostly casing, are still big intact molecules.
[13:15] However, as that cheese sits and ages, natural enzymes are going to slowly snip those bigger proteins into smaller peptides and then eventually into three amino acids.
[13:27] This is where we'll get more umami flavor, some nuttier and brothy aromas, and additionally, the texture becomes more brittle and crumbly because the protein network is literally weakening over time. Now, there are 20 amino acids, but two specific ones I want to point out as it relates to our Parmesan here are glutamic acid and tiracy.
[13:47] Glutamic acid is the exact same molecule that makes other foods like soy sauce, miso, tomatoes, and mushrooms have that slight umami or savory taste. And in my test, this was one of the biggest differences between the 24-month and the 40-month cheeses.
[14:03] The 24-month tasted a little more salt-forward while the 40 and 60-month cheeses had a more balanced profile between salty plus a noticeably more umami taste. And that extra savouriness is from the glutamate building up as more proteins break down.
[14:19] Now, after glutamic acid, the next amino acid I want to talk about is tiracy. And this is important because tiracy is what all of these white crystals are made up of. Now, I've heard that some people call these umami crystals, which I took to assume that the crystals themselves taste savory, but they don't.
[14:38] I literally pulled one out and kind of sucked all the cheese off the outside and then bit through it, and it doesn't taste like much, but it actually does have a slight bitterness, which I think this is what I was finding in that 100-month age Parmigiano.
[14:51] So, while the crystals themselves don't taste umami, they are really more like evidence that a ton of protein breakdown has happened because the tiracy has been concentrated enough to start forming that crystal, and it's a similar mechanism that would be happening when salt crystals are created.
[15:08] So, after protein breakdown, we also have fat breakdown, and this is another major chemical changing happening as the Parmigiano ages on the shelves. So, Parmigiano cheese starts with a good amount of milk fat, and in younger cheeses, those fat molecules are still mostly in their original intact form, and they don't have a very strong smell, and this is a big reason why that younger 12-month Parmigiano smells pretty mild.
[15:36] However, as the cheese ages, those natural enzymes begin to slowly break the bigger fat molecules apart, releasing what are called free fatty acids. And this is where things start to get interesting, because aromas are often created when these fats break down.
[15:52] So, things like butyric acid, caproac acid, or carbilic acid, give off everything from buttery and nutty aromas to deeper, slightly sharp-aged cheese notes. And this is why a 24, 40, 60-month, or 100-month Parmigiano will smell much deeper and more complex than a 12-month will.
[16:12] So, outside of the major protein and fat breakdown, there are a whole bunch of other tiny and slow chemical reactions that happened during aging. Things like little bits of browning, low-level oxidation, ester formation, sulfur chemistry, and even interactions between the peptides and the fat.
[16:28] These are all tiny individually, but over the years, they do add up and create the color changes, the aromatic complexity, and that long-lasting depth you only really get in older Parmigiano regiano.
[16:41] So, from a big picture level, we should now understand the science of aging and what's happening to the Parmigiano that causes it to change flavor over the years. But the real question we should probably ask to end this video is, does any of this actually matter?
[16:55] Like the science is cool, but do the flavor differences that I notice in the first taste that show up when I use them in real cooking, or any of these different age parms worth buying, and is one of them clearly better than the rest? Well, that's what I've been testing the past few days.
[17:14] I ran a few different comparisons here, so for one, I freshly grated each of them over a few slices of pizza, then I roasted some Brussels sprouts, added some lemon juice, and a bunch of Parm over top. And then I even did what a lot of Italians would probably say not to do with the ultra-age ones, and I made a Parmigiano cream sauce with Nookie.
[17:32] And as a quick reminder on the price, the 24-month was $19.47 per pound, the 40-month was $22.65, the 60-month jumped to $31.14, and then the 100-month jumped all the way to $52.74 per pound, and for obvious reasons, this is always going to be the most expensive.
[17:54] And to be straightforward here, as much as I may not want to say it, I think the 100-month is mostly a novelty product, and probably not worth your money. I love the fact that this 8-year-old cheese exists, and the history and science behind how it changes over the years is fascinating, but after using it in practice, I think there are kind of three big issues.
[18:15] So first, let me paint a picture. I think if you served two plates of pasta to someone with a 24-month versus a 100-month Parm garnish over the top, and gave them zero context about what they were tasting, I don't think the reaction to the 100 Parm would be like, wow, this is the best Parm I've ever tasted.
[18:33] I think it would be more like, ooh, that is different, and not what I was expecting kind of way. Not that it's bad, but it's just got this funk and aroma to it that I think would just catch a lot of people off guard.
[18:46] It would be interesting though to do this with 10, 20, 30 people, and actually get their reactions. Now, the second issue this has is it's easy to lose the complexity of the 100-month Parm.
[18:58] So on the pizza, you get the hit right away, but then it fades quickly to the background behind the tomato sauce and the bread dough. Then on the roasted vegetables, I found the differences were pretty easy to tell, but it's definitely hard to appreciate that complexity unless you're really tasting them side-by-side.
[19:14] Then in the cream sauce, the 100-month became a little bit too overpowering in addition to feeling just a little bit grainy in that sauce. Then the last and biggest issue of all is obviously the price.
[19:27] At $53 per pound, it just doesn't really make sense unless you're simply curious like I was. And if you find yourself in Italy, I would ask the cheese guy for a sample instead, don't get a whole wedge.
[19:40] Okay, so the 100-month probably not worth it, but what about the other two? With the 60-month, I'm also going to consider this mostly a novelty product. It's definitely not as big as a price jump as the 100, but again, I feel like it's limited with what you can use it for
[19:56] and actually appreciate what makes it different. Now, where I do think there is an argument to be made is trying to parm in this like 36 or 40-month range. First, from a price perspective, we're only talking about $3 or so more per pound.
[20:12] And if you've only ever bought and tried the standard 24-month, but you're looking for something that's genuinely different and still useful across a variety of use cases, this is where you'll notice it.
[20:24] When I taste them side-by-side, the 24-month is brighter, a little more milky and tangy. Well, that 36-month definitely brings more of that umami, savouriness, and depth. And it still behaves really well in normal dishes, and this surprised me in the Parmigiano Cream Sauce comparison.
[20:41] This was a more interesting test than I thought it would be. I mean, the 24 is kind of your standby that many of you are probably used to if you've made like a Parmigiano Cream Sauce. But you definitely get this kick-up in kind of that savoury umami flavor in the 40-month here, and I'm a big fan.
[20:55] So, you find yourself in Italy like I was staring at the cheese counter and you're wondering which one is worth bringing back. I think springing for something in the 36 to 40-month is probably your best bet.
[21:07] That being said, if you're in the States or another country where most of the Parm exported is probably a 24-month, you're definitely going to be happy with it. But anyway, that's going to wrap it up for me in this video.
[21:19] It was very fascinating getting to appease my curiosity and see what these different cheeses taste like. So I hope you learned something, hope you enjoyed, and I will catch you all in the next one. Peace y'all.