Whenever I hear 'Philadelphia' I always thick of the TV advertising of the 2 angels in heaven eating this soft cheese with crackers. I suppose that's the marking of good advertising. I have never actually tried the original Philadelphia but it is basically a creamy soft cheese manufactured by Kraft (a massive manufacturer of a whole array of food brands).
I like flavoursome cheese and seeing as I love soft cheese with flavouring like garlic, chives, herbs etc...this looked really appealing - Kraft Philadelphian Light Garlic and Herbs.' By 'Light' they actually mean, less fat and calories than the original. It's not 'low fat' and the product even details it to be - 'a medium fat soft cheese with garlic and herbs.' There is still 47kcal, 3.5g of fat and 2.3g of saturated fat per 30g serving. I don't know how much a 30g serving rquates to; I'll guess it's roughly one tablespoon and a half. That's ok if
you have delicate taste buds and this amount will satisfy you but I love strong flavours and could easily have a lot more. On the other hand, I don't like really creamy things and as this is a 'medium fat spft cheesey' it is a lot thicker and creamier than the low fat soft cheese spreads so I find that I use only small amounts anyway.
The packaging is brilliant; a 200g/300g plastic tub with plastic resealable lid (great for other uses when you've finished the tub). The tub is a silvery grey colour with a picture of a garlic bulb amongst some covers and grass. Taking of the lid, the cheese is further sealed with a peel back tin foil for freshness. It coats £1.32 for a 200g tub or £1.83 for a 300g tub - a fair bit more than supermarket own brands.
The cheese is pure white and dotted with bits of green herb. It actually only smells mildly of garlic and there isn't any prominent 'plastic' cheese smell either, so it wont stink out your kitchen- (Not good for warding off vampires, though if vampires are as handsome as Robert Paterson in 'Twilight' I wouldn't mind!). Digging my knife in, I find that it is very thick and once you've taken a knifeful out, it leaves a big indent. The good thing is, it does not go watery afterwards. It stays firm unlike low fat soft cheese spread.
The taste is very creamy and the texture is really soft, smooth and thick in my mouth - it's easy to just grab a spoon and took in. The garlic taste is mild compared to the soft cheese and herb taste but it's prominent enough to recognise it as an aftertaste. The cheese and herb tastes of chive, which is very light and refreshing. I ate mine with breadsticks - divine! The mild light spread went perfectly with the crisp crunchy breadstick.
You can also get:
Light with basil
With with chive
Extra light
Light
Original full fat
mini tubs
If you log onto the website: www.philadelphia.co.uk they have loads of recipe ideas with the range of soft cheeses. There's one for garlic and herb topped salmon fillet for this cheese which sounds lovely!The only added ingredients to the pasteurised milk are: garlic (1.3%); stabilisers; herbs and citric acid.
Now, as lovely as this cheese is, I probably will be sticking to the Supermarkets own brands of extra light flavoured soft cheeses. My only concern is that, this cheese is so soothing, creamy, cheesy and well flavoured, that I would be tempted to have about half the tub (it's less sickly when eating it with bread sticks!), and considering the nutritional info, this wouldn't be good. On the other hand, I am probably over -exaggerating seeing as you get so much more contents than you expect. I just kept digging and digging through the layers of thick soft cheese and it seemed to never reach the bottom of the tub! It is well worth the money, for a 200g (not sure 300g is worth close to £3) but at the end of the day, you are only paying for the brand. Supermarkets do their own full, medium, light and extra light soft cheeses for half the price per 100g.
Overall, I lovely tasty product with a mild garlic taste, so don't fret about bad breath (well, you may wanna brush your teeth afterwards just in case).
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