This Forgotten Italian Cheese Has a Surprise Inside

It’s easy for a single bite of new cheese to stop me in my tracks — making me mentally document how delicious it is — but it’s less common for just one glimpse of a dairy product to give me immediate pause. 

There’s one cheese that didn’t just recently stop me from doomscrolling on social media without even tasting it, but also caught the attention of hundreds of thousands of viewers on Instagram: burrino pepato.

Content creator Suzy (@sooziethefoodie) shared a clip of this Italian cheese in early June, and the unusual teardrop shape of burrino pepato is the first visual cue that it’s something special. The exterior of the cheese has a mottled brown and gray color — coupled with its shape, this leads several commenters to compare it to a potato — but it's what’s hidden inside that makes this cheese truly exciting. Inside the larger half of burrino pepato is a pocket of soft, salted, and gloriously delicious butter.

What is burrino?

The word “pepato” in Italian means “peppery” or “peppered” so this product’s name describes a burrino that is coated in pepper. Although the word “burrino” roughly translates to “butter” in English, it is also the name of an Old World-style Italian cheese. More simply put: burrino is a cheese, and burrino pepato is a version of that cheese covered in peppercorns. 

Burrino is a teardrop-shaped cheese filled with butter, and it’s made of scamorza. Scamorza is an aged mozzarella, though it’s aged briefly compared to many other cheeses, sitting for days or weeks instead of months or years. Consequently, it has a delicate, creamy flavor like mozzarella, but with a bit more umami, tanginess, and a drier texture.

The peppered version of burrino shown in Suzy’s Instagram video was made by Murray’s Cheese. Murray’s is a cheese retailer — founded in New York City in 1962 and acquired by Kroger in 2017 — that sells artisanal cheeses from producers around the world, in addition to creating its own products, like this burrino pepato, through its cave aging program. 

Josh Windsor, the associate director of Murray’s cheese caves, explains that you can “Think of [burrino] as a bag filled with a ball of butter. After wrapping the butter inside the cheese, the pouch is tied off and hung to dry. This gives it its pouch-like shape…”

How is burrino made?

When making burrino, the two components of the cheese — butter and mozzarella — are first made separately. (Mozzarella is produced through a process called “pasta filata,” which involves stretching and kneading curds to develop its signature, slightly stringy texture. Burrino doesn’t have to be wrapped specifically in mozzarella specifically, but it will be wrapped in something from the pasta filata family.)

From there, Windsor details that “The butter is essentially wrapped in a cheesy pouch.” For Murray’s burrino pepato, “The two [then] age together in our caves. This beautiful wedding of cheese and butter happens at Maplebrook Farm in Vermont, where the cheese ages for a week until it is sturdy enough to travel to our caves in Long Island City. 

“We then coat the burrino in more butter and roll it in a blend of two single-origin black peppercorns selected for their spiciness and fruity notes. The cheese then ages an additional two weeks in our cave to further develop the texture of the scamorza and set the rind.”

Where does burrino come from?

Burrino hails from Southern Italy and is often associated with the Basilicata region. However, Windsor notes that “Makers can be found in Campania, Molise, and Calabria, essentially the same areas where fresh mozzarella and fior di latte are made.

“Like many cheeses, its origins are a little murky. Some believe it was a way to preserve butter longer before the advent of refrigeration. One story that I often tell is that it came about as a way for Italians to avoid high taxes on butter when bringing gifts to family in the United States.”

Unfortunately, burrino can be quite hard to find in the U.S. today, but some artisanal cheese shops might carry it occasionally. (For example, Ploughgate Creamery and Maplebrook Farm in Vermont, which helped Murray’s develop its burrino pepato, have previously sold a limited batch of their own burrino.) If you have a small, local cheese shop, talk to its cheesemongers and ask if they carry burrino or would consider importing some. 

Subscribe to newsletters from producers like Ploughate Creamery, Maplebrook Farm, and Murray’s Cheese to find out when they have new or limited-edition cheeses available. Although the burrino pepato from Murray’s is currently sold out, we do have some excellent news: Windsor confirms the brand will be bringing it back for a limited run next year.