October 15 National Cheese Curd Day

Did you know October 15 is National Cheese Curd Day! Come and celebrate at Culver’s, where you will always find the cheesiest most delicious cheese curds around!

If there is one thing I know, thanks to living in Wisconsin throughout my high school and college years, it’s a good cheese curd. I feel like it’s a Wisconsin rite of passage to visit a cheese factory at some point in your time there where you get to learn how cheese is made and, in the final moments of the tour, you get to sample those squeaky cheese curds! In fact, now that we are in living in Chicago, every time we head up north we have to stop at a cheese shop to pick up a few bags, the squeakier the better! So when I was asked to attend the Culver’s Cheese Curd Challenge last week, you bet your bottom dollar I made sure I could go!

National Cheese Curd Day

The Culver’s Cheese Curd Challenge was brought about when Emily Hallock, a contestant on the current season of cooking reality show MasterChef, shared her love for, and connection to, cheddar cheese when it was the centerpiece of the first challenge of the season. Out of 40 home chefs, she made it to the Top 10. Later in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, Emily was asked what her cheesehead craving is, and replied, “It is Culver’s cheese curds every time I get up to Wisconsin. Always.”

So in anticipation of National Cheese Curd Day (October 15!), Culver’s invited Emily to join their executive chef, Quinn Adkins, for a timed competition to determine who between them can create the best, most cheese curd-worthy dipping sauce thus the Culver’s Cheese Curd Challenge!

Culver’s Cheese Curd Challenge took place in one of my favorite shopping and dining experiences in downtown Chicago, Eataly. As we waited for Culver’s President and CEO, Joe Koss, to begin the competition (seen speaking into the mic two photos above), we had some time to enjoy their Curd-themed photo op area complete with a giant stuffed C-U-R-D-I-S (he’s a curd nerd!) and some fun Culver’s Cheese Curd props!Gotta love my Wisconsin cheddar and Culver’s cheese curds! (Photo taken by my lovely friend, Jackie!)Each chef had 25 minutes to prepare their version of the best cheese curd dipping sauce and both brought their A game! It was so fun to watch both Chef Quinn and Emily in their respective cooking zones. I gotta give it to them, they were both grace under pressure…and there was a lot of pressure mixing and measuring and perfecting their recipes with a crowd watching their every move and the judges panel asking them question after question while they worked.
Emily was all smiles the entire time! She is a total professional in the timed recipe creating after her run on Master Chef!These are the dipping sauces each chef created. We all loved them both and our judges panel had the hardest time picking a winner. Emily’s sauce is the top one (photo above), she used basil to create an infused basil oil over top of a creamy dip that screamed fresh herbs…it was deeeliicious!

Quinn’s sauce is the bottom one, his had tons of cheese flavor with the slightest hint of blue cheese…it was so good!
And of course, how could I forget to show you that vital dipping tool, the Culver’s Cheese Curd! Did you know that every Culver’s Cheese Curd comes from La Grander Hillside Dairy in Stanley, WI?!! You know what I’m thinking, right? ROADTRIP!!!!

And because I love me some fun trivia…over 22.9 million orders of Culver’s Cheese Curds were sold last year! Laid end-to-end, that would stretch to the moon two times over!!The judges deliberated for quite a while but in the end finally chose a winner….Chef Quinn Adkins!Each chef walked away with an embroidered apron given out by Joe Koss.