Your Burrata Dish Sucks

there, I said it

Burrata has no flavor.

It’s milky fresh cheese formed into a pouch that is filled with shredded milky fresh cheese and milk/cream. I’m just saying. These are basic facts, there’s no need to get defensive.

not delicious looking

First of all, let me just say that I’m also not a fan of fresh aka “buffala” mozzarella, which is basically all burrata really is. Yes, I’ve tried it every which way. In southern Italy. With good olive oil, with perfect tomatoes, with drizzled aceto balsamico tradizionale (DOP), with fresh basil leaves, prosciutto di Parma, etc, etc.

I’ve tried it in the shape of an ovoline, a cilegine, tiny perline and bocconcine, braided treccie, and big long filone. Fresh mozz in brine comes in lots of different fun-sounding Italian-worded shapes, but, to me, it’s all got the same bleh taste. I find it flat. Flabby. Lacking in any appreciable flavor or texture.

Not much different than soft tofu, to be honest. Sacrilege, right?! I know. But I’m fucking saying it.

At least with fresh mozzarella, though, it functions acceptably as a fresh cheese. To be honest, I’d rather have chèvre, ricotta, mascarpone, or even farmer’s cheese. All of those have more flavor than fresh mozzarella. There’s an appreciable tang to them at least. Fresh mozz doesn’t really contribute much for me, but it also doesn’t instantly ruin anything it touches.

Burrata is so much worse.

The second you touch a burrata, it bursts, splooging its inner watery, milky cream all over everything. And, ok, sure, I get it, this is its appeal for many. An interactive snack. Ooooh! I poked my cheese ball and it bursted! Look how creamy! “OMG, Aiden, honey, take a pic while it’s oozing!”

Ok. Yes, it’s novel. You get to play with your food a bit. An orb that ‘splodes.

And, yes, sometimes smart chefs figure out smart ways to take advantage of this by placing the burrata blob atop something that, in theory, benefits from being splooged upon with a liquid. Like bread, pasta, or salad greens.

Nice try, smart chefs, but no. It’s not flyin’.

Because, again, it’s fucking milk, guys. Do you know what I say if I spill a glass of milk on my plate of nicely-tossed salad? I say “oh, fuck, I just ruined my goddamn salad. I guess I’ll throw that away.”

Know why I say that? Because spilling a glass of milk across a plate of savory food fucking ruins it. It’s completely normal to say “well, shoot. I just ruined my dang spaghetti” when you spill a glass of milk over it. Almost every sane person would say that.

You know what nearly nobody would say? “Oh, yum! Grind me some black pepper over that plate of milk-soaked pasta and pass the EVOO.”

And yet….. on fucking Instagram there are a thousand motherfuckers doing just that. Because instead of calling this milk milk, someone wrapped it up into a cute little boob-shaped pouch and called it burrata so they could charge $18 for a couple ounces of it.

You roll the mozzarella strips with your fork like spaghetti, and with cream dripping, you have the first bite: an explosion of milk mixed with sweet cream and mozzarella.

Oh, DO YOU, person on the internet? It’s an “explosion” of cream on milk on mozz? But….those are all the exact same flavor and texture. It’s just freakin’ milk mixed with milkfat, encased by barely solidified milk.

But, hey, perhaps I’m being unfairly cynical. Lactose intolerant, even.

That’s not me. I should keep an open mind. Let’s get into the history of burrata a bit, shall we? I’m sure, like most Italian things, there’s a lovely origin story, some quaint, centuries-old tradition developed among dairy farmers in medieval pastoral Italia, eh? Che buoni, le tradizioni!

Hm. Infatti, no.

…burrata was born as a way of making use of leftovers from the cheesemaking process. “The cream came from the dense layer formed on top of the morning milking,” … At the same time, the cheesemonger would make the stretched curd mozzarella and have some left over. Those pieces were stripped with fingers, mixed inside the cream and used as filling for the burrata.

This BBC article tries to dress up the whole scam with flowery language involving “castles” and “the spirit of ingenuity”, but, you know what? I’m not buying it.

Created in the 1920s under the shade of a castle in Italy’s Apulia region, burrata was born out of a need to minimise food waste and is a delicious example of human ingenuity.

1920’s? That’s not ancient medieval pastoral tradition. I don’t care how many castles you’re “in the shade of” when your dairy consortium is making use out of its operational production-run by-products, it still amounts to me eating your scraps so you can make more money.

This is pure marketing hype. The whole story smacks of focus-grouped fiction invented by a sleek Italian PR consultants in designer suits with slicked-back hair. They probably never even heard of burrata before driving down from Milan in their Ferraris in the 1990’s for the photoshoot. Even the name is bullshit — “burrata” in Italian means “buttered”, yet burrata cheese contains no butter.

Now that I’ve delved a bit deeper into the whole burrata scam, what I’ve discovered just confirms why I find burrata so foul. Besides the acidified milk splooge lactating all over everything, I must’ve also detected that lingering aftertaste of cynical PR manufactured “tradition”.

And then there’s this:

I don’t find this cute or appetizing at all. The fuckin’ guy thinks it’s a boob. And, hey, maybe that’s a part of the appeal that I missed. Is that why y’all like it? Because it’s mimics a titty that leaches milk?

Ok, wow. That actually hadn’t even occurred to me, but now that I’ve connected these dots, I’m thinking it might be the main draw for most of you freaks. Gotta say, that’s pretty weird, guys. Is this why you like burrata?

You should work past that. Seriously, go to therapy or something.

“You can use burrata for everything, but it doesn’t need anything. You only have to open it and eat….You close your eyes, and it takes you right back to childhood.” —some Italian lady who sells burrata

Ok, yeah. Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t un-see it. More boob symbolism. It all totally tracks. I didn’t realize this, but yeah, it seems that people like burrata because it subconsciously reminds them of the milky overload sensation they felt as a baby while suckling at mommy’s teat.

Totally makes sense now why it’s not appealing to me. I was a bottle baby.