When is blue cheese 'too moldy' to eat?

It's not to everyone's liking but it's perfectly safe to eat. However, blue cheese can go bad ... biting when it starts to spoil. If you taste a bit of the blue cheese and it's too strong to enjoy, you should throw it away. In most cases, eating a small bit of spoiled blue cheese isn't going to make you sick, so tasting it isn't dangerous. read more

With hard and semisoft cheese, you can cut away the moldy part and eat the rest of the cheese, but with the blue cheeses, the mold gets intermingled with its own mold and cannot be cut away. If the cheese has a grey or pink discoloration around the edges it is the sure sign there is too much mold on your cheese since it is a sign of non manufactured mold. read more

The mold of the surface is created by edible mold (Penicillium) culture, so it’s safe to eat. But if other bacteria will be able to develop in the cheese, it will go bad and the only thing you would be able to do is to discard it. read more

Of course, Roquefort is not the only moldy blue cheese. There's Stilton from England's central counties, Italy's Gorgonzola and Maytag Blue ripens in the hillside caves of Iowa. Many cheese rinds, like the one on traditional Brie, are also actually mold used to better preserve the cheese inside. read more