Reduced-sodium cheddar successfully manufactured

Reducing salt in cheese has historically proven difficult. Recently, however, researchers from the University of Minnesota have been successful in manufacturing a cheddar-style cheese using mineral salt replacers.

The researchers claim that previous studies into reducing sodium in cheese have used mineral salt replacers at levels too low to produce equal water activity (a_w) in the finished cheese, compared with a standard, full-sodium cheese. Higher a_w can result in differences in cheese quality due to differences in the effective salt-to-moisture ratio, creating differences in biochemical and microbial reactions during ageing.

Hypothesising that targeting replacer concentrations to produce the same a_w as full-sodium cheese would minimise changes in quality, the researchers manufactured a range of stirred-curd, cheddar-style cheeses. The control cheese was salted with naturally reduced-sodium sea salt, while others were manufactured with blends of sea salt with KCl (potassium chloride), modified KCl, MgCl₂ (magnesium chloride) or CaCl₂ (calcium chloride).

Unfortunately, CaCl₂ and MgCl₂ produced a range of unpleasant flavours, such as bitter, metallic, unclean and soapy. However, bitterness ratings for cheese with KCl and modified KCl were not significantly different from the full-sodium control.

The researchers concluded, “Potassium chloride can be used successfully to achieve large reductions in sodium when replacing a portion of the NaCl in cheddar cheese.”

The research has been published in the Journal of Dairy Science.