Parmigiano-Reggiano

The cheese comes from the dairies of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna to the west of the Reno, and Mantua to the east of the Po. Monasteries and later farmer-owned dairies were making a large, long-lived grana here in the Middle Ages. The twin name records the two cities at the heart of that trade, Parma and Reggio.

The protection is the point of the modern cheese. Milk, place, method, and a minimum age are fixed. Outside the zone, makers in Italy and abroad learned the broad method and sold the result as parmesan. Some of those cheeses are decent grating cheeses. They are a style, not this cheese. The dotted rind of a true wheel, and the full name, are how the protected cheese is marked.

The milk is partly skimmed. Evening milk has cream removed, then it is mixed with morning milk. The cows are fed hay and grass, not silage. The milk is warmed in copper vats, the curd is cut very fine, and it is cooked until the grains are tiny. Those grains are what the word grana refers to. The mass is pressed into a large wheel, salted in brine for weeks, and then aged.

Twelve months is the floor, not the ideal for every use. Older wheels, often around two years and beyond, are drier, more savory, and more likely to show crystals. The crystals are a result of age. They are not a defect, and they are not salt that failed to dissolve. Each wheel is checked. A wheel that does not pass is not sold under the name.

A younger wheel tastes of broth, butter, nuts, and salt, and it feels grainy rather than creamy. An older wheel is more intense: deeper savor, sometimes dried fruit, sometimes a faint crunch. The smell of a sound piece is appetizing and savory. It should not smell of old oil or of nothing at all.

Pre-grated powder in a shaker often tastes flat or woody because it has dried and oxidized. A freshly broken shard tastes fuller, even from the same age of cheese. If a piece is harshly bitter or smells rancid, the problem is storage, not the tradition of aging. Keep the wedge wrapped, and grate it as you need it.

Grate it onto pasta, risotto, and soup at the last moment, so the heat wakes the smell without boiling the cheese. Eat young and middle-aged cheese in pieces with fruit, especially pear, or with a drizzle of old balsamic. Drop a clean rind into a pot of soup or beans while they simmer, then take it out. The rind is salty and full of flavor. It is not waste.

Do not use a very old, dry wheel as the only cheese in a smooth cream sauce. It can stay grainy. Do not substitute a mild table cheese and expect the dish to taste finished. Pecorino Romano is the substitute when a Roman recipe wants sheep and a sharper salt. Grana Padano is the substitute when you want the same family at a milder pitch. A generic parmesan is the substitute only for everyday grating, and it will not match an old wedge eaten in the hand.

The protected cheese is made only in that Italian zone, in large wheels, and it is exported everywhere people cook Italian food. In Italy it is both daily and festive: a spoon of it over a weeknight pasta, a piece of an older wheel after a meal. Producers are consortium dairies, not a single farm.

The word parmesan traveled further than the cheese. In the United States and elsewhere it can mean any hard grating cheese in this image, including cheeses with additives that help them last in a shaker. Those products have a use in a hurried kitchen. They are not Parmigiano-Reggiano. When a recipe names the full title, it is asking for the protected wheel. When it says parmesan, a true wedge is still the best version of the instruction.