this video has been sponsored by brilliant this is American cheese and it's not like any other cheese it's soft and gooey and malleable it's shiny and it melts really easily and it's kind of like some sort of plastic but it is real cheese or is it according to the package itself it's actually just a processed cheese product and according to the US FDA it's not even legally considered cheese so then what is it what is this well that's where we're going to get to the bottom of today and I figured the best way is to
try and make it myself oh no come on man let's get started what is American cheese developed in the 1910s from cheddar Colby and similar cheeses Good Start that's why okay there's there's a it's got a base of real cheese okay here the manufacturing process traditional cheese is ground combined with emulsifying agents and other ingredients mixed and heated until it forms a melted homogeneous mixture H sounds really appetizing okay so the base the base is cheese so we got the base of cheese we just need a mulfy agents and other ingredients um okay I think
we can figure that out okay got the cheese and now for what I think are the more interesting ingredients we have sodium citrate dihydrate crystals what from uh a chemical company but no it it's USP is that food is that what does that mean it just means that you can use it in like Pharmaceuticals it's safe to eat should be and the second ingredient is sodium hexametaphosphate oh okay also USP look delicious okay so this is basically everything we need and uh yeah we'll just have to start processing the cheese beautiful cheddar looks great yeah
I think just turning it all into shreds makes the next part easier it's going to take a while faster I can't dude this is how it's you're meant to do it oh yeah and then I said leave my mom's name out of your mouth okay so that's it second one done so we now have all of the beautiful shredded cheddar and to turn it into the American cheese we just have to mix it with these chemicals and I'll start with the sodium citrate dihydrate so I first open it got some beautiful crystals nice and for
that we need 24 G whatever 25 is fine okay so we got the the sodium citrate and now got to do the uh the sodium hexametaphosphate and for this we need 1.2 but I don't think that's even possible on this scale it's okay two that's good enough all right got all the chemicals and uh I think we're ready to get started so the first step is to get just some regular water and to put it into this pot and then into this just got to dump in all of the sodium citrate and we'll also add
all of the hexametaphosphate perfect everything is going perfectly so far got to mix this up got to shred off some micr Plastics in into the mix amazing I see nothing yeah I think it's good yeah okay it's all dissolved should I taste some of it yeah yeah for sure just just immediately say yeah okay I get a decent amount you see that are you sure you are you sure you want to try this I think it'll be fine I'll see that was way worse than I thought it's like kind of salty but like a sour
nasty n y like it's almost like it almost tastes like sweaty huh you want some no so turn this on it doesn't have to get super hot so it's getting up to like 50 right now I think that's kind of okay to start with I'm going to add it bit by bit so here we go time to process the cheese looks like it's doing something the water cheese combo just doesn't feel right yeah it kind of just feels like it feels a little bit like making a bowl of seral with water okay all the cheese
has been been successfully added I think now we have to just mix it around make sure it doesn't burn I don't think the he the heat is not on crazy right now does kind of look like KD or some kind of noodles looking pretty good though yeah as it's sitting there it's it's looking better and better so I mean what we have right now is just cheese mixed with water and chemicals but this is supposed to eventually turn into a beautiful little square of American cheese I faith I I I believe it'll work we're getting
there we are getting there it's thickening and gooing up oh oh yeah look at that there you go it kind of just looks good yeah so I mean yeah at this point it just it just looks like a cheese sauce and the idea even now just I don't know why in my head using chemicals to make this is it does feel weird and it makes it feel like this is kind of some sort of unnatural abomination but the sodium citrate and the other chemical they're totally safe to eat and they're found in lots of other
foods and what we're doing here is we're basically just using them to combine the water with the cheese and when you when it combines you basically get the same cheddar except it's just way more liquidy and all of the cheddar fat and everything is suspended in a larger amount of water I guess like regular cheese and water don't mix when you melt them properly I just don't think they mix or they might mix but they'll separate that's what I I think it just feels really unnatural to add white powders and chemicals to alter it but
at the same time all you're doing in cooking is altering food so I think it's getting to the point where it's ready though yeah I know okay I'm ready to try what we've made so far and I'm expecting a amazing results oh look at that cheesy gooey cheese it's beautiful it's it's good but I feel like it's missing a little bit I think we need to add I wasn't planning to but we need to add a couple more ingredients first thing we you need butter I think you know it'll it'll it'll make the flavor pop
a little bit more we need to get four tablespoons that's a tablespoon right yeah it looks about right it looks about right one two three four and one for good luck right no hwk wo I've never done that before that wasn't enjoyable but it's going to have to quickly go melt this got the melted butter now all we need is some whole milk powder yeah normally you would probably just start with milk but I started with water so we have to use milk powder now can't add more liquid put this on the scale tear it
there okay now got to add 50 g of the whole milk powder okay 50 now we got to mix the powder and the butter together it's mixing in way better than I no no it now this kind of oddly enough looks like cheese looks like butter like frozen butter again okay that's good okay in it goes oh sinking now there's something really nasty about the smell of this I I can't describe it okay I think it's good time to mix this and the haters will say it will never mix properly and they're probably right it's
looking a little bit barf like you know a little bit chunky but you know I have faith I don't know man I mean is there a problem if there's a chunk in my cheese it's not exactly American cheese if it's got chunks in it right oh I have an idea we need the Whisk and this way the chunks oh God will stand no match oh look oh I see way fewer chunks oh it's so thick now oh yeah it's looking good I was very worried for a second but it's good I mean I wasn't worried
at all no no I think we're good okay the cooking part is basically done but before we move on I have to know if adding the butter and the powdered milk did anything okay I think it did something before it tasted very I don't know wasn't special now it's special what does that mean it feels like a more rounded flavor I can't even describe it what we have to do now is just pour out all this beautiful cheese onto the tray that's good right we get a perfectly those classic perfect slices ooh that looks really
good so I'm just going to we don't have anything to spread it out just use the tray no it doesn't really work hurry hurry I is going to start [Music] solidifying oh it's already solidifying yeah exactly this is not what I want it my my dream of thin cheese slices they're complet they're they're being challenged right now no this is this is completely unacceptable I have an idea uh no no this is not what I wanted we don't have a bigger oven uh uh uh oh man let's see no it errored oh really okay I've
recovered the cheese I don't even know why I really panicked to begin with to be totally honest it was always reversible got the cheese nice and hot again and the key now is we're going to use a smaller tray that's preheated and the goal is to spread it out as fast as possible okay one two 3 I don't want the slice to be too thick but like right now we're just trying to get anything right yeah okay just going to close these gaps up that looks I mean that looks way better than before little bit
thicker than you know than I was hoping for I'm not going to get that classic thin slice but it's okay this we made the thick Edition I think this is good just got to put this in the fridge for a little bit just slide it in and here it is it's all wrinkly it's beautiful so I think what we need to do is to cut it up so first cut it in half oh yeah that feels good it's a nice slice felt like cutting plastic okay another good cut nice then another third here right when
the knife goes through it's it's selfhealing where's the cut marks it's gone yeah and now I gu I guess it's time to take it out oh my God this is way thicker I'll turn it this is so much thicker it's all also like kind of it's not as it doesn't have that orange color on the bottom oh my goodness I I think it really does just look like a piece of processed cheese like a normal craft single or something it's got that soft plasticky texture do you see the cheese the see-through cheese plastic yeah there
it is oh yeah H it's like literally the exact same as a craft single it's indistinguishable it's like just a really thick craft single you did it wow honestly might be better than a reg than a craft single oh yeah yeah so at the end of the day what did we learn I think what I learned is that this isn't plastic at all it's kind of just cheddar cheese but with more water and what I think is interesting is that just because of this whole processing step this is why the FDA and you know just
regulatory agencies in general don't consider it cheese it doesn't mean that it's some sort of horrific abomination that nobody should ever eat and that it's just made of weird chemicals and plastic it's just because they've decided that it's now legally diluted cheese it's a derivative of cheese that's it it's a cheese alloy exactly um I think the only thing left to do now is what I set out to do from the very beginning get our pen dropped the first piece of bread cheese the other Bread on top okay oh yeah okay success all right so
while working on this project I learned a lot about cheese and I hope that maybe you learn something too there's so much more to life than just cheese though and there's so much more to learn and thankfully there's a fun and free way to do this and that's with the sponsor of this video brilliant I've been using brilliant for a while now and I still think that it's one of the best ways to learn math data science and computer science this is because all of their lessons are fully interactive which I think makes them a
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