This is an Archive page. To see the current entry please click the Home Page link on the left to go to our new site.
Local Food Heroes
Leicester & Leicestershire Food
Red Leicester Cheese
Traditional ‘Farmhouse’ Red Leicester is a superb cheese, slightly flaky and full of nutty flavours. It isn't the red stuff that's like rubber sold so often, by supermarkets, as Red Leicester cheese.
Right, let's get some facts straight. The name Red Leicester only came about after World War II. Until then it was just known as Leicester. The colour comes from the addition of Annato, a vegetable dye extracted from a South American plant of very long usage. Whether the colouring originally came from carrot or beetroot is anybody's guess!
This centuries-old cheese, made from cows' milk with a fat content of 48%, weighs up to 48lbs and is best when six to nine months old.
Recently, there has been an acute shortage of ‘Leicestershire made’ Farmhouse Leicester. In fact, it seemed to be being made anywhere but Leicestershire!
The good news is that Farmhouse Red Leicester is being made again in the SW of the county. David and Jo Clarke have built a dairy on their farm at Upton and are producing real unpasturised hand-made cloth-bound Red Leicester. This Sparkenhoe Red Leicester Cheese is available from a number of local outlets and deserves to be more widely available. It's worth making a special trip to get it.
top of page