What Havarti Tastes Like
What Havarti actually is
Havarti is a semi-soft cheese, and the one we bring in is made in Denmark. The ingredient list on the pack is short: pasteurised cow's milk, salt, lactic culture, and microbial rennet. That is the whole recipe.
It comes to us as a whole wheel. We cut and pack it here in Auckland, so the piece in your fridge was cut from a wheel by someone standing at a bench, not moulded into a block at the other end of the world.
Semi-soft is the useful word. It tells you where Havarti sits: firmer than the soft cheeses you spread, softer than the hard ones you grate. You can slice it with a knife and it holds its shape. It is an everyday cheese, and it behaves like one.
What it tastes like
Our own description of it is short, because the cheese is: a semi-soft, creamy body with a mild, buttery flavour.
Mild is the part worth sitting with. Some cheeses arrive first and loudest, and everything else on the plate works around them. Danish Havarti is not doing that. It goes alongside things rather than over the top of them, which is why it ends up in sandwiches and in lunchboxes and on the board that people actually finish.
If there is someone at your table who says they do not like cheese, they usually mean they do not like strong cheese. This is the one to hand them.
How to serve it
Take it out of the fridge before you want to eat it, and let it come up to room temperature on the bench. Cold cheese gives you less.
For a board, cut slices rather than cubes. Slices come off the wedge cleanly and people can pick them up without a fork. Put out bread or savoury biscuits, and something sharp and fresh next to it — sliced apple, pear, cornichons, a spoon of chutney.
For lunch, slice it straight onto sandwiches. It sits well with ham, with tomato and a grind of pepper, or with nothing at all but butter and good bread. Put it on toast under the grill. Lay a slice over a burger patty in the last minute in the pan. Fold it through scrambled eggs at the end, off the heat.
For a drink at the end of the week, a lager or a pale ale works, and so does a dry white. Nothing here needs an occasion. A slice standing at the fridge on a Wednesday is a fine use of it.
How to keep it once it is cut
The pack asks you to keep it refrigerated between +1°C and +5°C, which is the ordinary part of your fridge, not the door.
Wrap the cut face so it does not dry out. Waxed paper or a paper-lined bag is better than sealing it tight in plastic, because the cheese needs to breathe a little. Put the wrapped piece in the crisper drawer, where the temperature moves around least.
Take out what you need and put the rest back. Cheese does not like being warmed and cooled over and over.
If you want the longer version, we have written it up here: How to Store & Handle Artisan Cheese.
Where to buy Havarti in New Zealand
We import the wheels and cut and pack them in Auckland, so you are buying it from the people who handled it. The retail pack is 200 g, which is enough for a few days of sandwiches or one board with company.
You can find it on our site here: Danish Havarti.