Halloumi

Halloumi is Cyprus's defining cheese, made traditionally from a mix of goat and sheep milk, and it has held Protected Designation of Origin status specific to the island since 2021. Its most famous trick, holding its shape and developing a golden crust on a hot grill or in a dry pan rather than collapsing into a puddle, comes down to how it is made: the curd is heated to a high temperature during production, which denatures the proteins in a way that raises its melting point substantially above that of most other cheeses.

That same high-heat production is what makes it genuinely edible straight off the grill in a way that would simply not work with feta or mozzarella, and it is exactly why halloumi has become the default vegetarian grilling cheese across a huge range of cuisines, well beyond its Cypriot origin.

Cyprus uses halloumi for more than grilling, though: it is grated into the egg-based topping of makaronia tou fournou, the island's baked macaroni dish, in place of the bechamel a mainland Greek pastitsio would use, and it appears fried simply with eggs as an everyday breakfast alongside dishes like strapatsada.