Chaco Dairy · Mennonite Farmhouse Cheese
Queso Paraguay (Queso Chaqueño)
Photo: Correadeb / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The Mennonite cooperatives behind much of the country's cheese settled the dry Chaco scrubland in the late 1920s and 1930s, turning one of South America's harshest regions into a dairy heartland.
A soft, mild, slightly salty cow's milk cheese is pressed into blocks and sold fresh at Chaco cooperative stores and roadside stands. It's the cheese used to fill Paraguay's chipa and sopa paraguaya nationwide.
Why it's made this way: Boquerón department is home to the Mennonite colonies of Filadelfia and Loma Plata, whose dairy cooperatives are now among Paraguay's biggest cheese producers, alongside the farmhouse cheesemakers of the east.
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