Say cheese
Dec. 31st, 2025 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI've already said quite a lot about vegan meat substitutes, but nothing yet about vegan cheese; so, for the curious, I'm going to put that right this morning.
Vegan cheese comes in two broad categories: the cheap sort and the expensive sort. The cheap sort is made from coconut oil and various starches, and it is usually pretty cheese-like, assuming your definition of cheese extends to the processed variety (though a few of them are at least up to the standard of a decent processed cheese). It comes in a wide range of flavours and melts nicely, though, of course, it doesn't melt in that curiously stringy fashion that dairy cheese does. The mozzarella types are good on a pizza, and, while on the whole you wouldn't put the other sorts in a sandwich, they're perfectly acceptable on a baked potato or in cooking generally.
The expensive sort is rather interesting, because often (though not always) it's actually a lot less cheese-like than the cheap sort. It is made from nuts of one type or another. Nush, for instance, make a very good soft cheese from almonds, which comes in a tub, and that really does taste like a cream cheese. Tyne Chease use cashews, and the results have their own particular flavour profile which is not that close to cheese, but which I generally like very much. (The exception was their short-lived experiment in making a Camembert substitute. They used real Camembert cultures with their cashew mixture. I tried their "Cashew Bert", as they called it, and it was so disgusting I couldn't finish it; it seems a lot of other people felt the same way, because by the next time I went to order it had disappeared from the site.) There are other manufacturers, such as La Fauxmagerie, who specialise in trying to reproduce particular cheeses as accurately as possible. Tyne Chease is fairly expensive and these tend to be more so; I've occasionally tried these vegan cheese-clones, and the flavour is usually pretty good. However, nut-based cheeses don't melt. As far as I know, there is no vegan cheese in existence - yet - which is both top quality and meltable.
You can also make your own. You can even buy kits to do that, which I've never tried, since there is just me and the kits do tend to make a lot of cheese. Or, if you just want a kick of cheesy flavour in something, you can rather easily cheat by using nutritional yeast, or "nooch" as a lot of vegans affectionately term it. This is wonderful stuff. It's dead yeast, so you can't raise bread or brew beer with it; it comes in thin yellow flakes which conveniently dissolve easily even in cold liquids, so you can mix it not only into cooked dishes but into things like spreads (and I do, regularly). It's very good for you, as it contains a lot of B group vitamins in particular, and the flavour is cheesy with a nutty undertone. Adding garlic to the mix tends to bring out the cheesiness even more.
So, basically, if you're thinking about going vegan but hesitating because you're a cheese addict, there is hope. You can fill that particular gap; it just takes a little more thought and care than it does with meat, which is very easy to replace these days. Unless you only ever eat cheese cooked, or you only ever eat it uncooked, you're going to need to buy a slightly larger range of products because they don't all do the same things; but you can, at least, get them. It will take a bit of experimentation to find the ones you like best, but then, to be fair, it probably also did with cheese.
And even if you're not thinking about going vegan, you won't go too far wrong if you get yourself some nooch. It's one of the most versatile ingredients in my kitchen. You don't have to be a vegan to enjoy it!
Vegan cheese comes in two broad categories: the cheap sort and the expensive sort. The cheap sort is made from coconut oil and various starches, and it is usually pretty cheese-like, assuming your definition of cheese extends to the processed variety (though a few of them are at least up to the standard of a decent processed cheese). It comes in a wide range of flavours and melts nicely, though, of course, it doesn't melt in that curiously stringy fashion that dairy cheese does. The mozzarella types are good on a pizza, and, while on the whole you wouldn't put the other sorts in a sandwich, they're perfectly acceptable on a baked potato or in cooking generally.
The expensive sort is rather interesting, because often (though not always) it's actually a lot less cheese-like than the cheap sort. It is made from nuts of one type or another. Nush, for instance, make a very good soft cheese from almonds, which comes in a tub, and that really does taste like a cream cheese. Tyne Chease use cashews, and the results have their own particular flavour profile which is not that close to cheese, but which I generally like very much. (The exception was their short-lived experiment in making a Camembert substitute. They used real Camembert cultures with their cashew mixture. I tried their "Cashew Bert", as they called it, and it was so disgusting I couldn't finish it; it seems a lot of other people felt the same way, because by the next time I went to order it had disappeared from the site.) There are other manufacturers, such as La Fauxmagerie, who specialise in trying to reproduce particular cheeses as accurately as possible. Tyne Chease is fairly expensive and these tend to be more so; I've occasionally tried these vegan cheese-clones, and the flavour is usually pretty good. However, nut-based cheeses don't melt. As far as I know, there is no vegan cheese in existence - yet - which is both top quality and meltable.
You can also make your own. You can even buy kits to do that, which I've never tried, since there is just me and the kits do tend to make a lot of cheese. Or, if you just want a kick of cheesy flavour in something, you can rather easily cheat by using nutritional yeast, or "nooch" as a lot of vegans affectionately term it. This is wonderful stuff. It's dead yeast, so you can't raise bread or brew beer with it; it comes in thin yellow flakes which conveniently dissolve easily even in cold liquids, so you can mix it not only into cooked dishes but into things like spreads (and I do, regularly). It's very good for you, as it contains a lot of B group vitamins in particular, and the flavour is cheesy with a nutty undertone. Adding garlic to the mix tends to bring out the cheesiness even more.
So, basically, if you're thinking about going vegan but hesitating because you're a cheese addict, there is hope. You can fill that particular gap; it just takes a little more thought and care than it does with meat, which is very easy to replace these days. Unless you only ever eat cheese cooked, or you only ever eat it uncooked, you're going to need to buy a slightly larger range of products because they don't all do the same things; but you can, at least, get them. It will take a bit of experimentation to find the ones you like best, but then, to be fair, it probably also did with cheese.
And even if you're not thinking about going vegan, you won't go too far wrong if you get yourself some nooch. It's one of the most versatile ingredients in my kitchen. You don't have to be a vegan to enjoy it!
