Utz Cheese Balls

Utz Brands, Inc. (/ˈʌts/), more commonly known as Utz, is an American snack food company based in Hanover, Pennsylvania. The company produces a variety of potato chips, pretzels, and other snacks, with most products sold under their family of brands. Utz is also a snack supplier to warehouse clubs and merchandisers.
Utz Cheese Balls are puffed corn snacks, coated with a mixture of cheese or cheese-flavored powders. They are manufactured by extruding heated corn dough through a die that forms the particular shape. Another version of these cheese balls are Baseballs, the same type of cheese ball but mozzarella flavored.
==History and manufacturing==
Utz has been around since 1921 when Bill and Salie Utz began making potato chips out of their home in Hanover, Pennsylvania. As the company grew, they began making other snack foods such as pretzels, and their now famous cheese balls. In celebration of National Cheese Ball Day, April 17th, people headed to Hanover, PA to the Utz factory to see how they are made.
Utz started making cheese balls in 1990.  Sam’s Club, one of their biggest customers, approached them and asked if they could package the cheese balls in a barrel rather than in bags. The design team came up the plastic barrel and infamous purple label that can now be seen in many stores, and have even been featured in shows like NBC’s “The Office” and the “Alvin and the Chipmunk” movies.
To make Utz branded cheese balls, start with coarsely ground corn meal that is brought to the factory in 2,000 pound bags. That corn meal is then deposited into what they call an extruder, which is a machine that exerts enough pressure onto the corn meal that it turns into a gel. That gel is squeezed into a long string and cut into bite-sized pieces. When those pieces leave the extruder and are re-introduced to atmospheric pressure, they expand and turn into a round puff. From there they are baked in an oven to remove any excess moisture.  
The seasoning process starts with vegetable oil and an all-natural cheddar cheese powder that is mixed together and sprayed over the cheese balls in a tumbling barrel until they are evenly coated. Right before they leave the barrel, they are also sprayed with salt, and sent off to packaging. Above the packaging is a tube that holds the same volumetric amount of cheese balls as the container. The cheese balls get locked into place and then dumped into the barrel. Because the cheese balls settle after being shipped around the country, they have people who manually top off the barrels to make sure each one is 100% full when it arrives to the customer.
A large barrel contains approximately 1,100 cheese balls. Back in 2012, Utz made 14 million pounds of them, which made a total of 7 billion cheese balls.
==Stats==
Nutrition
Label 	Percentage	Grams
Total fat 	12% 	9
Saturated fat 	13% 	2.5
Cholesterol 	0% 	0
Sodium 	13% 	300
Total carbohydrates	5% 	14
Dietary fiber 	0 	0
Ingredients
Corn meal
Vegetable oil (contains one or more of the following: cottonseed oil, corn oil, sunflower oil or canola oil)
Whey
Maltodextrin
Cheese (semisoft and cheddar (pasteurized milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes))
Milkfat
Salt
Whey protein concentrate
Buttermilk solids
Natural flavor
Sodium phosphate
Lactic acid
Yellow #6
Autolyzed yeast extract
Yellow #5
Disodium guanylate
Artificial flavor
Category:Food
Category:Snacks
Category:Utz
Category:Cheese snacks
Category:Cheese dishes
Category:American food
Category:United States
Category:American snacks
Category:Food and drinks manufactured in the United States
Category:Food and drink
Category:Snacks manufactured in the United States