Yes, You Really Can Use Dental Floss To Cut Cheese

Cutting cheese into neat sections can be difficult, especially when you use a knife; but it doesn't have to be any longer. Yes, cheese knives exist; but, with one tool you never knew you needed, you can slice cheese easily, make sure you cut all the way through, and not feel like the entire process is difficult and draining.

The key to making cheese-cutting simple is to have the right supplies to get those neat, even lines and not get caught in a thick piece of cheese. All you'll need is a common household item, but there's a twist — you won't find this tool in the kitchen. You may need to go to another room to grab it; but, once you use it to cut cheese, those extra few seconds won't matter one bit. This simple-but-impactful technique works on soft cheeses, but it can also work its magic on some hard cheeses too. It's all in your ability to make use of an item you use every day for a completely different purpose and apply it to that big "cheese chop."

Kitchen, meet bathroom: The key to cutting cheese more easily is probably sitting right on your bathroom sink. Although you might think of dental floss as a crucial (albeit occasionally irritating) oral hygiene staple, it can also make life easier in the kitchen.

Dental floss works well for cutting cheeses because you can hold it taut. The way cheese is made subtly points to why taut dental floss is an ideal cheese-cutting option. Cheese has a calcium-laden protein rim called casein, and it doesn't exactly respond well to being cut. If you cut cheese too quickly, it will stiffen because of the response of this "protein mesh" to the force you're placing on it. However, when you cut cheese more slowly, it'll behave more like a liquid than a solid, which will make it easier to manipulate. Dental floss works well for cutting cheeses because you can hold it taut with both hands and wrap it around the cheese with just enough pressure to slice it. You'll end up with more uniform slices without a huge hassle, so the slices won't just take less time to make; they might look more appealing too. Just make sure that your dental floss is unflavored — you wouldn't want your cheese tasting like mint.

Yes, dental floss is a great tool for cutting cheese, but you might want to expand the foods you cut with it. Dental floss can slice up many foods besides cheese; but, as with cheese, sometimes it's easier to "floss" the food than to use a knife. 

Cakes and breads can crumble when you slice them with a knife, so it can be difficult to get the portions you want. If you'd like neater cake slices or need to cut uniform bread slices, just grab a piece of dental floss, pull it taut, and apply pressure to the cake in order to slice it, repeating the process at similar intervals to yield your preferred number of slices. The cake or bread will likely crumble less than when you use your usual knife. 

Perhaps even more surprisingly, you can use dental floss to cut certain fruits too, including watermelon. Just slice the watermelon into a few large sections, then take a large piece of floss and pull it taut, sliding it into where the melon meets the rind. After you've detached the melon from the rind, press the dental floss into the watermelon slice to make smaller, snackable pieces. 

Whether you use dental floss to cut cheese or other types of food, you'll never see it the same way again.