Graters

About keeping Parmesan cheese in the fridge?

I bought a little block of parmesan cheese at the local fromagerie a few days back and havent had the time to make the dishes i wanted to make...so the blok is sitting there in it's little plastic wrap thing...but the thing is,its starting to go hard.....what can i do to prevent that?to increase it's fridge life does any1 have any tips?will grating it and keeping it in a bowl in the fridge help?

Public Comments

1. actually you can freeze cheese.... do it all the time
2. Parmesan (I assume you parmegiano-reggianio if you bought it in block form) is a hard cheese... it is supposed to be hard. It doesn't really even need to be refrigerated, but I keep mine in the cheese drawer of my fridge wrapped in plastic wrap. It will keep for weeks like that.
3. Parmesan is a "hard" style cheese. Grating it would cause it to dry out more. Cheese is best kept in butchers paper (from what my local cheese shop has told me). If it's only been a few days and it is well sealed in the plastic it should be fine for quite a while. Maybe you could try a ziplock bag?? Hope this helps!
4. I am a chef like the last fellow, I have used many types and qualities of real Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese over the years, when I was a chef we even has 10 year old stuff once, all of the suggestions are fine, I take mine wrap it in 2 layers of paper towel, and then in a Ziploc bag or a sturdy plastic storage container, grate what you need and return it ot the frig, if it gets to dry it can be harder to grate. As the other have said it is suppose to be harder than cheddar cheese is, just keep it as air tight as possible to allow it to stay reasonably moist to grate better.
5. I shred it and freeze it in a ziplock all the time. Just be sure to squish all the air out of the bag while sealing it. You'll always have some on demand for dishes.