Why is bleu cheese all over the place these days. Even fast food places have it as a topping for everything. Sonic sells a hot dog with bleu chesse as a topping. Did bleu cheese all of a sudden glut the market? Did the cost of manufacturing drop like a brick? Is bleu cheese the new secret sauce? Did everyone’s taste buds all of sudden decide that THE taste du jour is a teenage boy’s unwashed gym sock what has a small mammal inside that crawled up and died.
Yeah, I’m not keen on it either. But what can you do? In French, “Bleu” means “heaven” as well as “Blue”. You don’t like “heavenly cheese”? What are ya, some kind of anti-cheese trouble-maker? (As someone should have said to Mr Bush.)
Around these parts (The English Home Counties) the pubs put that kind of thing in quiche, soup, couscous, risotto, and for all I know, créme caramel. Fortunately other flavours tend to drown it out. MORE BEER!
First let me say that I like bleu cheeses on their own merits. I’m not hog-wild about them but I like and appreciate them well enough, particularly when they cozy up to a good wine. You can’t go wrong there.
That said, I agree that there has been a world of culinary sins committed with bleu cheese as the main agent or, it may be said, the innocent patsy. And mutepointe, this phenomenon you describe is not all that new; it’s just gained a crazy momentum despite all that should be right and good in the world. When I was a child (back when the Earth’s crust was cooling), my father used to make stuffed hamburgers for us, and from time to time he would use bleu cheese. It wasn’t bad, and I sort of liked it. But then again, we’re talking burgers, here; a certain level of challenge to the palate is acceptable in that case. Shift to my mid 30s (some 20 years ago): I was at a restaurant that sang the praises of its new and supposedly groundbreaking gorgonzola-crusted filet mignon, so I tried it. It was horrible. It was overkill. It was needlessly brash and if it were a trumpet sounding it would be brutish and right in one’s ear. It was an offense to both the cheese, and the tenderloin. Ever since then I have cast a dim eye on using bleu cheeses for such things, not that I don’t like the cheese, because I do, but because there’s so much to get wrong in the name of mere innovation. One wonders if the people coming up with these things ever really taste them before letting them out the door.
Thank you for your input. I’m glad I was never surprised with one of your Father’s hamburgers. I’d have hurled like a rocket ship. My wife went through a homemaker phase a long while ago. She tried a new recipe every so often. The borscht soup was probably the best thing she ever did. The worst is still remembered by any of our friends at the time. Cheesy Meatloaf. Embedded in an ordinary looking meatloaf minding it’s own business were cubes of some orange type cheese. I have issues with how I’ll eat cheese anyway and that was not one of them. Because the cheese was embedded, it wanted but couldn’t melt. You’d think it would be just like a cheeseburger. It wasn’t. Cheesy Meatloaf has become our term for something that is just completely wrong and horrible.
Cheesy meatloaf is one of those things that sounds good on paper, but I’d probably never make it even if I hadn’t read your story. It’s just not on my conceptual meatloaf radar. BTW, one day instead of breadcrumbs or crushed saltines, I decided to use rolled oats soaked in a little milk, and I’ve never looked back. For flavor, texture, and moistness it’s unbeatable, all other things being more or less optional. Spread tomato ketchup on top sprinkled with more rolled oats (these unsoaked), let it all bake to caramelised goodness, and you’ve got some fine Merkin eatin’ there.
Rolled oats soaked in milk would be a nice touch. I would do just a few oats on the top the first time to see what hapens with them.
I don’t know how my wife became aware of Panko bread crumbs but she did. We’re using those for everything now. I received as a gift individual casserole dishes so I can make crab cake casseroles or anything else and then add more Panko bread crumbs as a topping to her casserole.
Maybe if the Cheesy Meatloaf has vent holes so it spewed out like lava. that would have helped. Maybe. Nothing would have hurt.
Do you know, to this day I haven’t tried panko yet. I wonder what’s wrong with me.
I could start a thread. The problem with a poll is that there are only 16 options and at least one option has to be “other”.
Well, tell you what: I’ve got to sign off and do some meatspace stuff, so you go ahead. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.
I like Bleu cheese, and I also have a taste for other strong-smelling cheeses, like Limberger. For dinner tonight my wife put parmesan cheese on the baked chicken breast and eggplant slices, and our lettuce salad had crumbled bleu cheese and blue cheese dressing. Cheesy meatloaf also sounds good and probably tastes even better.
This “bleu” spelling is another American thing, isn’t it? I’ve never seen it spelt like that before. I presume the product you mean is the thing that we Brits call “blue cheese”, yes?
Assuming it is, there’s a lot of blue cheese toppings, blue cheese dressing etc around in pubs at the moment.
As well as other things, I do a regular weekly ‘Business Briefing’ slot on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. I have to hand the presenter a single sheet of A4 paper with my name and company at the top and three headlines - all nicely written out in block capitals. When I did my briefing on Thursday, without forewarning the presenter of what I was doing, I handed him my sheet with the headlines etc on. So he read it out (as he’s supposed to do) “SALES FALL FOR BLUE CHEESE DRESSING AND GUACAMOLE”. *Yes," I said, “it’s a double dip recession”.
Can’t believe he didn’t see it coming …
I’ve also never understood why they serve blue cheese dressing with Buffalo-style chicken wings. Have you ever put dressing on a wing?
I don’t like the idea of cheesy meat loaf, but for some years I’ve been making meat-and-mushroom loaf. A pound of meat, half a pound of mushrooms (grated and sweated so that the loaf isn’t too watery); egg, bread crumbs, and some strong herbs like rosemary, thyme, and/or savory.
The once was enough. Have I mentioned I’m not a fan?
Ooh, shroomeatloaf. Sounds really good. You grate the shrooms? I’ve never even heard of that before. Makes sense, and I expect it’s for the specific texture you get from it, right? A duxelles would be nice, but hey - it’s meatloaf. The elevation might give your diners nosebleed.
This thread has inspired me. I’m making meatloaf today. This may not seem like such a huge deal, but I haven’t made any for a long, long time. Like as in way long. Nano will rock the kitchen.
Yes. We still pronounce it “blue”, though. I suppose it must look rather Stiltoned to you. And BTW, it’s not spelt. It’s cheese.
The recipe (from a 1940’s era book called “Mushroom Cookery”) calls for the shrooms to be sliced thin using that thing on the side of a cowbell cheese grater. That works okay but I prefer them fully grated – it allows the whole thing to hold together better. I forgot to add that the recipe also calls for onions, which I caramelize once the shrooms are cooked down.
A good meat loaf is hard to beat when it comes to comfort food, especially at the end of a cold overcast day. Enjoy yours, Nano! I have a 10k tomorrow morning, so it’s spaghetti for me.
I make a bison/Stilton meatloaf that is rather good. I use milk soaked cubed baguette, mushrooms sautéed with some amontillado, sautéed onions, and sautéed celery. I learned the hard way to be careful with the amount of cheese, less than a 1/4 cup of Stilton now. I think too much makes it a little bitter in addition to over powering the loaf. The top gets covered with Polish bacon, of course that’s more fat than I should have in a year or two.
Sounds delicious, but I’m still wary of the bleu cheese and could leave that out altogether and want for nothing. But, that’s just me. I might be convinced.
Now mine, OTOH, is pretty basic and almost simplicity itself: just chopped onions and red bell pepper, salt, black pepper, dried thyme, Worcestershire sauce, ground chuck, eggs, oatmeal (rolled, not cut), and bam - mix 'em all together, just like that. I usually use a loaf pan, out of habit more than anything. This is one of the few dishes I wouldn’t consider putting garlic in; the onions rule, here. I incline now to not soaking the oats: if the mix seems dry, then maybe add a drop of milk; or maybe just do it anyway for the hell of it. Bake it at 350F untill the top browns, beketchup the top, sprinkle a bit more oatmeal on top of that for pretty, and finish baking 'til done. I have no idea how long that will be; today’s meatloaf is a big one. 
Ooh, the house smells good. Question for you across-the-Pond folks: do you have meatloaf among your down-home dishes?
Sometimes I wonder why I read through these topics. However, tonight I learned what surely has been missing from my meatloafs. It’s bam. I should have known that. I realize that the bam is most likely a typo, when the writer probably meant “spam”, else he has been watching too much daytime TV.