Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cheese from Imsil County, North Jeolla, South Korea

Imsil cheese임실치즈

The cheese of Korea's first domestic cheese factory, begun in Imsil by a Belgian priest who had local farmers raise goats and turn surplus goat milk into cheese; production later switched to cow milk. Fresh milk from local farms is pasteurised and made into cheese the way Western cheeses are, and most of it is a mozzarella-like pizza cheese.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Imsil cheese itself.

Short entryCheese

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe sources give no recipe; in 2005 the plant made five tons a day.
Fresh cow milk from local farms (originally goat milk)[joongang2005][jjan2012]
Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Fresh milk from local farms is collected and pasteurised

Step 1 of 3
Collect and pasteurise the milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Milk is collected fresh every morning from local farms into tanks at the Imsil Nonghyup plant and pasteurised.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

The cheese of Korea's first domestic cheese factory, begun in Imsil by a Belgian priest who had local farmers raise goats and turn surplus goat milk into cheese; production later switched to cow milk. Fresh milk from local farms is pasteurised and made into cheese the way Western cheeses are, and most of it is a mozzarella-like pizza cheese.

What makes this one different

Not a traditional Korean ferment but a mid-20th-century transfer of Western cheesemaking to a Korean farming county, first with goat milk, then with cow milk.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Father Didier t'Serstevens arrived in Korea in December 1958, kept two goats at his Imsil church and urged farmers to raise goats and make cheese from surplus milk. He handed the business to the workers in 1981; it is now run by Nonghyup (Korea JoongAng Daily, 2005).

  1. [joongang2005] Jang Dae-suk and Lee Min-a (2005). A 4-decade history of cheesemaking. Korea JoongAng Daily, 21 June 2005web
  2. [jjan2012] Lee Hwa-jeong (2012). 국내산 우유로 만든 임실 치즈 (Imsil cheese made from domestic milk). Jeonbuk Ilbo, 6 December 2012web