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In my experience, the best non-dairy cheeses are made from culturing nuts. Miyoko's Creamery and Punk Rawk Labs in the US both use cashews (and sometimes includ
by autarch 9y ago
In my experience, the best non-dairy cheeses are made from culturing nuts. Miyoko's Creamery and Punk Rawk Labs in the US both use cashews (and sometimes include other nuts) as the base, then culture them. They both taste fantastic to me, though as a 20+ year vegan I cannot compare them to dairy cheese.
I've also had recipes that used non-dairy milk as the base. None of these were cultured, so while they can taste good, they generally don't have any of the tang or sharpness of cheese. This can be fine if you're trying to make a cheese sauce but it doesn't cut it for something that's trying to be like solid cheese.
If you want to make some at home I highly recommend the cookbook Artisan Vegan Cheese by Miyoko Schinner (of Miyoko's Creamery). The recipes are actually fairly simple, though I think it takes practice to get a consistently excellent result, which is why I'm lazy and just buy the cheese from her company instead of making it myself.
You can definitely make yogurt from non-dairy milks, and AFAIK it's done with the same strain of bacteria. In the US, these are available at mainstream groceries (at least in Minneapolis where I live) as well as co-ops and Whole Foods. I've had yogurt based on on soy, almond, and coconut milk (and maybe others I'm forgetting). My favorite is probably Kite Hill's yogurt. That said, I'm not that into yogurt in general, so I rarely eat it.
- vanderZwan 9y agoI really hate to say this, but for me the vegan cheeses are not "there yet" - or at least the ones sold locally in Stockholm. Which I think is a real issue with this kind of stuff - from living between countries I've noticed for example that the Netherlands has much better meat replacements, but Sweden has the better milk replacements, and I don't think the local vegan cheeses are made the way you describe. It might be my Dutch privilege of growing up in the country-side close to a real cheese farm, but almost every vegan cheese I've tried here has a dissapointing "margarine" taste/texture - that weird watery feeling compared to real butter. I'm sure someone will figure how to recreate something resembling the missing taste/texture eventually though. (also to be clear: it doesn't have to taste like cheese, I just want it to taste in such a way that I don't miss it, and part of that is not tasting like margarine). But again, maybe it's an issue of knowledge not being wide-spread enough to create good local alternatives.
- autarch 9y agoYeah, I have no idea what's available in Europe. If what you've tried is not based on cultured nuts, I'd assume it's not very good. Miyoko's Creamery also makes a fantastic cultured butter that's based on cashews and coconut oil (but with no coconut flavor). It's very creamy and hard at room temperature, much like butter and completely unlike margarine.
- vanderZwan 9y agoSounds like it should work, coconut has that creamy texture by itself!
- nailer 9y agoI had a lovely vegan flatmate who always cooked for me, I wanted to make it up by making a vegan version of my pasta dish. To do this I paid a LOT of money for the best quality vegan 'parmesan'. It was inedible and tasted like a rubber coconut.