Red Leicester Bite Ingot Truckle (Tesco Finest)

An admirable second entry under the “cheese ingot” banner, which as is well-documented elsewhere I am physiologically unable to resist. This is a pretty decent Red Leicester which is as easy to eat as the well-received blue Cheddar ingot equivalent – but, because it’s a Red Leicester, just a little bit less enjoyable in every way.

As with its Cheddar sibling, this cheese is one of few worthwhile purchases from the “Christmas Cheese” section of your local supermarket. There is quite a variety of exceedingly mediocre round wax-wrapped cheeses competing in that arena; Tesco’s high-end rectangular ingots are both much more satisfying to stack, and a great deal tastier, than all their round equivalents. Not only they are capable of achieving a vastly higher volume-filling fraction in three-dimensional space, but the underlying cheese in both these ingots is quite good. More Christmas-focused cheeses like Asda’s Christmas Cake Flavour Yorkshire Wensleydale score quite highly for their festive fun, but it’s a literally laughable prospect to consider purchasing and eating them outside December.

I find most supermarket Red Leicester induces bouts of crippling boredom or even the temporary near-total shutdown of all higher brain functions related to sensory stimulation; as I chew through the red, rubbery bulk in a vain attempt to extract even a scintilla of flavour, I ponder the twisting turns of life – the Christmas cards not quite sent, the phone calls left unmade – that led to me not just instead eating a Cheddar and enjoying it. This cheese suffers from that age-old problem.

Unlike the blue ingot, eating this cheese straight from the fridge will not be an enjoyable experience – very bland and flavourless. That said, when left out to warm for a really prolonged period of time (I eventually allowed this to rest overnight on the counter), some quite decent flavour can be coaxed out. This is a little softer than the Cheddar, and substantially sweeter; it actually has quite a deep, rich and nutty flavour. It’s milder than its blue brethren (no surprise as this is only marketed as Strength 4) but there’s a fair bit of bite there, gently soothed by Red Leicester’s sweeter flavour. The texture is excellent for Red Leicester – no rubbery supermarket tyre this, but a rather soft, moist and classy texture with a slight crunch.

Red Leicester is an excellent melting cheese, and this would taste great grilled on toast, but presumably no rational adult is buying a Tesco Finest Christmas cheese ingot with a cross-section of 4 square centimetres to carefully cut into tiny pieces and arrange on their toast. Thin apple slices would also be a great match for the sweet flavour.

I somewhat struggled to find a use case for this cheese; the Cheddar equivalent looks fancier thanks to its deep blue wax, and is for me more enjoyable to eat. That said, while I didn’t accidentally eat all of this in one ill-fated traverse past the fridge, I did eventually finish the ingot, pondering the whole while the fascinating lives of the people are who are buying this instead of Cheddar.

If you are a fan of Red Leicester, this is an admirable specimen when allowed to achieve its full taste potential, and I rate it 7 out of 10.