It's quite simple, really.
One of my absolute favorite comfort foods is macaroni and cheese. When I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll make it from scratch, using a roux as the base for a smooth and creamy cheese sauce. But if I’m feeling under the weather or a little blue, I don’t always have the energy for that kind of kitchen undertaking.
That’s when I reach for my favorite boxed mac and cheese: Annie’s Shells and White Cheddar. That distinctive purple box always puts me in a good mood. Recently, I couldn’t help but wonder: Does white cheddar actually taste different than yellow cheddar? I realized that I didn’t have an answer.
So I decided to go on a cheddar quest, straight to the source. I visited the Tillamook Creamery in Tillamook, Oregon, as well as one of their dairy farms. What can I say, I’m very thorough!
Cheddar vs. white cheddar: What’s the difference?
If you want to be cheeky and say, “Well, they’re different colors,” you’re actually about halfway to the truth. As Jill Allen, Director of Product Excellence at Tillamook, pointed out to me, all cheddar is naturally white. That’s because cheese is made from milk, which is white. But it’s not necessarily uniformly white.
From pale, buttery cream shades with just a tinge of yellow to bright, almost cool-toned white shades, milk can be different colors from the white spectrum. Jill explained that there are several factors can that influence the color of a cow’s milk, including the time of year, the temperature and the cow’s diet. Even from cow to cow there can be a lot of variation.
In order to make blocks of cheddar look more uniform, a coloring agent called annatto is added to the milk as it begins its journey to becoming cheese.
What is annatto?
Annatto is made from the seeds of the achiote tree, which is indigenous to Central and South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The annatto seeds can be ground into a powder and used as an edible dye. It’s in many products, from smoked fish to lipstick to, of course, cheese.
I first learned about annatto when I was working at Whole Foods. It was one of the natural dyes that the bakery department used to give frosting an orange tint. Now I love looking at food labels and finding “annatto” listed on the ingredients—which is the case with the giant block of Tillamook medium cheddar currently sitting in my fridge.
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