Italian parmesan question

I was at Trader Joe's and saw some Italian Parmesan Grana Padano for $8.99/lb. Is it any good? What can you tell me about this cheese?

(Pre-emptive Disclaimer: Yeah, I know there's another cheese called Parmigiana Reggiano and that it's good, yada, yada, yada. I have a wedge of it in my fridge.)

Larry, the info at the URL below states that the Grana Padrano outsells the Reggiano by 10 to 1 in Italy. I suspect that this has more to do with price than with quality. I would though think that the Padrano would be an excellent substitute for Reggiano if you are going to cook with it.

Larry -

I like grana padano quite a lot. It's similar to good Reggiano, although it lacks the complexity of flavor that the expensive stuff has.

I would recommend trying it out to see what you think of it. For everyday cooking where the cheese isn't in a starring role, it's not a bad way to go.

Mike

It's a fine cheese.
Rather than as a substitute for Reggiano, try to find applications where its milder flavor works better.

Mike, I buy the Reggiano and pay about $12 per pound for it. I wondered what price the "expensive" stuff is. Is it somewhat like balsamic vinegar where one can pay a few dollarst for some young or several hundred for some really old stuff? I don't mean to suggest that anyone is paying hundreds of dollars for a pound of cheese, but is someone paying $30 - $40 per pound? Thanks.

Mike, I buy the Reggiano and pay about $12 per pound for it. I wondered what price the "expensive" stuff is. Is it somewhat like balsamic vinegar where one can pay a few dollarst for some young or several hundred for some really old stuff? I don't mean to suggest that anyone is paying hundreds of dollars for a pound of cheese, but is someone paying $30 - $40 per pound? Thanks.

Don't know, Bob. We pay anywhere from $12 to $15/lb for Reggiano and I don't remember seeing it anywhere for much more. But I also haven't been to a shop that carries more than one brand, so perhaps there are more expensive ones that we don't get here.

Mike

In a good Italian American neighborhood with a lot of stores competing with each other (Arthur Ave in the Bronx comes to mind) even the good stuff with a couple of years age on it sells for less than ten bucks a pound.
Here in Santa Barbara I've paid as much as fifteen bucks per lb for inferior examples.

just a quick point non nomenclature. grana padan is NOT parmesian - though that might be the way a smart retailer in the US would label it so the consumer would have a clue. would someone more knowledgable than me tell us whether there ARE other types of parmesian in addition to reggiano? it seems i remember that there are; but.....

The reggiano is $16/lb here. That's expensive to me.

Costco has a good P.R. for $9.99/lb.

just a quick point non nomenclature. grana padan is NOT parmesian - though that might be the way a smart retailer in the US would label it so the consumer would have a clue. would someone more knowledgable than me tell us whether there ARE other types of parmesian in addition to reggiano? it seems i remember that there are; but.....

hmmmm - grana simply means a granular cheese. Parmigiano Reggiano refers to the cheese's DOC - so no, I think in order for it to be called Parmigiano (the adjective for Parma) it has to be Reggiano. If it is referred to as parmesan then it could come from anywhere.
Now Grana Padana is a similar, granular cheese, but the similarities end there. It is made in Lombardy, and, IIRC, there are several other important distinctions. What the cows are fed is different, the aging requirements of the cheese is different, and I believe PR has to be from successive milkings (night, day?) wheras Grana Padana can come from the milk of many days.

Righto, John.

I think the original DOP for Grana Padano was right around the area of Padua in the Veneto. Then it sort of branched out to other areas where it was made in the same method.

Usually a bit milder than PR. and usually not aged for as long, hence doesn't go as crystalline as the PR does.

Re Parmigiano Reggiano: there is a famous, and widely available, knockoff from, of all places, Argentina. It's surprisingly tasty, but it's still a knockoff. The real stuff has a 'dot' tattoo of Parmigiano Reggiano on the outside of the rind.

A somewhat similar cheese from around that area is Montasio.

You mean Sardo, right? I've bought and cooked with it. It's not bad at all. It ain't Reggiano, but then, nothing else is either.

You mean Sardo, right? I've bought and cooked with it. It's not bad at all. It ain't Reggiano, but then, nothing else is either.

Right on, Chef C.!

My wife was working in a wine festival up in Seattle, and came away with a left-over donated quarter wheel of that Argentinian stuff. Being a wine and food geek, of course I sniffed in disdain. Being a cheese eater in the privacy of my own home, though, I stuck the thing in the garage fridge and let it mellow.

Kept it wrapped in cheesecloth and trimmed it occasionally. Proclaimed I was just using it for cooking, but somehow ended up snacking on as much as I cooked with. And "cooking", I figured, included grating the stuff over virtually anything.

We ended up moving from Seattle to Kentucky, so I carted the cheese in my car, and continued munching on the ever-dwindling wedge until there was nothing left but hard grating nibs, and then even that was gone.

As you say, it wasn't PR, but nothing else is. Still not bad eating though.

Sometimes we go through life not knowing what, if anything, we're missing. There's a good local imported food store near me. Based on my mother's recommendations from many, many years ago, I would only buy their imported romano for grating over spaghetti, etc., as my mother insisted it was better than parmesan. Over the years, I've had parmesan on numerous occasions and have always tended to agree with my mother's evaluation. But now you folks have stirred up curiosity in me - thinking I'm somehow missing something. So, I'll go out and buy some Parmigiano Reggiano and have it with my next spaghetti dinner and report back.

Howie, if you're grating it over spaghet', you should probably try to find some Extra Vecchia-----well aged PR. Nuttier, richer flavor, and more of the little bursts of crystallized salty flavor that makes PR so special..

One of my favorite ways of serving PR with pasta is to mix up some spaghetti-type pasta with spicy seasoned bread crumbs, some diced prosciutto, EVOO, rough grated PR and hot peppers. Just toss it all together.

You can also substitute coarse grind black pepper for the hot peppers if you want.

If you like it really rustic, you can toss in some anchovies. Personal preference there.

And sometimes I like to throw in a little fresh lemon juice, or even a tiny tiny bit of lemon zest (mostly in the summertime).

Back to the original question, Larry, I use the Grana Padano from TJ's all the time, particularly when their selection of Parmigiano is poor. TJ's is fond of peddling PR from the corner of the wheel, with rind on two sides.

Those here who have said there's no similarity between the two cheeses are stretching a point, I think. They're both hard cheeses made from unpasteurized cow's milk in the north of Italy and treated more or less the same way. Yes, PR production is governed by more rules - tighter geography, which day's milk, minimum ageing and so forth, but the basic flavor profile is similar. As others have said, the PR is generally more complex so you might want to splurge occasionally for grating at the table or eating alone but for cooking, the GP is a more than adequate substitute and beats the tar out of any domestic "parmesan".

[quote="Mark Willstatter"]TJ's is fond of peddling PR from the corner of the wheel, with rind on two sides.

Mark, inevitably when I have grated as much cheese as I can get from a rind (without scarring my knuckles), I wrap the rind in stretch wrap and save it until I make a big pot of minestrone. It gives a wonderful aroma and flavor to the soup, and.minestrone IMO wouldn't be minestrone without that rind.

Those here who have said there's no similarity between the two cheeses are stretching a point, I think.

I don't think anyone actually said that. My point was simply that there are differences.

Mark, inevitably when I have grated as much cheese as I can get from a rind (without scarring my knuckles), I wrap the rind in stretch wrap and save it until I make a big pot of minestrone. It gives a wonderful aroma and flavor to the soup, and.minestrone IMO wouldn't be minestrone without that rind.

Thanks for the tip Bob. I do much the same, so it's not as if I let the rind go to waste. Much as I like flavor in my soup, though, I still look to get as much actual cheese for my money as possible. Possibly because it's picked over before I get there, it seems like a lot of the PR at TJs is half rind (or more).

In an interesting kind of PR-related story, my father volunteers for an outfit in Sacramento called Senior Gleaners, generally retired volunteers who started with "gleaning" fruit and vegetables from previously picked orchards and fields but now accepts out-dated and otherwise unwanted food from grocery stores as well. They sort it and distribute it, generally to food banks. As a sort of token "pay" for volunteers, they get to take a piece or two of the "bounty" home with them: once the PR at TJ's is well picked over, some of that rind-heavy cheese ends up there! Another interesting fact: they get so much outdated bread and bagels that the food banks can't handle it - it goes to livestock (pigs, specifically) instead!

One of the things I like about Grana Padano over Reggiano is that the former's flavor is less salty.

I've been using Grana P for about a year now in place of R and it has been quite serviceable as a grated cheese topping, plus much easier to take as a stand-alone cheese.

Of course, it's near impossible to get fresh, moist Reggiano in the U.S. Seems by the time most of it gets here it has turned into stone.

OK Gang,
Last night I did it. I invited the family over for spaghetti and meatballs. I bought a chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano ($13.99/lb.) and a chunk of Peccorino Romano ($6.99/lb.) and had my son prepare a plate with two small portions of pasta with just a bit of sauce, and the cheeses grated on on each portion, which he served to me blind. While they looked quite a bit different in the chunk, I couldn't tell the difference by looking at it grated over the pasta. However, the taste difference was unmistakeable. The Parmigiano Reggiano was more intense and earthy. I like it. Afterwards, I tasted a slice of each and was amazed that the Parmigiano Reggiano, in addition to salty, funky earthiness also had a subtle, milky-creamy flavor to it, lacking from the Peccorino Romano. This introduction to Parmigiano Reggiano was very revealing and I liked it better than the Romano. Was it an earth-shaking epiphany? No, but it was fun.