Grana Padano

Grana Padano is made from raw cow's milk, partly skimmed by letting the cream rise naturally, cooked in copper vats and pressed into wheels of 24 to 40 kilos. The name is descriptive: grana means grainy, for the flaking, crystalline structure the paste develops, and padano refers to the Po Valley plain where it is made (thirty-two provinces across Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Trentino and Emilia-Romagna).

There are three official ages. Nine to sixteen months is the everyday cooking cheese. Oltre 16 Mesi is firmer and more savoury. Riserva is reserved for wheels of at least twenty months that pass the Consorzio's inspection, in which an expert taps the wheel with a small hammer and listens to the internal structure.

It is the most consumed protected-origin cheese on earth, at roughly five million wheels a year, and its production traces back to the Cistercian abbey of Chiaravalle outside Milan in the twelfth century.

Mild, milky and gently sweet, with a nuttiness that builds with age and a savoury finish that stops well short of Parmigiano's. At nine to sixteen months it is soft-flavoured enough to disappear into a dish, which is exactly what most cooking wants. At twenty months and beyond it develops brown-butter and dried-fruit notes and a crumbly, crystalline texture.

The texture is grainy rather than smooth: it fractures into irregular shards, never slices cleanly, and by sixteen months is studded with crunchy tyrosine crystals.

Set against Parmigiano Reggiano, the honest summary is less of everything: less salt, less depth, less length on the palate, and less complexity. That is not always a drawback. In a delicate risotto or a béchamel, Parmigiano can dominate where Grana Padano supports.

Buy a wedge with rind attached and grate it as you need it. Pre-grated Grana Padano contains anti-caking agents, loses aroma within days of opening and often costs more per kilo than a whole piece.

Use the nine-to-sixteen-month for cooking: grated over pasta, stirred into risotto at the end, folded into béchamel, meatballs and fillings. Its mildness is the point: in an asparagus risotto or a pumpkin soup, Parmigiano can bully the other flavours while Grana Padano stays underneath them. Save Oltre 16 Mesi and Riserva for the board, shaved with traditional balsamic vinegar, honey or mostarda.

Never throw away the rind. Scrape it clean and drop it into a minestrone or a bean soup, where it releases flavour for a good hour, or roast it in a hot oven until it puffs and eat it as a snack.

An unopened vacuum-sealed wedge keeps in the refrigerator to the date on the pack, typically some months out. Once you break the seal, the wrapping matters more than the temperature: a barely damp cloth next to the cheese, then parchment or waxed paper, then the vegetable drawer, or a rigid box that is not airtight. Plastic film pressed directly on the surface works for a few days and after that the cheese sweats against it. Handled that way a wedge holds two to three months. Grated cheese, whether you grate it yourself or buy it in a tub, dries out within days.

What changes is water. The cut faces dry first, going glassy and darker, and that skin is normally scraped off before grating; the wedge as a whole loses weight, hardens and tastes more concentrated and saltier. Older cheese crumbles rather than flakes. Freezing in 200 to 300 gram portions works for about six months, though the paste comes out more friable and suits the grater rather than the table. Rinds freeze well and go into soup. Past the printed date, refer to it and to the dairy.

Look at the rind first. A genuine wedge carries the dotted diamonds with GRANA PADANO repeated across the whole curved edge, pressed in by marking bands before salting, plus a branded four-leaf clover with the province initials and the dairy number, added once the wheel has reached its minimum age. A casein plaque with an alphanumeric code identifies the individual wheel. The paste is pale straw, finely granular, and it fractures into irregular flakes; anything that cuts into bendy slices is a different cheese. From sixteen months on you get crunchy white tyrosine crystals.

Outside Italy the near-miss is usually wording rather than a lookalike wheel: Italian hard cheese, grana-style, or plain parmesan on a domestic block or a shelf-stable shaker. Grated Grana Padano DOP always shows the Consortium mark and states the rind content, which is capped at eighteen per cent. Parmigiano Reggiano is a separate DOP with its own rind stamping and usually costs several dollars a pound more, so a wedge priced well below both is telling you something.

Grana Padano is stocked almost everywhere Italian cheese is sold. In the US, Costco, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and Italian delis carry it at roughly $10-18 per pound, usually the nine-to-sixteen-month. Riserva and Trentingrana need a specialist or an online seller such as Eataly or iGourmet.

In the UK, all the major supermarkets carry it at about £14-24 per kilo, and it is often the best-value real DOP cheese on the shelf.

The identity checks are on the wheel. Dotted diamond marks reading GRANA PADANO run all around the heel, applied by the marking band before salting. A fire-branded four-leaf clover carries the province code and the dairy number, and a casein plate on the face gives the individual wheel's alphanumeric code. Riserva wheels are additionally branded 'Riserva Oltre 20 Mesi'. If you need to avoid egg, read the allergen line: lysozyme from egg white is permitted and must be declared.

Chiaravalle Abbey, just south of Milan, is where the story starts: the Cistercians who drained the Po plain are credited with inventing the cheese around 1135, and the abbey complex and its mill can still be visited.

Around Cremona, Lodi and Mantua a number of dairies open the make room to visitors in the early morning, when the curd is broken with the spino. The Consorzio publishes a list. If you can time a visit to coincide with the hammer inspection of finished wheels, do it: nothing explains the cheese faster.

In Trentino, the cooperative dairies of the Val di Non, Val di Fiemme and Giudicarie make Trentingrana and most have a shop attached. In Milan, the older cheesemongers keep thirty- and thirty-six-month Riserve that never reach supermarkets.