Trader Joe’s New Cheese Is Basically Instant Charcuterie

Trader Joe’s has put pesto inside an entire wheel of cheese because simply putting pesto next to the cheese wasn’t close enough. The result is The Sheepish Pesto, a Spanish sheep’s-milk cheese that’s brined and aged for at least six months before being injected with herby, garlicky pesto.

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Yes, injected.

Cut into the cheese and you’ll find streaks of green running through the middle, along with plenty of basil and garlic flavor. So if your ideal cheese situation involves something a little more interesting than a wedge of cheddar and a handful of crackers, Trader Joe’s has come prepared.

There’s just one problem: You only have until the end of August to find it.

Meet The Sheepish Pesto

The Sheepish Pesto starts with sheep’s milk cheese made by an expert creamery in Spain. The cheese is brined and aged for a minimum of six months, which gives it a nutty, umami-rich flavor and semi-firm texture.

Then comes the pesto injection.

The cheese is filled with herby, garlicky pesto, creating green streaks throughout the cheese while adding plenty of basil flavor.

It’s a pretty fun thing to cut into if you’re serving a cheese board, because what initially looks like a fairly standard piece of Spanish sheep’s-milk cheese suddenly has bright green ribbons running through it.

And Trader Joe’s has plenty of suggestions for what to do with it.

You Can Do More Than Put It On A Cheese Board

The Sheepish Pesto is designed to work as a cheese-board addition, but Trader Joe’s has also come up with a few ways to use it that are considerably more ambitious than putting it on a cracker and calling it charcuterie.

You can cube it and skewer it with toothpicks, slice it into triangles to eat with wine, or shave it over a green salad. And then there’s the pasta option.

Trader Joe’s suggests shredding the cheese and melting it with butter, diced onions, and garlic before tossing it over pasta with cracked pepper for what it calls a one-of-a-kind “Cacio e Pesto.”

Which sounds like a pretty defensible reason to keep a wedge of this in the fridge.

The pesto injection also means you don’t have to add a separate jar of pesto every time you want that basil-and-garlic flavor. It’s already running through the cheese, just waiting to melt into whatever you’re making.

Only For A Limited Time

The Sheepish Pesto is a limited-time Spotlight Cheese at Trader Joe’s and is only available in stores during August. It’s priced at $6.49 for a 5.3-ounce package, so you’re not committing to a giant specialty-cheese purchase if you want to see what happens when you inject pesto into sheep’s-milk cheese.

The bigger issue is timing.

Once August is over, The Sheepish Pesto is gone, so if you’ve been waiting for a sign to make your next Trader Joe’s trip slightly more interesting, this green-streaked cheese might be it. At the very least, it gives you something to bring to a cheese board that will probably get people asking, “Wait, what’s in that?”

And for once, the answer is not just “cheese.”