How and why did cheese curds become such a big deal in Wisconsin?
On the eve of tasting and judging about 30 samples of cheese curds for the World Championship Cheese Contest, dairy experts Marianne Smukowski and Kerry Kaylegian enjoyed deepfried cheese curds with their meal.
They say they weren’t the only cheese judges at the restaurant enjoying an order of cheese curds that night. Mind you, all contest judges are dairy experts. Some traveled to Madison from halfway around the world.
All would be tasting many of the world’s finest cheeses. Yet, they could not resist the squeaky call of the curd.
Curds are the world’s greatest finger food, says Kaylegian, an associate research professor at Penn State University whose expertise includes dairy product quality.
The textural experience and snackability of curds appeals to Smukowski, a dairy industry specialist for 35 years.
Curds have risen from a Wisconsin exclusive to widespread distribution to near mythical heights.
How and why did cheese curds become such a big deal in Wisconsin?
The answer is 100 years in the making.
So, grab a bag of fresh curds and settle in for this serving of our What The Wisconsin? series that explores readers’ questions about America’s Dairyland.
Grassroots beginnings
An estimated 2,800 cheese factories dotted Wisconsin’s landscape in the 1920s, said Dean Sommer, cheese technologist at the Center for Dairy Research. Most cheesemakers made cheddar at that time.
With cheddar factories strung out across the countryside, everyone knew the cheesemaker and could walk into a plant and ask for curds, said Steve Stettler, who operates Decatur Dairy in Brodhead with his family. Stettler began making cheese in 1974, earned six master cheesemaker certifications, then in 2020 added his seventh certification when he became the first master cheesemaker for cheese curds.
“I guarantee you anyone making cheddar was eating fresh curds out of the vat,” Stettler said of Wisconsin’s early cheesemaking days.
Thousands of factories made it possible for a lot of Wisconsinites to get them fresh, Sommer said.
Multiply that experience over decades and Wisconsinites developed a taste and appreciation for curds.
Cheesemakers appreciated the cash flow.
“You get the milk in today, make the curds today, sell them today,” Sommer said.
It takes about five hours from filling vats with milk to filling bags with curds and cash registers with money. It could be months or years to get paid for curds pressed into forms for cheddar.
As Wisconsin lost most of its small, countryside cheddar factories during the last 100 years, customers didn’t lose their taste for curds.
In 1961, Wiskerchen Bros. Cheese Factory ran ads in the Marshfield New Herald promising “FRESH CHEESE CURDS Right From The Vat!!!” The curds were available in the afternoon seven days a week at the factory 9 miles east of Marshfield on County H.
Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery completed its cheese factory addition in
1968 and began producing cheddar cheese by the pound and cheese curds. Previously, the cooperative was a major butter manufacturer, but Ellsworth’s curds quickly became the top-selling specialty product. In 1983, Wisconsin Gov. Anthony S. Earl declared the city of Ellsworth the “Cheese Curd Capital of Wisconsin.”
Meanwhile, Stettler said Decatur Dairy customers started asking them to make curds in the 1970s.
Through the ’80s and ’90s, getting warm curds fresh from a cheesemaking neighbor was a less common experience, but curds weren’t going the way of the once widely popular Limburger cheese.
Distributing curds to the masses
Curds may have started as an afterthought at small countryside cheese factories but moved to top of mind at some of the biggest cheesemakers.
“It’s almost as if Wisconsin has been branded the home of fresh cheese curds,” Sommer said. “Those factories have really promoted it.”
Paul Bauer, CEO of Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery, gives a shoutout to the U.S. Department of Agriculture marketing grant they got in the mid-2000s that helped them expand their cheese curd distribution.
“I have about 150 people employed full time because of that grant,” Bauer said.
Ellsworth made a packaging improvement to extend shelf life of curds.
“We’ve been able to perfect and market a cheese curd that can still have that squeak for an extended shelf life and we’re able to bring that both on a national international scale,” Bauer said.
Shelf life isn’t an issue for most cheese. Flavors develop during the aging process that can stretch from months to years. Not curds. From the minute they’re bagged curds begin losing the squeak and delicate balance of clean milky flavor, salt and a little acid note because protein bonds loosen as part of its transformation into cheddar (or other) cheese.
That need for freshness limited the range for curd sales, which was overcome in the early days by having thousands
of cheddar cheesemakers.
However, efforts like those at Ellsworth and other Wisconsin cheesemakers changed the curdscape.
You can find curds in the refrigerated section at big grocery stores like Woodman’s Markets, Sommer said — something you would never have seen 20 to 30 years ago.
Keeping curds refrigerated can extend their shelf life to about a week. Only take out the curds you plan to eat for each serving and allow them to come up to room temperature. A few seconds in the microwave can also bring back the squeak.
On the deep-fried side, you nearly have to go out of your way to find a Wisconsin pub or supper club that doesn’t serve curds encrusted in golden fried breading or beer batter.
Heck, the Wisconsin-based Cousins Subs chain sells deep-fried cheese curds.
Culver’s, the Wisconsin-based chain known for butter burgers and frozen custard, has been “exporting Wisconsin” (as Craig Culver puts it) to other states. Deep-fried cheese curds were added to the menu in 1997, the same year Culver’s opened its first restaurant outside the Midwest. Today, there are more than 855 Culver’s locations in 25 states. Customers last year gobbled up more than 48 million orders of Culver’s cheese curds — all of them coming from La Grander Hillside Diary in Stanley.
Culver’s created the first National Cheese Curd Day in 2015. Celebrated Oct. 15, it’s not a federally recognized holiday but certainly a good excuse to chow down on curds. And, for one glorious day in 2021, that included a bunsized cheese curd topping a burger patty.
Any cheesemaker could make cheese curds, right?
Widespread fame can bring curd competition from cheesemakers outside Wisconsin.
“Though cheese curds are a familiar staple in Wisconsin, the tradition is becoming a sales phenomenon far beyond the Upper Midwest,” WCMA Executive Director John Umhoefer said in a December media release announcing the addition of curds to the World Championship Cheese Contest.
Nearly every cheese life cycle includes a cheese-curd stage. The curd stage comes after heating milk with a whey starter and rennet but before being pressed into shape (blocks, spheres, wheels) for aging.
Wisconsin produces more than 3 billion pounds of cheese annually. That’s about 25% of all cheese made in the United States. That’s impressive, but cheese does get made in other states. Curds are part of that process.
Entries in the World Championship Cheese Contest cheese curd categories included curds from states not named Wisconsin.
Stettler was surprised by the number of entries from outside Wisconsin.
With curds moving from state to regional to national obsession, Wisconsin cheesemakers will vehemently defend its curd titles.
Still celebrating curds in Wisconsin
In 2002, a couple decades after being declared the cheese curd capital, Ellsworth decided that maybe we should hold a Cheese Curd Festival to commemorate that achievement. What started like most small-town festivals with a couple thousand attendees has grown to a major undertaking.
Bauer said it takes about nine months of planning and work to pull of the festival each year.
The event draws about 30,000 with about 3 tons of cheese curds consumed during the two-day festival, this year set for June 24 and 25. For more information, see
Further proving Wisconsin’s cheese curd prowess, Ellsworth Cooperative and Decatur Dairy won the inaugural cheese curd and flavored cheese curd categories at this year’s World Championship Cheese Contest.
“Getting first place, that was about as good as it gets,” Stettler said.
America’s Dairyland will likely always be revered as the home of the fresh cheese nuggets.
“Wisconsin is the cheese center of the United States, so while there are other cheese plants that make cheese curds they’re just more identifiable to this region,” Bauer said. “Similar to wine regions or BBQ regions. People have a lot of allegiance to a local food – even if it’s not local to them.”
Have a question for What the Wisconsin? Visit bit.ly/whatthewisconsin. Contact Daniel Higgins dphiggin@gannett.com. Follow @HigginsEats on Twitter and Instagram and like on Facebook.