Halloumi

• 1. Introduction

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  Halloumi is a cheese that squeaks. Bite into a warm, browned slice and it answers against your teeth with a small, rubbery protest. That sound belongs to a brined Mediterranean cheese that has become a serious business. Halloumi now accounts for 13.4% of the exports of the Republic of Cyprus. For something so familiar on a grill, its past is surprisingly hard to pin down. Where did that odd name come from? Why does the cheese hold its shape over flame when most cheeses collapse? And who gets to put the word on a package?

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• 2. A Word From Egypt

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  Manuscripts and inscribed pottery fragments from Roman Egypt in the 2nd century carry the Demotic word ḥlm, which simply meant cheese. Scholars think the name halloumi likely goes back to that ancient word. Coptic kept it alive as halōm in its Sahidic form and alōm in its Bohairic form. In medieval Egypt it named a cheese that people ate. Egyptian Arabic inherited it, and from there it crossed the sea. Cypriot Maronite Arabic shaped it into xallúm, and Modern Greek made it khalloúmi. English borrowed the Greek version and spelled it halloumi, sometimes haloumi. The Cypriot Turkish name, hellim, comes from the very same root. Egypt itself still has a cheese called hâlûmi, though it is a different cheese from the one in this story.

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• 3. Folklore and Records

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  Bedouins, who needed food that kept well while they travelled, are thought to have been the first to make this kind of cheese. Cyprus has its own legend. Sometime between AD 395 and 867, a herder on the island is said to have mixed sheep and goat milk and heated it over a fire. As curds separated from the whey, he sifted them out, shaped them into blobs and left them to cool. Legend gives Cyprus the credit, but nobody knows whether the cheese was first made there. A 14th-century Egyptian cookbook, Kanz al-Fawāʾid fī Tanwīʿ al-Mawāʾid, already offers a recipe for improving ḥalūm by brining it. The earliest surviving description from Cyprus dates to around 1554. Florios Voustroniou, head of the Secretariat in the Venetian administration of the island, wrote of it under the name calumi. Leonardo Donato, later Doge of Venice, transcribed that manuscript. In 1788, Archimandrite Kyprianos mentioned the cheese in his Chronological History of the Island of Cyprus and added that it was exported, long before any of today's market figures existed.

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• 4. Village Cooperatives

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  In 1867, the poet Georgios Vizyinos, who had lived in Cyprus as a teenager, published To Ptochon tis Kyprou. The poem describes eating halloumi in a village, which hints at how ordinary the cheese was in rural life. Traditionally, villages made it through cooperatives of 10-15 women. The woman who owned the most goats led the group. Goat's and sheep's milk went into the pot because cows were scarce on the island until the British introduced them in the 20th century. The cheese left its mark on family names too. Halloumas, Hallouma, Halloumakis and Halloumis are Cypriot surnames that likely relate to halloumi production. By the early 1940s, the authorities had begun issuing licenses to make the cheese, ending the era of informal village production.

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• 5. Scalding the Curd

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  Warm milk at 30-34 degrees Celsius is where halloumi begins. Rennet, mostly vegetarian or microbial, is stirred in, and the milk sets in about 30-45 minutes. No acid-producing bacteria are used at all. Traditional makers work with fresh, unpasteurized goat's or sheep's milk. Commercial producers use a pasteurized blend of cow's, goat's and sheep's milk. The set curd is cut, reheated and stirred to firm it up. It then goes into special molds and is pressed until enough whey has drained away. Next comes scalding. The pressed curds are boiled for at least 30 minutes in hot whey saved from the pressing, and this is considered the most crucial step. It gives the cheese its characteristic texture. The cooked pieces are lifted out, salted and garnished with fresh or dried leaves of mint, Mentha viridis. They are folded, kept in salted whey for 1-3 days, then packed in airtight containers. A mature halloumi has to wait much longer, at least 40 days in the brine whey.

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• 6. On the Plate

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  A traditional round of halloumi is a hemisphere weighing 220-270 grams. About 25% of its wet weight is fat, which works out to 47% of its dry weight, and roughly 17% is protein. Once cooked, its firm texture is what makes it squeak when chewed. Because its melting point is unusually high, it can be fried until brown without melting. That quality makes it ideal for grilling, as in the dish saganaki. It also turns up with vegetables, in salads and in sandwiches, and many recipes go well beyond simple grilling. Vegetarians often use it as a meat alternative. It can be eaten raw as well. Two styles exist. Fresh halloumi is semi-hard and elastic, with a milder and less salty taste. Mature halloumi has soaked in brine, so it is harder and drier, and saltier. Sealed and refrigerated, either kind can last as long as a year. A 100 gram portion of one Tesco-branded packet holds 313 calories and 3.0 grams of salt.

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• 7. Boom and Shortage

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  In 2013, the average resident of Cyprus ate 8 kilograms of halloumi, and British appetite had grown so large that the UK bought more than any European country except Cyprus itself. Then came 2018, when a protocol was signed to export halloumi to China, and sales surged. A shortage followed, made worse by high temperatures that led animals to give less milk. Industrial cheese-makers reached for cow's milk, which is cheaper and more plentiful than goat's or sheep's. By 2019, almost all the halloumi exported to the UK was 80% cow's milk. The numbers have kept climbing. In 2023, annual production exceeded 450,000 tons. The United States imported 5,000 tons, Japan 2,500 tons and the UK 18,000 tons. The global market is worth roughly US$500 million a year, with the UK as the biggest importer. How much cow's milk could belong in the cheese became the sharpest argument among its own farmers.

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• 8. Who Owns the Name

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  In the United States, Halloumi is a registered trademark held by Cyprus. In the UK, it belongs to the Foundation for the Protection of the Traditional Cheese of Cyprus named Halloumi. Because of trademark law, a cheese sold as halloumi in the U.S. or the European Union must be produced in Cyprus. Within the EU, the name is also a geographical indication with protected designation of origin status, so only products from certain parts of Cyprus may carry it. That protection was delayed largely because cattle farmers, sheep farmers and goat farmers disagreed over whether cows' milk belonged in the cheese and in what amount. The word hellim, the Turkish name, has fought its own battle. In 2006, a German enterprise registered the trademark Gazi hellim. The Cypriot dairy producers' organisation filed a complaint with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, and the complaint was rejected. So a Turkish word for the cheese ended up inside a German company's trademark filing.

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