Well to my surprise it appears that different Dairy Queens have vastly different vendors for their cheese curds.
I was expecting to get what I considered the standard DQ cheese curd of white cheese curd and battered. I was surprised with not only yellow and breaded, but what appeared to not even be cheese curd, but rather chunks of cheese (pressed and aged) that was breaded and fried.
However I will judge these on the merits of what was presented rather than the difference from what my expectation was.
The temperature was good, and the cheese had a distinct flavor, most likely coming from the fact that it was a fully developed cheese rather than a curd. This was a plus on the flavor. There was however a serious knock against it in that being a full fledged cheese when melted too fast, it separated the oil from the body of the cheese. This gave a look and texture of microwaved cheese. While it didn't much affect the flavor, the presentation and mouth feel was quite off.
The breading was a bit thick, but was cooked thoroughly enough to no be doughy. I would call it too much crunch, but everyone has different preference on crunch.
To give credit to the cooks, given this material to work with they did the best they could. It was well prepared.
I almost feel bad giving this a rating as a cheese curd, because it really should be in a separate category of perhaps fried cheese, much like mozzarella sticks are, but they sell them as cheese curds, so I will have to grade them as cheese curds.
Even with the best efforts of the fry cooks, these "curds" cannot be given a score of higher than a 3, they just lacked too many of the things I would want in a curd.
Finally I would like to give a shout out to the crew that went to lunch and experimented in the Way of Curds today. Thanks to Lindsey, Scott, Linda, Melinda and Melissa .
That's the Way of Curds today,
-Matt
