Stabilized cheese products

A method of producing a frozen microwaveable, coated food product, comprising the steps of;

• providing pieces of cheese having a maximum dimension of 1 cm;
• mixing the pieces of cheese with dry ingredients to prepare a premix, said dry ingredients including one or more hydrocolloids selected from starch, protein, polydextrose, xanthan gum, guar gum, carrageenan and pectin;
• mixing the premix with an aqueous binder solution to produce a cheese dough containing at least 60 wt. % of cheese by weight of the cheese dough, said aqueous binder solution containing 2-15% of cellulose ether by weight of the binder solution;
• the method further comprising the subsequent steps of:
• forming the dough into portions;
• freezing the portions;
• applying a batter coating to the pre-coated portions to produce batter coated portions;
• applying one or more layers of crumb to the batter coated portions to provide a crumb coated portion;
• frying the crumb coated portions to produce fried portions;
• and
• cryogenically freezing the fried portions.