How to Use Leftover Cheese Ends and Crumbs

Cheese ends often come from different cheeses: a piece of kashar, a slice of white cheese, a little lor, or a hard end of aged kashar. Before using them together, separate the cheeses that melt from those that do not. Cheeses such as kashar, which are coagulated with rennet and aged, melt and stretch when heated. Fresh, acid-set cheeses such as lor and çökelek soften but do not run. Very aged, dry cheeses release their fat instead of melting. Group the ends according to these three behaviors, and use each group for its own purpose.

Grate and mix the melting cheese ends, then use them in dishes that call for melting cheese: on top of a pasta bake, vegetable gratin, or toast. Mix them into a kumpir filling with hot potatoes. A mixture of different kashar cheeses has a fuller flavor than a single kashar. Add a small amount of an end such as aged kashar, which has a sharp flavor but melts poorly, to a cheese that melts well; this gives you both good melting and flavor. If the entire mixture is made from sharp cheese, the topping dries out and becomes oily.

Nonmelting cheese ends go in savory pastry and pide fillings, menemen, and salads. Mash white cheese crumbs and lor with parsley, dill, and egg for a savory pastry filling; it holds its shape and does not run in the oven. Add the same crumbs to menemen in a pan with tomatoes and peppers. It is a mistake to put nonmelting cheese in the same sauce as melting cheese: while the sauce runs, the nonmelting cheese stays grainy and spoils the sauce’s texture. For a cheese sauce, choose ends only from the melting group; sprinkle the nonmelting cheeses on top at the last moment.

Cheese ends that dry out and harden in the refrigerator have not become useless, despite what you might think. They harden because they lose moisture, and dry cheese grates better than fresh cheese: it does not stick to a fine grater and falls like powder. Finely grate these ends and sprinkle them over pasta, soup, and salad. If an end has hardened so much that it is difficult to grate, cut off its hardened edge and grate the rest. Grate a dry end as soon as you take it out of the refrigerator so it does not warm up in your hand and become oily. Use this method only for cheese that has lost moisture but has not changed color or smell.

Another way to use cheese ends is to mash them. Mash different cheese crumbs with a little yogurt or butter, then mix in red pepper flakes, thyme, and finely chopped herbs to make a cheese spread for bread or breakfast. The spread is already salty because all the cheeses contain salt, so do not add salt. An end with visible mold should not be used for any of these purposes; whether moldy cheese can be trimmed is a separate question, and the decision should follow the guidance for that situation.