Into Norwegian culture: Getting to know Norwegian brown cheese

When it comes to Norwegian specialties, you usually think of salmon, right? But for Norwegians, many of their other specialties are not less iconic and if not saying, make them more proud than salmon because those are things you only find in Norway. One of them is Brunost, brown cheese. These are the images from a video I shot a few years ago when I interviewed Oyvind Skogsholm Hansen, a sales manager from Tine, the largest brown cheese company in Norway. He led me and my friends to their product display booth and introduce Tine’s most popular brown cheeses.

Although it is called cheese, brown cheese is not cheese because its cooking method and taste are completely different from those of cheese. Many people agree that it tastes like caramel or milk chocolate and the cooking method and taste are also similar. Brown cheese is usually made from a mixture of milk, cream, and whey, cooked to a thick consistency, molded, pressed, and left to rest to form a block like a cheese block. Oyvind tells me that Tine’s two most popular brown cheeses are made from 50% cows’ milk and 50% goats’ milk. The other type is the concentrated type because it is cooked longer and made entirely from goats’ milk, so it has a dark brown color, a richer and more unique taste. For me, this one is a bit too strong. I still prefer the cow milk mixture. This is also the most common type that is sold a lot in supermarkets and is commonly used in cafes and waffles.

You can eat brown cheese on its own like caramel or chocolate, but the most popular way to eat it is with whole-wheat bread and Norwegian waffles, which are thinner, softer and more fragrant than Belgian waffles. In addition, Norwegians also use brown cheese to make beef steak sauce or to use in cakes. I’ve tried to make a brown cheese cake once and it was absolutely delicious.

With that said, it would be difficult for you to imagine whether Vietnamese people like brown cheese, right? So let me show you the reactions of the Vietnamese people who tried the brown cheese that Håvard Muggerud brought to invite people at different streets. Looking at these reactions, you must have guessed that many Vietnamese people of all professions and ages seem to like brown cheese a lot.

If you have the opportunity to come to Norway, you should definitely try brown cheese!
You can watch the video below to get to know more. Since I spoke in Vietnamese, remember to turn on the English subtitles.