Buzz
Burrata is truly a masterpiece. For those unfamiliar, it’s a cheese made with a delicate mozzarella shell, enveloping a rich blend of mozzarella curds and cream. This inner blend is called 'stracciatella,' and it sets burrata apart from regular mozzarella. Personally, I enjoy burrata with stone fruit or in a caprese salad, though we’ll have to wait a few months for fresh peaches and tomatoes to be in season.
There's an Instagram video circulating that suggests you can create stracciatella by mixing store-bought mozzarella with heavy cream. Unfortunately, that's not accurate.
In the video, MacKenzie Smith from grilledcheesesocial breaks mozzarella into small pieces, drenches them in heavy cream, adds a pinch of salt, and allows the cheese to soak in the cream for 'at least half an hour.' Then, she spreads the mixture on bread, drizzles truffle oil on top, and seasons with pepper.
I tried the same thing—without the truffle oil—and can confirm that this hack doesn't create stracciatella because, scientifically, it just isn't possible.
The mix of cheese and heavy cream doesn’t taste bad, as you'd expect from cream and cheese. It works on bread and tastes fine, but it's much heavier and less refined than authentic stracciatella. Transforming store-bought mozzarella into stracciatella would be like turning butter into whipped cream; while they share some ingredients, both butter and mozzarella have gone through chemical and structural changes that can't be reversed. It's a process that can't be undone, like a cow that's already been milked.
The difference between mozzarella, burrata, and stracciatella
As I mentioned before, burrata consists of two parts: mozzarella and stracciatella. According to allrecipes, the process of making burrata begins almost identically to making mozzarella:
Making burrata starts with cultures and rennet being added to warm, fresh cow’s milk, just like any cheese. As the milk begins to curdle, the whey separates and is drained away. Next, boiling water is poured over the curds, which are then stretched, essentially creating mozzarella.
Fresh curds are then placed inside the mozzarella, along with cream, and the mozzarella is wrapped around the mixture. The curds have a ragged, torn look, which is why it's called 'stracciatella'—'stracciatella' means 'rag' in Italian. (And the curds do resemble torn, stretched rags, especially if you squint a bit.)
Mozzarella can't revert back to being curds. The texture of mozzarella is much denser and chewier than curds, and simply adding cream won't change that.
But does it taste good?
The combination of cream and torn mozzarella does taste good. It's much heavier and more substantial than true stracciatella, but I enjoyed it on bread with some olive oil and pepper. While stracciatella is light, tender, and delicately creamy, this 'hacked' version is firmer, a bit chewy, and loaded with heavy cream. It’s a little too rich to indulge in too much at once, but that's not necessarily a downside.
I’m not sure why you'd bother making this yourself, though, since DIYing it doesn’t really save much money. To create this imitation stracciatella, I bought a three-dollar ball of mozzarella (on a deep sale) and a two-dollar half-pint of heavy cream. That's five bucks, and you can buy burrata for six. It might not be the highest quality, but it’s still burrata, which means it’ll have real stracciatella inside.
