American cheese, or specifically pasteurized process American cheese, has a bad reputation among foodies. Some say it isn't even cheese. However, it's the go-to ingredient for a cheeseburger or macaroni and cheese because the properties that allow it to melt without loosing its flavor or texture. Sure, it's processed food, but all cheeses are, because that just means it's been altered, and all cheese starts out as milk. But if the people who look down their noses at American cheese have you wondering, food scientist and chef J. Kenji López-Alt explains everything you need to know about American cheese.
First off, it's made of cheese. The process for making it started out as a way to save cheese bits that were too small to sell by melting them all together. López-Alt goes through every ingredient to explain what they are and what they do, but most are self-explanatory, like milk, whey, milk fat, calcium, and salt. The ingredients in cheese. Second, the FDA has standards for pasteurized process cheese, pasteurized process cheese food, and pasteurized process cheese spread, such as the content of cheese, fat, and liquid. However, some products are labeled as something slightly different than those titles to avoid having to adhere to the standards. You should should always look out for those.
Take a short course in American cheese at Serious Eats and you might feel better about consuming American cheese. But if you still want to avoid pasteurized process cheese, you can make melty-smooth cheeseburger slices at home out of any kind of cheese you want with López-Alt's recipe.
(Image credit: Poppy Thomas-Hill)
