Buying Burrata Cheese at the Store

Can You Buy Burrata Cheese At the Grocery Store?

Once upon a time, most people would have had a limited selection of food. Nowadays, modern techniques and technologies mean we can enjoy foods from all around the world. For proof, look no further than the fact that you can buy a wide range of cheeses from a wide range of countries at any grocery store of a certain size or beyond. Burrata cheese is no exception to this rule.

What Is Burrata Cheese?

If you are looking for good cheese, you could do much worse than checking out Italian cheeses. The country has a fine cheese-making tradition dating back centuries and centuries. If you believe La Cucina Italiana, an Italian cheese called Concerto Romano is the single oldest cheese in the entire world, which isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds because Roman histories suggest the cheese originated in pre-Roman times. Amusingly, Burrata cheese is much more recent than what you might have expected based on this information. Still, it is in no sense inferior to its counterparts, not least because it is very much a beneficiary of the collective expertise and experience of Italian cheese-makers.

In short, Burrata cheese is a cheese from Apulia. If you think of Italy as a boot, then Apulia would be the bootheel. There are stories about Burrata cheese going back as far as the turn of the 20th century, but better-verified accounts suggest that it came into existence in the mid-20th century. The cheese won its initial fame by being an artisanal cheese. Curiously, it then managed to retain that fame even when factories started mass-producing it. A fact that says much about not just the local cheese-makers skill but also their marketing ability.

What Can You Expect to Pay For Burrata Cheese?

Burrata cheese isn’t a particularly cheap cheese. Back in 2020, Houston Food Finder mentioned that it was possible to find a couple of four-ounce spheres for $4.99 at Trader Joe’s. Chances are good the prices have increased since then because of the staggering inflation in 2021 and 2022. Still, they shouldn’t be that much worse.

Of course, you should remember that the price of cheese can always vary from place to place because of availability, transportation costs, and other issues. For that matter, you should know certain kinds of Burrata cheese are much cheaper than others depending on what you consider to be true Burrata cheese. The gist of it is that Burrata cheese is considered a protected product by the European Union. As a result, you can argue that is the only real kind of Burrata cheese out there. However, if you don’t particularly respect the idea of protected products based on geographical origin, you should look into cheeses made using the same methods and ingredients but not in the same region as Burrata cheese. It is interesting to note that the United States is famous for the production of such cheeses, which is connected to the huge number of Italians who immigrated to the country in earlier decades.

Where Can You Find Burrata Cheese in the Grocery Store?

If you are interested in Burrata cheese, you should be able to find it in the same places as other cheeses in grocery stores. With that said, if you aren’t sure where that might be, you can ask any of the grocery store’s employees for further directions.

Besides that, you can also look for Burrata cheese in other places. For example, it makes sense to look for it in Italian grocery stores because it is Italian cheese. Similarly, it makes sense to look for it in cheese stores because it is a somewhat less common kind of cheese. Other than these, you might also find it helpful to look up online cheese stores listed by The Spruce Eats and similar sites.

What Should You Look For From Your Burrata Cheese?

Generally speaking, Burrata cheese comes from cow’s milk. There are still examples made using water buffalo milk. This change over time is unsurprising because cow’s milk is cheaper than water buffalo’s milk. Regardless, the choice of ingredient isn’t this cheese’s most unusual characteristic. Instead, that would be how its exterior is a hard cheese shell while its interior is a mix of stracciatella and cream. Burrata cheese has a strong association with mozzarella. That is because its exterior is made using mozzarella while its interior has scraps of mozzarella mixed into it. Traditionally, Burrata cheese is wrapped in asphodel leaves, the greenness of which is a useful indication of the cheese’s freshness.

What Are Some Alternatives to Burrata Cheese?

Unsurprisingly, mozzarella is a great alternative to Burrata cheese. Besides that, America Restaurants says you should consider cream cheese and feta as other alternatives. The first is creamy while the second is crumbly. Despite that, both kinds of cheese are great-tasting while being versatile enough to work in a wide range of contexts. Combined, those are more than enough to make them suitable substitutes for Burrata cheese.

Conclusion

Summed up, Burrata cheese is a fascinating food from Italy’s Apulia region that is hard on the outside but soft on the inside. Conveniently, there is both the product from its historical place of origin and the product made elsewhere. The two should taste very similar, but you might be able to get a better price for the latter than for the former because of the reduced exclusivity. Either way, you can expect an exceptional product sure to please even picky palates.