What is velveeta made of

Image: Kristian Bjornard. From its beginnings as cheesy leftovers, Velveeta has rarely been a stand-alone product.

Some of the recipes for Velveeta concocted to sell the product include:. While Velveeta used to be made of real cheese, today, Velveeta cheese is made with whey protein concentrate and milk protein — meaning that it is not technically cheese.

While there are elements of real cheese in Velveeta — like, you know, milk — to call it actual cheese is a bit of a stretch. Meanwhile, the ingredient list for most cheeses is milk, rennet, and maybe a little bit of salt. But the longer ingredients list isn't the most startling element here. While many varieties of supermarket cheese do have preservatives, true cheese doesn't actually need artificial additives, because the cheesemaking process actually creates natural preservatives.

Non-starter NS bacteria are the second wave of bacteria that appear in cheese during the cheesemaking process. Mainly made up of mesophilic lactic acid bacteria, these naturally occurring organisms contribute to the flavor and storage ability of different cheeses. Velveeta, on the other hand, contains quite an array of distinct coloring and preserving agents.

One ounce of Velveeta contains 13 percent of your daily value for calcium, as opposed to cheddar, which contains 20 percent. But even though Velveeta has less calcium, it actually has more lactose.

It might seem strange, but cheese actually doesn't contain all that much lactose. While it is made from milk, the natural process of making cheese removes much of the lactose -- or milk sugars -- which are consumed by the bacteria that are turning the milk into cheese, much in the same way that yeast eats away at the sugar in grape juice to turn it into the alcohol in your favorite bottle of wine.

But Velveeta can't say the same about its product. Yearwood says that Brooks loves to tell stories about how his mother used to stay up all night to baste the turkey before Thanksgiving. But she's discovered a hack to get a moist bird without all the hassle: She leaves it covered in a pan of water in the oven overnight.

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The original process for making Velveeta involved blending tiny bits of various cheeses, including cheddar, Colby and Swiss, along with an emulsifier. Today, the process is different in that instead of starting with bits of cheese, it is made from pasteurized milk, along with whey, emulsifiers and salt. The emulsifiers basically weaken the molecular bonds that hold the milk proteins together, producing a cheeselike product with a springy consistency that allows the product to hold together when it melts.

Since the key characteristic of Velveeta is its smooth melting quality, if you're looking to substitute something else for Velveeta, it will have to be something that melts just as well. And to some extent, this depends on what you're using it for.

If you're making a queso dip , substituting ordinary cheddar cheese will produce a stringy mess. But if you're just looking to substitute it in a casserole or mac and cheese recipe, you'll have an easier time.

In terms of flavor, Velveeta is mild, so its closest relative is probably American cheese, which you can purchase in packages of individually wrapped slices, or at the deli counter under such brands as Boar's Head and Land O'Lakes.

Cheez-Whiz is another product with similar properties, although it comes in a can or a jar rather than a block or in slices. Velveeta is typically used in recipes where it's important for the cheese to melt and melt smoothly. The main example of this is in cheese dips, such as the traditional Tex-Mex dish chile con queso dip, made by combining Velveeta with Ro-Tel, a brand of canned tomatoes with diced chiles.

Mac and cheese is another dish that benefits from the supurb melting property of Velveeta, since the cheese sauce not only needs to hold together when melted, rather than separating, but must be able to evenly coat the macaroni as well.

Velveeta in used in a wide variety of other dishes, such as stuffed peppers aka " poppers " , casseroles, soups, and even fudge. In , the iconic oval logo was introduced and has more or less remained the same ever since. Smart albeit sly marketers decided that adding whey made the cheese healthier and more nutritious and "highly nourishing" for "weight-watching moms" and "growing youngsters.

In the AMA cited that Velveeta's nutritional value built " firm flesh. When Kraft debuted pre-sliced cheese in the '50s, it had to do some damage control. To avoid internal competition, the company rebranded Velveeta as a dip and sauce. Originally Velveeta was made from real cheese. Today, it's mainly whey protein concentrate, milk protein concentrate, milk, fat, and preservatives.