Burrata

Burrata is two cheeses in one. The outside is fresh cow's-milk mozzarella, stretched by hand into a thin pouch and tied off at the top with a knot. The inside is stracciatella: ragged strands of that same stretched curd, torn by hand and steeped in fresh cream.

That construction is the whole point. The shell is springy and lightly salted, the filling is sweet, rich and barely holding together. A good burrata collapses when you cut it. If the centre stays firm or scoops like ricotta, it is either old or industrially stabilised.

Since 2016 there has been a protected designation, Burrata di Andria IGP, which requires Italian cow's milk and production within Puglia. Outside that scheme the word is unregulated, which is why burrata is now made in California, Wisconsin, Australia and half of Europe, sometimes very well, but it is not the same object.

Very mild, very milky, and much sweeter than you expect from a cheese. The shell tastes like good fresh mozzarella: clean, faintly salty, with a squeak to it. Then the centre arrives and the register changes completely: thick cream with a light lactic tang, closer to crème fraîche than to cheese.

There is no sharpness, no funk and almost no salt. What burrata delivers is texture and fat, which is why it is nearly always served with something acidic, bitter or salty next to it. On its own, with nothing but oil and pepper, it can read as bland; with tomatoes, anchovies or chilli, it turns into the best thing on the table.

It is also emphatically a fresh-cheese flavour: if what you are eating tastes tangy, sour or yoghurty, it has gone past its window.

Take it out of the fridge 30 to 45 minutes before serving. This is the single thing that most changes the result: cold burrata tastes of almost nothing because the fat is locked up.

Serve it whole and cut it at the table with a cross on top, letting the centre spill out. It needs very little around it: a good extra virgin olive oil, flaky salt, cracked black pepper. Beyond that, reach for contrast rather than more richness: ripe tomatoes, Cantabrian anchovies, grilled peaches, sautéed bitter greens, a spoonful of 'nduja melting over the top, prosciutto, roasted red peppers.

With pasta, tear it over the top off the heat rather than stirring it into a hot pan. On pizza, add it after the pizza is out of the oven and on the plate. Never bake it, never grill it, never put it under a broiler: the emulsion breaks and you get a greasy puddle.

What is left in the tub is not waste. The whey and stray cream are good stirred into a soup or used to enrich mashed potatoes.

Unopened, keep the sealed tub in the coldest part of the fridge, around 4°C (39°F), and go by the date the producer printed on the lid. Artisan burrata is normally dated a few days out; heat-treated supermarket versions carry weeks. Once the tub is opened the useful window is short, counted in hours rather than days, and the ball needs to stay fully submerged. Move it to a lidded container and top the liquid up with whole milk or lightly salted water if there is not enough to cover it. Left uncovered on a plate the outer skin dries and stiffens within a couple of hours and the sheen goes flat.

What changes physically: from the second day the cream in the centre loses sweetness and picks up a lactic tang, the shell tightens, and the liquid clouds as fine curd settles out. Freezing does not extend it usefully, because ice crystals break the cream emulsion and the filling separates into fat and watery whey on thawing, so it pours rather than spills. For anything to do with the date itself, the packaging and the producer are the reference.

A burrata is a pouch, not a ball. There should be a visible knot or twist at the top where the curd was gathered and tied, and the surface should read porcelain white and glossy rather than matte or faintly yellow. It sits loose in liquid in a sealed tub. Pressed gently through the packaging it gives and springs back; one that stays dented feels slack. The smell at opening is milk and fresh cream with a faint lactic edge.

The thing most often mistaken for it abroad is plain fresh mozzarella, sold in the same round tubs on the same shelf: the knot is the tell, and mozzarella cuts uniform all the way through while burrata releases a loose centre. Stracciatella sold on its own is the filling without the shell. A tub marked burrata with three or four weeks of shelf life has a stabilised filling and cuts firm. On price, expect roughly $8 to $14 for 8 oz domestically in the US, $16 to $22 flown in, and £3 to £5 per 150g in the UK; well below that is usually the long-life type.

In the US, the best domestic burrata comes from Di Stefano in California, BelGioioso in Wisconsin and Maplebrook Farm in Vermont, and all three are sold at Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's carries its own version at around $5 for two small balls. For Italian imports, Eataly and Murray's Cheese fly it in weekly, and specialist shippers like Gustiamo and Formaggio Kitchen handle Andria producers. Expect $8 to $14 for an 8 oz ball domestically and $16 to $22 for a flown-in Pugliese one.

In the UK, Waitrose, Ocado, M&S and Sainsbury's all stock burrata year-round at roughly £3 to £5 for 150g, which works out to £20 to £30 per kilo. Natoora supplies restaurant-grade Pugliese burrata to shops and direct; La Latteria in London makes it fresh; Italian importers such as Vallebona and Ham & Cheese Co. ship nationwide.

Whatever the source, buy on production date rather than expiry date. Anything with more than a week of shelf life left has been stabilised and will not behave like the real thing.

Andria, in the province of Barletta-Andria-Trani, is where it was invented and where the dairies sell over the counter from six in the morning. Eating one within a few hours of production is a genuinely different experience and worth planning a morning around. Corato, Ruvo di Puglia and Gravina in Puglia have equally serious production and fewer visitors.

The Valle d'Itria (Martina Franca, Cisternino, Locorotondo, Alberobello) has dairies that make it on site each morning, many with the stretching visible from the shop floor. Bari's old town and covered market handle it properly, and across the Salento around Lecce most working masserie serve it with local tomatoes and their own oil.

Outside Italy it travels badly, so the rule is to eat it where the turnover is high: busy Italian restaurants that go through a case a night, not places where it sits in a display fridge.