Smoked Scamorza

Let me tell you about Smoked Scamorza, and why it behaves so differently on your board than in your pan.

Pick it up and you feel it right away — that little give under your fingers, close kin to mozzarella, the same family of stretched cheeses. Warm it, and it does not just soften, it stretches, it strings, it pulls into long ribbons on the fork. That pull is the whole point of this cheese.

How do you choose a good one? Look and feel first. The skin should be taut, slightly leathery, never cracked or weeping. Give it a sniff too — you want a clean, smoky depth, nothing sour or off, nothing that smells flat.

Some people say smoked cheese cannot be used for melting, that smoking ruins the stretch. No! Put it on a pizza or into a pasta bake and watch it pull into the same long ribbons as any Scamorza. The real mistake this belief leads to is reaching for plain mozzarella instead and losing all that smoky aroma — when Smoked Scamorza would have given you both the pull and the smoke, right there on your plate.