If you’re wondering what the difference is between mozzarella and burrata, we have the answer. They are two fresh Italian cheeses that can easily be confused, but there are differences in many aspects: their origin, their production, their flavour… We analyse each one in detail.
The food market is constantly looking for reasons to renew itself and offer new things to its public. Do you remember when mozzarella was that soft, perky cheese with an Italian pedigree that we demanded on pizza and proudly added to salads? Well, things have changed. Possibly because, over time, we have normalised eating brick-shaped mozzarellas that barely resemble what a good Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, the original, tastes like, and of course, the halo has faded.
That’s why burrata has come to the rescue, new, brand new, and even more Italian-sounding. It comes from the Puglia region, is creamier, and has not yet been vilely perverted by substitutes, although it is already showing signs of being so. We add it to smoked sardine salads with spicy strawberries and we are enthralled by watching its interior overflow from the little bag that looks like a giant dumpling, as some English people call it.
If, like most people, you notice something different when you eat burrata and when you eat mozzarella, but you don’t know exactly what, here are a handful of differences between the two cheeses.
What is mozzarella
Mozzarella is a fresh, spun paste cheese originating from Campania, in the south of Italy, traditionally made from buffalo milk. Juicy on the inside and tenderly firm on the outside, it has a very characteristic, mild salty and acidic touch, resulting from the fermentation and brine through which the curd passes.
Anyone who has seen how mozzarella is made will know that the milk achieves a consistency that today we would call cutting-edge technology: after several heat processes, the curd is spun (filature of the mozzarella) and becomes a large, white, malleable gum, ready to form ovoid spheres the size of the palm of a hand. The mozzarella balls are smooth, soft, so white that it is not for nothing that their appearance is described as close to that of porcelain.
The name is a diminutive of the old nickname given to mozzarella: la mozza, which comes from the verb mozzare, meaning to cut. Unlike other cheeses, mozzarella is worked in the form of a single mass from which small portions are cut. These portions, traditionally separated by hand, are the ones that are finally packaged and reach our tables.
What is burrata
Burrata is an Italian fresh cheese made from spun paste, with an outer layer made from a thin mozzarella shell and the inside, the well-kept treasure, a filling of fresh milk cream (panna) and threads or pieces of the mozzarella itself, which is called stracciatella. Stracciatella comes from the word stracciato, which in Italian means torn into pieces (and now we know that it is not just the cream and chocolate ice cream that we all have in mind).
There are already burrata made all over the world, but the original burrata, and the one that maintains a Protected Geographical Indication, is Burrata di Andria, made, as its name indicates, in Andria, a territory located in Apulia (or Puglia, in Italian), right in the heel of the Italian boot.
The name, burrata, which sounds stubborn but good-natured, comes from burro, a strange multilingual polysemy, which in Spanish means donkey but in Italian means butter. So burrata is, according to its name, a buttery cheese, and this is said of it, both because of the creaminess of its filling and because of the idea behind its invention, which we will see later.
Differences between mozzarella and burrata
Mozzarella and burrata look similar, but they are not the same. Mozzarella is a medieval invention while burrata was born in the 20th century; generally mozzarella is made with buffalo milk and burrata with cow’s milk; mozzarella is from Campania and burrata from Puglia; the taste of mozzarella is more pronounced and acidic, while in burrata we find a more dairy-like and sweet taste, not to mention their different textures. We delve into each of the differences between mozzarella and burrata.
Texture: the mozzarella is firm, the burrata is creamy
The texture is one of the most distinguishing elements between mozzarella and burrata. Mozzarella is soft, firm, and elastic on the outside, and when you stick a knife into it, it will release a little of the whitish whey in which it is bathed, full of aromas from fermentation. Inside, after the smooth and slippery structure of the outside and the initial rebelliousness when cut, we will find a slightly rubbery and grainy texture, with a small, creamier core. Buffalo mozzarella will always be more pleasant in texture, softer, and less chewy than cow’s milk. If we bake the mozzarella, the texture of the mozzarella is completely transformed: the cheese melts and, when hot, it recovers its structure in threads, the same ones that have previously been subjected to filature to make the fresh cheese balls.
On the other hand, burrata retains the shape of mozzarella on the outside, but inside it is a small volcano of cold, white lava, which when you cut the cheese in half, tends to slowly spread across the plate. This is part of what has made us fall in love with it, its incontinence, its implacable need to collapse and dislodge the delicious stracciatella that keeps snowy walls inside, a mixture of mozzarella spun with cream. Be careful, because in the ecstasies of the spilling of burrata, burratas have been known to open like piñatas that contain a milky liquid that instantly covers the plate. Italian burrata does not give in to these noises, because the mixture of cheese threads with cream is thick, not light, and it is consistent, not uneven. So it is not so much about looking for a large and immediate spilling, but rather a morbid and slow dispersion of the treasure well hidden in the burrata bag.
Ingredients: mozzarella with buffalo milk, burrata with cow’s milk
Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP is made using exclusively buffalo milk, which, unlike cow’s milk, is richer in protein, fat, and calcium, and gives this mozzarella a special flavour. Burrata di Andria PGI, on the other hand, was invented using cow’s milk and is still made that way.
In the supermarket you will find mozzarella made from cow’s milk (called Fior di Latte), buffalo milk, and a bit of each, and you could find the same in a supermarket specialising in burrata. But the truth is that the versions with a seal of origin of each are not made with the same type of milk.
In addition to milk, as in most cheeses, we will find among the ingredients salt, rennet, and lactic ferments, the probiotics that are used to acidify the curd and allow the magical transformation of lactose into lactic acid, a process that transforms the flavour of the milk and helps preserve it. If, apart from these natural ingredients, we find others that correct the acidity, we will know that we are dealing with industrial mozzarellas and burrata that are possibly less tasty.
Taste: from the fermentation of the mozzarella to the cream of the burrata
While burrata deepens the flavors of cream, mozzarella does so with those of fermentation.
Both are soft, subtle cheeses. But there is the earthly and there is the heavenly. And we can say that mozzarella has the best of both worlds. It tastes like the milk of water buffaloes that have grazed in Italian meadows and natural parks such as Cilento and Gargano, but it has a light taste like a memory, delicate like the juice of a cloud. Mozzarella conquers the beginning of the palate with its milky nuances and becomes great at the end when the acidic point of the curd emerges like a white lightning bolt that connects heaven and earth with exquisite elegance.
Burrata is not far behind in terms of its display of flavours. The filling of burrata has the flavour of the dense cream we call cream, that tasty precipitation of the fattiest part of the milk that is deep and at the same time delicate in its milky and enveloping aromas. Burrata has a soft and sweet flavour.
Campanian mozzarella, Apulian burrata
Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP comes, as its name suggests, from the region of Campania, especially from the provinces of Caserta and Salerno. 90% of this mozzarella is still produced in these places today, but there are also cheese factories in various regions that extend from central to southern Italy, in the areas of Lazio, Puglia, and Molise, from Rome to the Amalfi Coast. Mozzarella without designation of origin, as a generic cheese, is produced all over the world, with different levels of quality. There is mozzarella made in the USA and also in Spain.
Like mozzarella, burrata is a generic name that refers to a cheese that can be made anywhere in the world as long as it follows certain ingredients and processes. However, Burrata di Andria IGP, which has a protection seal, is only made in the Puglia region.
Origin and history: mozzarella, is much older than burrata
The origin of mozzarella is practically associated with the arrival of buffalo in Italy, back in the 10th century. Water buffalo found themselves comfortable in the areas of southern Italy and one thing led to another. In the 12th century, the monks of the monastery of San Lorenzo in Capua were already making a cheese called mozza, which they sometimes smoked, so that it would not spoil so quickly, and called provatura. In the 18th century, the presence of the Bourbons in Italy, fans of this fresh cheese, turned mozzarella into a widely consumed product, so much so that in 2021, 54 million kilos of Mozzarella di Campania were produced, of which 35% were destined for export to various countries, including Spain.
Compared to mozzarella, which is of medieval origin, burrata is a very new cheese, a 20th-century invention to use up the leftovers from the mozzarella-making process long before the term zero waste in food existed. According to historian Riccardo Campanile, who traced a genealogy of burrata by interviewing elderly people in the Puglia area, burrata is believed to have originated sometime in the 1920s, at the Bianchino masseria, the farm of Lorenzo Bianchino Chieppa located near Castel del Monte in Murgia.
When a heavy snowfall left him stranded on his farm with gallons of leftover cow’s milk that he couldn’t sell, Bianchino found a way to preserve it: the creamy, creamy consistency that formed spontaneously on the settled milk was stored in small mozzarella sacks, as butter (donkey butter) was traditionally stored, hence the name, burrata. Along with the cream, he tore off leftover pieces of the mozzarella he made from the milk and mixed it all together to form the stracciatella interior. By 1931, burrata was already listed in the Guida Gastronómica d’Italia, where it was listed as a typical product of Andria.
Presentation: from mozzarella balls to burrata bags
The most common form of mozzarella is the medium-sized sphere that in Italy is called aversana. Then there are mozzarella bites, bocconcini, and pearls, the smallest balls of all. Although it is not consumed in Spain, there is braided mozzarella, and it can also be found in Italy smoked, as mozzarella affumicata. We will find mozzarella at the head of Caprese salad, accompanied by tomato and basil. An all-rounder for all kinds of dishes, we will always find it hand in hand with pizzas, risottos, or lasagnas, there are numerous recipes with mozzarella cheese to try at home.
Burrata is usually found in balls that are the same size or slightly larger than mozzarella. There is also a smaller version, burratina. Look for it topping salads with pine nut creams and cured meats. Indiscreetly sandwiched between two crunchy pieces of bread in a pastrami sandwich. On pasta dishes, in a burrata salad with tomato and pesto, and even fried.