Burrata Cheese

What is Burrata Cheese?

Burrata cheese is a soft mozzarella with a creamy center – essentially, mozzarella stuffed with mozzarella. It is easily described as tasting both buttery and light. Burrata cheese has a rich texture that is spreadable but firm enough to cut or tear apart. This fresh cheese is best consumed and enjoyed not long after it is made.

Nancy Silverton’s book The Mozza Cookbook: Recipes From Los Angeles’s Favorite Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria describes it well as “a cream-filled mozzarella sack”. Burrata cheese is thought to have been invented as a way to use up mozzarella scraps during processing, and is made up of two parts: a thick, soft center made of cream and mozzarella, and an outside coating made of freshly made and stretched mozzarella which creates the skin.

Its flavor is memorable, but for some, burrata cheese is an acquired texture. And because the flavor is so buttery, it is a perfect accompaniment to crispy bread and cracked pepper.

Burrato Cheese Highlights

  • Burrata means ‘buttered’ in Italian.
  • It is a specialty of the Puglia region of Italy.
  • Made of buffalo or cow’s milk, burrata is categorized as an Artisanal cheese. It is almost always sold in a bag (it is so soft it doesn’t keep its shape), and sometimes comes wrapped in asphodel, and green stemmed Italian plant. See image below.
  • It is made by taking fresh mozzarella curds and mixing it with cream, then using this to fill inside a stretched piece of fresh mozzarella, creating a pouch. It is then sealed up in a bag and typically consumed within 48 hours.

Burrata Cheese Wrapped in Asphodel

Burrata cheese wrapped in asphodel leaves. Wikimedia Commons via CC License.
Burrata cheese wrapped in asphodel leaves. Wikimedia Commons via CC License.