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Comment by diputsmonro | Hacker News Reader

Cheese???

A slice of american cheese in instant ramen gives it some body and adds a bit of extra fattiness that's often missing. At least in flavorful, spicy ramen it really doesn't add much cheese flavor. Try it out.

What is "american cheese"? Do you mean plastic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cheese

you're behind schedule on your food hipsterism. american cheese has passed through the unironically bad phase, the ironically bad phase, and ironically good phase, and is now back to unironically good.

I am not food hipster, I am french. ;-)

that makes you the ultimate food hipster

It's so sad to me that American cheese is only associated with the shitty kraft singles. White American cheese is such a good melted or sandwich cheese.

It's processed (not aged), high fat, low protein cheese. Invented by James L Kraft (yes, that Kraft) and is the basis of Kraft Mac & Cheese, elsewehere called Kraft dinner. It melts perfectly and is shelf-stable. Fun fact: for a time it was called Government cheese. USDA used to buy surplus milk in glut years to stabilize prices, mass produce this cheese product, and give it out as part of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/'food stamps'). The phrase 'government cheese' became a pseudonym for welfare and uttered by ('compassionate') conservative types to belittle the food insecure, so they rebranded it and voila! Now it's 'merican!

Korea at least adds cheese to lots of stuff and it seems to work.

Kraft singles in instant ramen is a great thing in Korea!

Budae Jjigae specifically is similar to his recipe, and also has an interesting history.

Usually people use one of processed cheese, a very very mild mozzarella or a cream cheese

So it's mostly just a source of fattiness and creaminess to add that velvety texture to the sauce

I've seen people just add butter to ramen as well for the same effect.

I grew up (as a white American kid in Virginia) often adding a slice of American cheese to instant ramen, and I can confirm that it’s delicious.

Parmesan cheese works too.

I bet it works wonderfully. American cheese is essentially salty cheddar that melts real nice. That's why it's the best cheese for a hamburger.

It is nothing like cheddar, certainly not a 'salty cheddar', it's most obvious deviation perhaps is the mildness/lack of saltiness.

Maybe what's called 'cheddar' in the US is different too though, I don't know? It's not PDO (and the US doesn't respect them anyway I think?) but I'm comparing to British if not Cheddarian cheddar.

In this usage, salt is anything but lacking. Americans do know what cheddar actually is and indeed make a shitload of it in a wide range of qualities. Tillamook out of Oregon and Cabot out of Vermont are commonly available and pretty good.

I looked up Tillamook, first reaction was that it doesn't even look like cheddar - but then I noticed the 'Maker's Reserve White Cheddar'. Why is artificially coloured the default?! 'white cheddar' makes it sound weird/fake/some strange variant, when all it is is that they haven't added colouring to ingredients list.

The non-'white' ones look like red leicester, which is a bit like a mild not very salty cheddar, and that colour.

Cheddar cheese is indeed white, unless annatto (a tree nut) and sometimes paprika are added for flavor. Tillamook makes both.

Yeah cheesey ramen is the best

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