For over two decades, Mozzarella House has been hand crafting small batches of artisan Italian cheeses at their manufacturing facility in Everett, MA. They are a favorite of local chefs and specialty shops due to their consistent quality and use of all-natural ingredients. Far and above, Mozzarella House’s best selling products are cow’s milk mozzarella and burrata cheeses, both of which will be featured at this year’s Boston Local Food Festival.
After purchasing the existing business three years ago, owner Giuseppe Argentieri has a lot to be proud of. He and his employees continue the tradition of hand making each batch of cheese, starting with raw, unpasteurized cow’s milk sourced from local dairy farms. Argentieri is then able to supervise his own pasteurization process which helps him maintain consistency and quality over the product. While it’s more expensive and time consuming to pasteurize the milk in house, the cheese just tastes better, says Argentieri.
After the milk is pasteurized, it is then steamed in large industrial kettles as workers separate out the curds that form.
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The curds are then gently stirred with a large wooden paddle until the correct consistency is achieved. Finally, the curds are stretched by hand and formed into balls of fresh mozzarella cheese. The entire tedious and labor intensive process takes over six hours.
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2012 marks the third year Mozzarella House will be featured at the Boston Local Food Festival. Argentieri says he loves the opportunity to stand behind and show his product to new customers. Nothing moves Argentieri more than seeing his customers walk away with smiles on their faces. “Despite the grueling work and daily stress, it’s all worth it to see my customers happy,” he says. Argentieri’s goal is to continue making a great product in the old world tradition for decades to come.
In addition to the mozzarella and burrata cheeses that Mozarella House will be featuring at this year’s festival, they also produce fresh ricotta cheese, scamorza cheese, which is a dried and aged mozzarella, and a type of fresh farmer’s cheese that combines the flavors of mozzarella, ricotta and cottage cheese together.
Mozarella House products can be purchased at Savenor’s Market in Boston and Cambridge, Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Wilson Farm in Lexington, or at your nearest Whole Foods Market. Don’t forget to stop by and say hello to Giuseppe and the rest of the Mozzarella House team at this year’s festival!
This post was written by Jarrod Cohen of Men of Wings, go check him out!
