Today we’re going to talk about haloumi cheese. Some people have heard of this, and some haven’t. You either know it and use it often because it’s delicious, or you haven’t really heard about it and are hesitant to try it because it’s an unusual cheese. It’s one of the only cheeses that’s usually eaten cooked brown on the outside. So, let’s talk about haloumi cheese.
Haloumi has a rich history that goes back several centuries. It’s from the Eastern Mediterranean region – traditionally associated with Cyprus from the Mediterranean, but both Greek and Turkish people claim haloumi as a key part of their culinary heritage. There are early written references from the medieval period to a cheese that sounds similar to it. Some people say haloumi dates back to the 10th century in the Byzantine Empire.
The name “haloumi” is said to be derived from the Coptic Egyptian word “halom”, meaning “cheese”, so it might even have older connections to Egypt. During the Ottoman Rule of Cyprus in the 1500s to the 1800s, haloumi became widespread throughout the Middle East, and then spread into North Africa.
Traditionally, it’s made from goats and sheep’s milk combined, but sometimes more modern recipes use cow’s milk. It’s unique in that it’s un-ripened and it’s semi hard. It has a very high melting point, so it can be grilled or fried, and it doesn’t lose its shape like other cheese does. It’s also brined, giving it a salty flavor, and a longer shelf life, which is important in the Mediterranean, especially before refrigeration, as it’s very hot there. The method of making haloumi was developed as a practical way to preserve the milk in the region’s hot climate. Families or village communities would make haloumi batches, and then store it in brine or wrap it in mint leaves. The mint helped to preserve the cheese and deter mold from growing.
These days, it’s very popular globally; in the UK, the EU, and the Middle East, for its unique texture and versatility. It was given the Protected Designation of Origin status in the EU, so now only traditional methods can be officially used to make haloumi and sell it.
So, let’s talk about how it’s made. The mixture of sheep and goat’s milk is used, and an enzyme to coagulate the milk, called the rennet. Unlike most other cheeses, it doesn’t use a starter culture. Then salt would be added, and sometimes it’s folded between layers of mint leaves.
The milk would gently be heated to around 32 degrees Celsius or 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the rennet would be added to coagulate the milk – there’s no starter culture, as I said. After that, it would be left to rest for about half an hour, and form a soft curd. The curd would then be cut into small cubes, like mozzarella, to release the whey. Then it’s allowed to sit, and gently stirred, and then the curds would be heated again to about 38 degrees Celsius, or 100 Fahrenheit, for another half an hour or a bit longer.
Then the curds would be left to settle, and then they’d be scooped out and placed into a cheese mold or a muslin lined basket to drain the whey. They’d be lightly pressed to expel more whey and start to shape the cheese. This next part is unusual for cheese making – the cheese blocks would be cooked in the hot whey until they float. This cooking step gives it its characteristic, rubbery texture, and also the high melting point.
After this cooking, the cheeses are salted and folded – they may be salted by hand or placed in brine. It can be stored in the brine or dry salted, and it’s kept cool. Traditionally, it’s aged for a few days to a few weeks, although it can be eaten fresh.
So, how is it used, and how do you cook it? It’s one of the most versatile cheeses in the kitchen – it’s salty. It’s chewy. You can do it on the grill. First, let’s talk about how it’s prepared once it’s made. Preparing haloumi is quick, but it’s definitely unusual as far as cheese goes. It has a high melting point, as I said, and it holds its shape beautifully when it’s cooked.
Pan frying is the most common method. I do enjoy this method myself, but I’ve also used the oven method, and grilled it. In the pan, with the haloumi, you would use something like coconut oil or olive oil to cook it in. You cut it up into one centimeter thick slices – that’s about half an inch – or you can cut it into cubes.
Then you need to brown all the sides. Depending on what you’re going to use it for, you may want to pat it dry if it’s been in a brine, and then you heat a pan to medium heat, and add a tiny bit of your oil. As you add the slices to the pan, move them around gently in the oil so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. So, you add your slices or your cubes, and then you cook for one or two minutes per side, until it’s golden brown and crispy. You might want to add a little bit of salt, depending on how salty your haloumi is. Some kinds are already quite salty, while other kinds need a bit of salt. I also like to add a little bit of lemon juice over it. It’s delicious! You can do that either when you take it out of the pan, or while it’s still in the pan.
Again, make sure your pan is hot enough before you put the haloumi in. If you start with a cold pan, the haloumi starts to melt before it actually gets crispy, so you want a nice hot pan. Add the haloumi, cook it a little bit on each side, and then you get that nice brown crispy effect.
For grilled haloumi, you preheat your grill, and grill it on each side, or you can put it in the oven under the grill. Again, you can sprinkle a bit of olive oil and salt on it, and grill each side for a few minutes. Keep a close eye on it, and you’ll see it’ll start to bubble and look crispy on top.
Once you’ve prepared it, you can use it for a number of things. I’m going to mention a couple of recipes from our Elegant Easy Appetizers cookbook for haloumi. You can use it as a meat substitute. Vegetarians enjoy haloumi. It’s a good meat substitute because it adds something substantial to your salad or whatever you’re eating. You can use grilled or fried haloumi instead of meat in salads, sandwiches, et cetera. You can use it on skewers and kebabs. Use the cubed version, and intersperse it with grilled vegetables.
You can put haloumi as a topping for a salad or vegetables, or you can use it inside of a wrap, a taco, or a pita bread; crumbled or diced with whatever else you’re putting in there for breakfast or brunch. You can serve pieces of haloumi with your eggs, or your toast and bacon. It is quite rich, so maybe bacon plus haloumi is a little bit much. It’s nice to use it with the egg and toast, though. In Middle Eastern places, they’ll add it to breakfast wraps. In or on top of salads, it adds that salty richness, and good texture.
You can use it simply as a standalone appetizer, with lemon wedges or a dip like sweet chili sauce or hummus. The first haloumi recipe we do in our book is a prosciutto-wrapped haloumi stick as an appetizer. You simply cut up your haloumi into long sticks, and you wrap each stick in a piece of prosciutto. Then you pan fry it, as I mentioned, on each side, and serve it with a sweet chili sauce dip. That’s amazing, and it’s my favorite way to do it.
The other one uses zucchini or green marrow, slicing it with a vegetable peeler into thin strips. Then you steam the strips and mix in a little bit of basil pesto. It shouldn’t be over-steamed, because it will disintegrate, so just steam it until it’s nice to eat, and mix in a little basil pesto to that zucchini. This part is optional – you can also steam some pieces of red or yellow pepper, and mix those up with a little bit of olive oil and salt.
Then you’ve got these two vegetables, and you grill your haloumi sticks and put them on top. It tastes amazing with just the zucchini, but it’s also wonderful with the red pepper. Those three things together make an amazing appetizer. Add a bit of lemon juice over the top. Very delicious!
You can also use haloumi in a curry. It won’t melt; it’ll hold its shape, and it has a chewy texture. People also use it in Mediterranean stews
Haloumi with watermelon is an unusual idea. This is a classic Cypriot summer dish with watermelon and warm haloumi slices, with a bit of mint and olive oil. Haloumi salad would just be mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and some cubes of haloumi with a lemon vinaigrette. There’s grilled haloumi. Deep fried haloumi is similar to fries. You can use it as fries with a dipping sauce.
I already mentioned wraps or pita breads; warm flatbread stuffed with the grilled haloumi and your other salad ingredients. Haloumi is really nice when it’s warm, because it adds something to a salad. If you have a cold salad with a little bit of a warm cheese, that’s really nice.
You can use it in haloumi burgers, with thick slices of grilled haloumi in place of the patty. Alternatively, you could have your beef patty with some slices of haloumi on top, and add in some roasted red pepper or pesto in there too. In your tacos you can use the pan-fried haloumi with avocado. Haloumi with cabbage slaw and a lime chili dressing is also an amazing flavor.
For haloumi pasta, you can toss your fried haloumi cubes into the pasta with tomatoes, olives, and fresh herbs like basil. You can make haloumi shakshuka by adding chunks of haloumi to a tomato based shakshuka. You can even add it to a vegetable stir fry. You would cook the haloumi first; brown it on each side, and then saute your vegetables and add the cubes of haloumi back to the pan with a splash of soy sauce and some sesame seeds.
Then there are haloumi stuffed peppers or mushrooms. You cook up your haloumi, you bake your vegetables and mix them together and perhaps add a grain like quinoa, and then stuff your mushrooms with that. Delicious!
A Turkish breakfast spread is a great way to enjoy your haloumi. The highlight of the dish is your grilled or fried haloumi. You slice it and cook it, and then on the side, you could have a fresh vegetable platter with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and radishes. You could have a marinated olives bowl, and a bread selection with sesame bread or toasted pita bread. You could have some sweet jams or spreads, some tahini, some other cheeses, and some kinds of eggs, perhaps boiled eggs. You could have filo pastry rolls filled with cheese, and have some Turkish black tea – all these things served at the same time in little bowls. It’s an elegant spread.
Turkish cuisine also uses haloumi in a pastry. Savory pastry made with filo dough can be filled with grated haloumi cheese – you would grate it before you cook it. That would be a very different experience, with a different texture. You would add a bit of mint and parsley, and then bake the pastry until it’s done.
Turkish Kofta is meatballs with grated haloumi mixed into the potato and herb mixture. It can be done with or without the meat. There’s also a Turkish flatbread which can be topped with haloumi, tomato, peppers, et cetera, and sometimes egg.
Then, from the Greek side of things, there’s haloumi saganaki. This is a twist on the famous cheese saganaki dish, and it’s basically thick slices of haloumi which are pan fried until they’re golden and crispy, and served with lemon and crusty bread.
There’s haloumi with ladera, which is vegetables in olive oil. The haloumi would be served with a Greek vegetable stew, like roasted vegetables in olive oil, or green beans and tomato sauce. The haloumi adds that salty richness and the protein to these vegetable dishes. The haloumi meze plate would also be Greek. A meze spread could have olives, dolmades, which are those stuffed vine leaves, tzatziki, pita breads, roasted peppers, and of course the grilled haloumi. This is a perfect appetizer or light dinner.
There’s the spanakopita, the spinach pie, but with haloumi added to the usual feta spinach filling to give it extra texture and saltiness. There are haloumi pita wraps. This would have grilled haloumi stuffed into a warm peter bread with tomato, onion, lettuce, cucumber, and tzatziki or hummus.
Then there’s haloumi pasta with Greek flavors – pasta tossed with the grilled haloumi cubes that have been cooked. Most of these dishes, except for the one with grated haloumi, will use it cooked. There’s cherry tomatoes, spinach, olives, capers, and a bit of olive oil in that pasta.
So, haloumi always goes well with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt, and that’s all you need, but it’s sometimes paired with a bit of mint, and there are the dips, things like tzatziki and hummus. I like it with sweet chili sauce. You can have it with vegetables and salad, ingredients like tomato, cucumber, arugula, grilled vegetables, et cetera.
Try it on its own first – cook up some in a pan. Get it nice and crispy and golden, and then try some in your oven. You can even do it on a bake setting if you just watch it until it looks ready. Try both of those methods. You may find you enjoy one more than the other, and you prefer one style. Find your favorite style, and then try it with a few different dips. Try it with sweet chili sauce. Try it with simply lemon juice sprinkled on top before you eat it, and try it with different meals. Try it with a salad, try it with breakfast, try it with dinner, or with some steamed vegetables, like the zucchini and red pepper, and find your favorite ways to have it. Maybe try the prosciutto wrapped method. You may find that you have something to add to your dinner rotation that you really enjoy, that enhances your salads, your side dishes, and even your main dish.
Haloumi is truly one of the most amazing cheeses out there. It’s unique, and most people haven’t actually tried it. Why don’t you try it? Use it for one of your new family fun night appetizers, or just have a fun family dinnertime with something new. I hope you’re brave enough to try it. Let me know what you think. If you’d like to see our recipe book, it’s on familyfoodformoms.com. It’s called Elegant Easy Appetizers, and all the appetizers are simple, with five ingredients. They’re easy to make for a family dinner, but they look elegant, and they add some class to your your meal.
