Washington—The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) this week awarded a patent for a dry blend useful in the manufacture of extended cheese products.

Inventors are Mostafa Galal and John Fannon.

The patent was assigned to Allied Blending & Ingredients, Inc.

As explained in the patent, extended cheese products generally refers to a cheese in which a filler has been added to extend the mass and volume of the cheese while maintaining the physical properties of the natural cheese. Extended cheese products are typically lower cost than other cheese types because the extending can be performed less expensively and because certain milk ingredients can be extended with cheaper products (e.g., extending milkfat with vegetable oil or milk protein with starch). However, replacing a conventional cheese composition ingredient can present one or more technical hurdles because cheese compositions are complex and their properties can be sensitive to (i.e., require) the presence and/or amount of certain ingredients.

It has been discovered that a unique combination of ingredients provides an extended cheese product that has excellent flexibility with respect to formulation changes because the resulting extended cheese product can exhibit substantially the same or improved properties (e.g., functional/processing properties, organoleptic properties, combinations of these, and the like) over a range of significantly different cheese formulations, while allowing for the reduction of casein, according to the patent summary.

There is disclosed in the summary a dry blend useful in the manufacture of making extended cheese products.

This dry blend is particularly useful for those who are making extended cheese products since the dry blend is easily used in the manufacture of extended cheese products by the addition of water, fat/oils, and cheese and/or cheese curds, and optionally the addition of flavoring to produce the desired product.

Further embodiments disclose, among other things, a pre-filled cheese extender package having a dry blend comprising: 45 to 65 percent modified food starch; 5 to 18 percent whey; 10 to 18 percent emulsifiers; 0 to 8 percent gums; and 1 to 5 percent acidulant, wherein said dry blend is homogenously blended and filled into said pre-filled cheese extender package.