PASTEURIZED – AGE: 3 WEEKS – COW MILK – BY MURRAY’S CHEESE CAVES
Introducing a special fall edition of our strangest, most delicious cheese. Filled with creamy maple butter and coated with zingy heirloom peppercorns, Burrino Pepato is an all-in-one flavor adventure dreamed up in our cheese caves. The cheese is scamorza, similar to mozzarella but slightly aged and springy. Get a bite with every layer, and it’s like extra-buttery cacio e pepe with a slight maple sweetness. Serve as a cozy app (spread the butter on bread and top with the cheese) or at the dinner table (dice it up and melt on a baked sweet potato).
Burrino Pepato starts at Maplebrook Creamery in Vermont, where cheesemakers craft burrini—scamorza cheese filled with butter—in small batches from fresh Vermont milk.
They use cultured butter from Ploughgate Creamery, made according to European tradition. It’s sweet, a bit tangy, and incredibly creamy. For our fall edition, we use a slightly sweet maple butter.
Scamorza is a pasta filata or pulled curd cheese. Like in mozzarella-making, the curds are submerged in hot water before stretching.
For burrini, the cheese is formed into a pear shape (as is traditional for scamorza) and filled with butter before aging.
Once the cheese is formed, it heads to Murray’s Cheese Caves, where our expert affineurs coat the balls in olive oil and roll them in a blend of Robusta Vietnamese and Zanzibar peppercorns.
They spend a few weeks in our Natural Rind Cave, where the cheese develops a springy texture and more pronounced cheesy flavor.
The peppercorns remain spicy and zingy and the butter creamy and fresh.
Burrini is a cheese thought to have been developed by Italian immigrants coming to the United States in the 19th century.
Legend has it they’d smuggle products that required high taxes, like butter and charcuterie, inside lower-taxed items like cheese.
About the maker
At Murray’s Cheese Caves in Queens, New York, our experts age and mature cheeses to perfection, creating unique products that are exclusive to Murray’s.
We built our caves to enhance the quality of our products, as well as to honor the craft of cheesemakers across the globe. The practice of aging cheese, known in French as affinage, was relatively rare in the United States when we built our first set of caves in 2004.
The cheeses that mature in our caves are crafted in a variety of ways, which are reflected on their labels, described below.
Cave Aged Original cheeses are produced from a Murray’s original recipe—we have a hand in every step of the cheesemaking process.
Cave Aged Reserve cheeses are made in collaboration with some of our favorite cheesemakers. They send us unaged wheels, and we use unique aging techniques to produce something completely new.
Cave Aged Limited cheeses are born out of our constant innovation and experimentation, only available for a limited time.
Cheeses in the Cave Aged category are aged in our caves with methods that replicate the treatment they would’ve received from their original producer. This category is largely populated by bloomy rind cheeses that don’t fare well in transport.
Murray’s operates four caves, designed to ensure that each cheese matures in its ideal environment—the Bloomy Rind Cave, Natural Rind Cave, Washed Rind Cave, and Alpine Cave.
The temperature, humidity, and microbial activity in each cave are controlled and monitored with the greatest precision.
How You’ll Receive Burrino Pepato
Burrino Pepato is a handcrafted cheese—the piece you receive may differ from what’s pictured here in shape and proportion of cheese to butter.
Each Burrino is one pound. If you order a 1/2-pound piece, you’ll receive half of a Burrino, cut lengthwise and wrapped. If you order a 1-pound piece, you’ll receive a whole Burrino.
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