Cheese, Burrata

⚠ UNTESTED. A briefing.

Burrata is not really a separate cheese — it is an assembly, and knowing that is most of knowing how to make it. You take stretched curd, pull a thin sheet, line a cup with it, fill it with shredded curd soaked in cream, and gather the top into a purse.

⭐ And it was invented to use up offcuts. The scraps and trimmings left over from making mozzarella are what goes inside; the pouch is a way of selling them. A waste-stream product that became the most expensive thing in the cabinet is a pattern this collection keeps meeting, and it is worth noticing rather than romanticising.

The filling has its own name — stracciatella, from stracciare, to tear or shred. ⚠ Not to be confused with the Roman egg-drop soup or the chocolate-chip gelato, both of which are also called stracciatella for the same reason: something torn into strands.

The diagnostic detail: freshness matters here more than in any other cheese in the section. A burrata is at its best the day it is made and is a different, sadder object after three.

Ingredients

• 1 batch of stretched curd, from Cheese, Mozzarella (Cultured) — about 1 lb
• 1/2 cup heavy cream, cold
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• Water or whey at 170-180 F for stretching

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. Make the stretched curd first. Everything below assumes you are standing over a bowl of curd that has just passed the golf-ball test. This is not a make you start cold — the curd has to be hot and pliable.
2. Set aside about a third of the curd for the filling. While it is still hot, pull it into thin strands with your fingers and drop them into a bowl. Let them cool to room temperature.
3. Make the stracciatella. Mix the cooled strands with the cold cream and the salt. It should be loose, glossy and just holding together. Cream in first, salt after — salting dry strands makes them seize.
4. Pull a pouch from the remaining curd. Take a ball of hot curd and stretch it between your hands into a thin, even disc — thinner than feels safe, about the thickness of a coin. Drape it into a small cup or bowl so the edges hang over.
5. Fill and tie. Spoon the stracciatella into the lined cup, then gather the overhanging edges up and pinch them together into a purse. Work fast; the curd stops cooperating as it cools. Some makers tie the neck with a chive or a strip of leek, which is decorative and also genuinely helps it hold.
6. Drop it into cold brine or iced water for a few minutes to set the skin, then keep it cold.
7. Eat it today. Tomorrow is acceptable. The day after is a different cheese.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t 🔴 UNTESTED. The technique is consistent across sources; the hard part is not the recipe but the hands, and I will say so rather than pretend a written procedure conveys it.

Where burrata came from Andria, in Puglia, and the usual account puts it in the 1950s at a farm in the Murgia — with some sources claiming the 1920s. ⚠ I cannot settle the date and the difference matters less than the reason: it was a way of using the offcuts from mozzarella and getting cream to market before it spoiled, in a place and a decade without reliable refrigeration. The pouch is packaging that you can eat.

The name, and the protected one Burrata is from burro, butter — a description of how it eats rather than of what is in it. Plain burrata is a generic name you may use freely; Burrata di Andria is a protected PGI, registered with the EU in 2016, and that one belongs to the place.

Sourcing and gear Nothing special: a small bowl or cup to line, and cold cream. ⚠ The cream must be cold and the curd hot, which is awkward and is the point — warm cream makes the filling greasy and cold curd will not pull thin.

Still open I have not been able to pin the invention to a year I would print without a hedge. The 1956 date and the Bianchini family attribution are widely repeated and I have not found the primary behind them.

Read alongside /cheese/makes/pasta-filata/ on the site.