It’s not often we get to cook with an ingredient that is more or less new to us. As a foodie family, we tend to at least know about a lot of foods—whether or not we use them all the time. This week, however, my wife introduced me to a new cheese with which she was already familiar, but which I had never heard of myself: Burrata.

Apparently, burrata is a kind of cheese that has a solid outside with a creamier inside. The outside is either mozzarella or something very close to it, and the inside is what I’m told is stracciatella. I would describe it as a creamy ricotta. 

Overall, it makes the cheese very strange to palate, as it is not one hundred percent texturally uniform and takes on different elasticities depending on how you incorporate it. My wife put some in a vegetable stir-fry with oil and balsamic earlier this week to give it a try. Paired with our miniature eggplant and squash, it was a fresh element. 

The next day she made chicken parmesan, which featured a large lump of melted burrata atop each chicken tender. This too sang with the joy that rings through many Italian dishes—a pairing of acidic tomato sauce and light dairy cheesy freshness. It didn’t hurt that the chicken was quite moist and had a light crust of breading that gave the vessels support of a well-toasted carb ingredient. 

And getting back to the cheese on this one, it wasn’t as hard to detect it in this as it was in the stir-fry. Front and center, this time the burrata stretched as it heated up, pulling from its tomato-sauced bed several inches—dare I say a foot—to where the creamy topping suspended from the fork.

If you like cheese, it’s important to understand that it is not a cheap passion. Many decent cheeses only start at a dollar an ounce. Aged cheeses and more labor-intensive ones reach much higher still. Burrata at least seems to be mostly on par with mozzarella but could also be difficult to find depending on where you shop. My wife had recently visited a wholesale restaurant supplier with her grandmother to pick up a few things in bulk for home and business. Being the cheese lover that she is, she took advantage of the wide selection, wholesale prices and bulk quantities like a little mouse in a cheese factory. When she came home, arms loaded with bags and a big grin on her face, I knew she had made ample use of her trip. 

The burrata happened to be the star purchase but it was betwixt her other cheesy interests, which included a large wheel of brie and a stout log of Italian herb chevre. 

Despite being on a budget of sorts, it is always nice to have that one thing on which it makes you happy to splurge a little, especially when it’s discounted. The other two cheeses would keep at least until opened, but the burrata required immediate attention, hence its inclusion in most of this week’s meals. A few salads featured chunks of luxurious burrata atop their leafy greens. This ended up playing very nicely with the Italian dressing we enjoy. 

Burrata also complimented the Evercrisp apples we cut up like a fruit crouton. 

Finally this week, we made a more kid- and time-friendly meal—a tray of homemade pizza. We just recently found our pizza stone, which had been hiding in boxes since we first moved out of our starter home nearly four years ago. This went down in the oven with a healthy dusting of cornmeal to coat the bottom of the dough. Then we tried a pizza dough ball that came ready to form from the store (yes I know, very lazy of us). We spread some red sauce, shredded mozzarella on the kids’ half and dropped clumps of burrata on ours. Last but not least, we drizzled a little bit of fresh pesto on top of each of the clumps of burrata and baked it off at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes. 

The resulting pizza was exceptional. While the dough was rather average, everything else had deep sweet and savory flavors. I will say that the crust held up under the very moist stack of toppings and baked through without getting gummy or unevenly baked.

The way out here, when you love something, you try to use it to its fullest. When you discover something, you push to learn as much as you can about it. And when you enjoy every attempt you make with it, you start scheming about another trip to the fancy store at which you found it. 

If you’ve never had the pleasure of trying burrata, it is a true delight and I would highly encourage you to do so. A good brand, based on our experience, would be BelGioioso. They’ve seldom let us down with other cheese products and continue to impress as we broaden our horizons. 

May you have the cheesiest of Thanksgivings, be it through hors d’oeuvres or dad-joke-level puns.