Monterey Jack Cheese
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Monterey Jack is one of the few distinctively American cheeses, not imported from somewhere else but actually developed on the North American continent. (Do not confuse this with "American Cheese", a strange and disquieting pale-orange and tasteless imitation of cheese).
Monterey Jack (colloquially called just "Jack") is a fairly soft cheese, somewhat similar to mozzarella, but with a less robust flavor, as it is normally made from skim milk. It tends to be quite creamy in texture, and indeed cream is perhaps the best way to describe its flavor: mild, but distinct and pleasant. This retiring taste leads to flavored Jack cheeses, with "Pepper Jack" (filled with bits of chopped jalapeno peppers) being quite common in the western United States. If you look hard enough, you may also find other flavors including pesto, garlic, onion, smoked salmon, habanero and caraway.
Monterey Jack has a fat content of roughly 25% and a water content of roughly 45%...sort of middle-of-the-road for cheeses in both cases.
The cheese originated in the 18th century as a "queso del pais,"or "country cheese," made by the Spanish missionaries in California. The name apparently originated in the 1880s when a businessman named David Jacks began shipping the cheese out in large quantities from the pleasant coastal town of Monterey. Somewhere along the line the "s" vanished from his name, perhaps as the result of improper punctuation in referring to "Monterey Jack's" cheese.
In trendier places, particularly in California, you will also find an aged variety called Dry Jack, which compares favorably with Parmesan or Romano. This cheese was invented during World War I when shipments of imported hard cheeses from Italy were disrupted.
About 1/10 the cheese produced in California (by weight) is Monterey Jack these days. In 1996 this amounted to over 100 million pounds of cheese (very nearly 50 million kilos for those of you with rational systems of weights and measures).
Monterey Jack (colloquially called just "Jack") is a fairly soft cheese, somewhat similar to mozzarella, but with a less robust flavor, as it is normally made from skim milk. It tends to be quite creamy in texture, and indeed cream is perhaps the best way to describe its flavor: mild, but distinct and pleasant. This retiring taste leads to flavored Jack cheeses, with "Pepper Jack" (filled with bits of chopped jalapeno peppers) being quite common in the western United States. If you look hard enough, you may also find other flavors including pesto, garlic, onion, smoked salmon, habanero and caraway.
Monterey Jack has a fat content of roughly 25% and a water content of roughly 45%...sort of middle-of-the-road for cheeses in both cases.
The cheese originated in the 18th century as a "queso del pais,"or "country cheese," made by the Spanish missionaries in California. The name apparently originated in the 1880s when a businessman named David Jacks began shipping the cheese out in large quantities from the pleasant coastal town of Monterey. Somewhere along the line the "s" vanished from his name, perhaps as the result of improper punctuation in referring to "Monterey Jack's" cheese.
In trendier places, particularly in California, you will also find an aged variety called Dry Jack, which compares favorably with Parmesan or Romano. This cheese was invented during World War I when shipments of imported hard cheeses from Italy were disrupted.
About 1/10 the cheese produced in California (by weight) is Monterey Jack these days. In 1996 this amounted to over 100 million pounds of cheese (very nearly 50 million kilos for those of you with rational systems of weights and measures).
