🧀 Burrata

Burrata is a fresh Italian cheese from Apulia: a sack of pasta filata, the stretched curd used for mozzarella, filled with stracciatella, shreds of the same curd soaked in cream. Cut it open and the cream runs out. It appeared at the start of the 20th century and for a long time was eaten mostly in Apulia. ⁵

In the United States there is no federal standard for burrata, only for the mozzarella around it: at least 45 % milkfat in the solids, more than 52 % and up to 60 % moisture, pasteurised dairy ingredients, and cow's and buffalo milk never combined in one cheese. ⁸ In the UK, the NHS lists pasteurised burrata among the soft cheeses that are safe in pregnancy. ¹⁰

On a pack, plain “burrata” is not a protected name and can be made anywhere; the mozzarella it is built from may, under Codex, be cow's or buffalo milk or a mix. ⁷ Because burrata is sold in liquid, an EU label must also give the drained net weight, so the cheese itself can weigh far less than the tub. ⁹ The one protected name is Burrata di Andria, an EU geographical indication since 2016. ²³

Codex describes high-moisture mozzarella as a soft, rindless, near-white cheese whose overlying layers may form pockets holding a milky liquid, with at least 20 % fat in the dry matter. ⁷ Burrata turns that pocket into the point of the cheese and fills it on purpose.

Making the casing starts like any mozzarella: curd of the right acidity is heated, kneaded and stretched until smooth, then shaped while still warm and firmed by cooling. ⁷ Heat and stretching turn the protein from a shapeless mass into parallel fibres, which is why the casing tears into strands; the result depends on the curd's pH and calcium. ⁵ For burrata, part of that mass is opened into a pouch, filled and closed by hand into a topknot. ¹

The Codex list for mozzarella is short: lactic cultures, rennet, salt, vinegar and drinking water. Preservatives are allowed too, among them sorbic acid up to 1,000 mg/kg and nisin up to 12.5 mg/kg, so a long date on a tub is worth checking against the ingredients. ⁷

It is one of the most perishable cheeses on the shelf. The rules for Burrata di Andria require it to be packaged at the dairy where it is made and kept at 4 ± 2 °C. ⁶ Since 2020 its moisture may range from 50 to 70 %. ⁴

Italy listed burrata as a traditional agricultural product of Apulia by a ministerial decree of 14 June 2002, and its fame has since spread far beyond the country. ⁵

Researchers are still looking for ways to make it last: one Italian team put dry ice inside the cheese while moulding it, and the burrata kept its chemical and microbial qualities better over 21 days. ⁵