Dubliner

A friend of mine recently said, “What cheese should I buy if I’m not at la fromagerie? What if I’m just at [gigantor supermarket] and want some normal cheese to eat? What should I buy then?”

Well, without digressing into what exactly a “normal” cheese is supposed to be, or why it’s so worth the extra trip to a well-stocked cheese monger, I thought, “okay… what would I buy?”

I can tell you what I would not buy. I would not buy a cheese that was labeled “cheese product” or “cheese food”. Nor would I buy a “brie” that comes in a plastic container. Why not just spread paste on your baguette?
But there are some decent mass-market cheeses that are pretty tasty and easy to find in many major chain groceries. Today I give you one such cheese: Dubliner.

Dubliner is marketed under the Kerrygold brand but is actually made by a large dairy/food ingredients manufacturer in Cork called Carbery. Their website lists several varieties of Dubliner, but I’ve only encountered the “Vintage” and the “White”. Today, I’ll be tasting the “White” as it seems to be the most commonly available.
Dubliner is an aged cheese, similar to a cheddar. (The Kerrygold website calls it “not unlike a cheddar…”) Well, if you like aged cheddar, you will probably like Dubliner. It’s not a sharp as some aged cheddars I’ve had, but it is pleasantly sharp and nutty. It has a nice, tight curd and is dry–slightly flakey, but melts nicely in your mouth.

Those Carbery folks do have a good sense of “mouthfeel”. Even the white, which I gather is not aged as long as the “vintage” has a few calcium lactate crystals, which I just love encountering in an aged cheese.

Overall, Dubliner is a very nice mass-market cheese and a great snack cheese. This recipe for Guinness Dubliner cheese soup also sounds pretty good. So if you are in the local mega-mart and you want to grab some cheese without making a special trip to a cheese shop, I’d say Dubliner isn’t a bad way to go at all!