("Dio e Zingaro" by La Municipale Balcanica)
- Hi everyone, I'm Jerry James Stone,
and in today's video I'm gonna talk to you
about three different ways
that you can go ahead and just soften cream cheese.
Let's get to it.
So the easiest way, the straight-up easiest way
to soften cream cheese is to just put it on the counter.
If it comes in a box take it out of the box.
Leave it in the foil that it's in.
Put it on the counter
and just let it sit there for at least an hour or so.
The reason that this is the best way, and the easiest way,
is one, you don't have to do anything
other than open up the package,
and if you can't do that you can't cream cheese anyway.
But the second reason is
that all the other methods that I'm about to go over,
involve applying heat.
And so, while they work, and they're great,
especially if you don't have an hour to kill,
like maybe you forgot
that you needed softened cream cheese or something.
But the problem is is when you're applying heat,
that means the exterior of the cream cheese
is receiving heat,
while the middle of the cream cheese is still really cold,
so it's a little bit uneven and it can be a little tricky,
and you can have part of it where it's almost runny
and some of it's still kinda cold and firm,
and it's just not as consistent, always.
Whereas if you just put it on the counter,
let it sit for an hour or so, you'll be good to go.
So the second way to do it is to microwave it.
So for this you definitely want to take the cream cheese
out of the foil package.
You do not want to put anything foil or metal-like
into the microwave.
Take the cream cheese out
and put it on a microwave-safe plate,
and just put it in the microwave
and nuke it for about 15 seconds at a time.
(microwave humming)
(microwave dings)
Once again, this is a lot faster
than putting it on the counter
where you just let it sit there for an hour,
but the thing is, like I said,
because you're applying heat
there can be some inconsistencies on the firmness
throughout the cream cheese.
So just something to think about.
If you remember, just take it out of the fridge,
put it on the counter, leave it there for a while.
If you forget, the microwave is a great next step.
One thing that's a little faster than the microwave
is actually using hot water.
So you can take the cream cheese
out of the box that it came in, leave it in the foil,
and put it in a bowl of water that's warm.
This'll take about 10 minutes
to thaw out and soften the cream cheese.
Once again, coming back to what I said earlier,
you're applying heat so you're gonna have some unevenness.
So if you forgot to take the cream cheese out,
this is perfect if you need it in 10 minutes,
but it's not gonna be as consistent or as great
if just letting it soften on the counter.
Lastly, there's one little trick that kind of is
a hybrid of all the things.
So you can actually cut the cream cheese into cubes
and leave it on the counter and it'll actually thaw faster.
So if you take it out of the refrigerator,
remove it from the box, open up the tinfoil,
and then chop that cream cheese into cubes,
one inch cubes, and leave it on the counter.
By having more surface area exposed to the room temperature,
it softens a lot faster.
So this can take it from softening
for an hour on the counter as a solid piece of cream cheese
to down to 20 minutes.
And in my opinion,
that's a lot better than using the microwave
or the hot water,
because once again you're not applying heat,
you're just using the room temperature.
So that's a few different ways to soften cream cheese.
I hope this video was helpful for you.
If it was, hey, give me a thumbs-up.
If there's something that you want to know about,
drop a comment below.
And if you like to cook like I do,
I release new videos every single week,
so see you next time.