Turn Mozzarella Into A Burrata Clone With Just Four Ingredients

Burrata is one of those dishes that makes people's hearts beat quicker. It's mozzarella's luxurious, super creamy cousin and it's an absolute showstopper of a cheese. Burrata hails from the Puglia region of southern Italy and was invented in the 1920s by Lorenzo Bianchino Chieppa as a way to make money off the mozzarella scraps that didn't make it to logs or braids you're used to finding in Caprese salads. The leftover cheesy strings are combined with cream and wrapped in a smooth, thin mozzarella shell. When the lucky diner cuts into the ball of cheese, the cream and mozzarella bits spill out in a gloriously rich and decadent cheese perfect for salads, pasta, and more. However, sometimes you don't have burrata on hand, or it's too difficult to find at your local grocery store. In this case, you can mimic burrata with just a few easy-to-find ingredients. The result is burrata-tastic.

Chef Abra Berens' ingenious technique was, as so many brilliant recipes are, born out of necessity. As she tells Epicurious, "There are so many times where I've lived in places where I don't have access to fancier foods." She decided to use that creativity one night at the restaurant where she works when she wanted to zhuzh up a kale salad but had no burrata available. Her faux-rrata included a mozzarella ball, torn and tossed with sour cream, lemon zest, and salt. That's it. Just a few ingredients you're likely to have in your kitchen already and a result worth so much more than the sum of its parts. It's a quick way to replicate burrata's rich, tangy, buttery taste and texture for any salad or room-temperature food. Chef Berens cautions against using it in warm food, which might not hold up to the temperature but still leaves so many delicious options.

This faux fancy cheese is ideal for the kale salad with which it was initially paired, but don't stop there. There's no limit when you have a recipe this quick and delicious in your back pocket. Think cheese plates, where this can complement a firm, sharper cheese like Parmesan or a nutty Manchego. It would be a dream spread on a pizza crust topped with prosciutto, balsamic, and arugula, as long as the dish is served at room temperature. That is, of course, if you can stop yourself from eating the whole bowl with just a sleeve of crackers and a spoon. And you can pretty much always make it (if you have a ball or braid of mozzarella in the fridge) means you don't even have to plan out your preparation ahead of time. Just take a tip from Chef Berens and let your tastebuds and whimsy be your guide.