Agroaldea
It depends on your taste, but it should only be ingested if it is natural.
Cheese is a very complete and versatile food from a gastronomic point of view. Its multiple varieties, textures and flavors allow their presence at the table to be very varied and extensive.
Whether as a tasting on a table, molten, gratin, sliced for sandwiches or even in cakes and desserts, cheese admits different preparations to enjoy at different times of the day. But, Can you eat the crust?.
Spanish legislation, in the Quality standard for cheeses, allows the use of different coating materials and surface treatments for aged cheeses: olive oil and other edible vegetable oils, peppers, Pepper, aromatic plants, wine and cider, waxes, paraffins, polymeric materials (with or without colorants), expressly prepared mineral oils and smoke applied directly to the bark in the smoking process. Like this, depending on the type of crust there are two kinds of cheeses, those of natural bark and those of artificial bark.
Artificial bark. It is made to control humidity and ripening conditions, to protect the cheese from the development of microorganisms that would alter the product, bumps or damage and to achieve a certain look. Artificial rinds can be made of various materials, from wax or vegetable extracts, even synthetics, as certain plastics.
Natural bark. Within the natural rind cheeses, edible according to taste, there is also a diversity of products. In this group are the cheeses that develop the rind when drying in controlled environments.
This natural bark, whose hardness depends on the drying time, often must undergo washing or brushing during processing. Its taste is usually bitter and, sometimes, becomes covered in mold during the ripening process.
There are also cheeses that are bathed in water, beer, wine or brine and develop a specially colored crust, greasy and strong smelling, that is rarely consumed even if it is suitable.
In which cases can the cheese rind be eaten?:
The following are some examples of cheeses with edible natural rind:
Cheeses with a rind with blue-gray mold, like some typical of France: Dung, Valençay.
Soft and whitish rind, covered in some kind of fluff, like Brie, Camembert.
Semi-cured or semi-soft, with rinds ranging from sticky, orange or tan, even thick and gray.
Other semi-soft cheeses, like El Edam o Havarti, develop a greyish mold that is cleaned or brushed to a leather-like rind that protects it as it matures.
Hard and leathery bark, like the Emmental, Cheddar, Parmesan, Manchego, Idiazábal.
White rind blue cheeses, fluffy, sticky or hard, as Roquefort, Cabrales or Gorgonzola.