I'm not gonna act like I love them all because some of them definitely do suck, but I can honestly say i have a few vegan cheeses I really love. I also make cashew cheese and when I feed them to my non vegan friends they love them too so idk what to tell ya š¤·š»āāļø
[THIS](https://www.thecheesemaker.com/products/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese.html?sku=BK1013&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwqdqvBhCPARIsANrmZhPrUd2eopDQK_he01YQ9gHAYJ7orlU-JUvDat1louDOFxIJm7RI7JAaAiSDEALw_wcB)
This book is amazing
Miyoko's liquid Mozerella is good for pizzas. Daiya has a javarti that is good to eat straight off the block.
That covers it. We could easily do better. Why aren't we?
I mean respectfully I disagree. A lot of the soft Miyokos wheels are amazing imo. The violife feta is on point too... my last ex was a very talented (non vegan) chef and even liked a lot of the vegan cheeses I fed him.
i agree! i also get this cheese from my local farmers market thatās SO much better than any dairy cheese i ever had. we have a soft spreadable sharp cheddar from them now thatās absolutely to die for. i feel like OP hasnāt ventured outside the grocery store, there are lots of small businesses making amazing cheese
Wait, you've got a local farmer market and they sell vegan cheese there?
O boy, the farmer markets here are more of the old fashioned kind. If there is a vegan cheddaer for sale somewhere, I find it sooner in a supermarket then at a farmers market.
Violife feta has the mouthfeel of pure fat and tastes like coconut oil, canāt be remotely compared to real feta. Iām vegan but letās stop this madness lol
Violife fermta reminds me more of goat cheese. Its my favorite. Some roasted beets, a drizzle of balsamic glaze, and some chunky crumbles of violife feta *chef's kiss* š
Didnāt we all agree a long time ago that cheese was never going to be a 1:1? I *prefer* vegan cheese to animal cheese. That feta is my favorite and it reminds me more of a cream cheese block but more dense. I add it to my just egg scrambles, put it in lasagnas, and straight up eat it with tofurky and crackers.
Why do we have to be a monolith on this issue? Why canāt we just disagree, like animal consumers do? Not everyone hates American cheese. Not everyone loves sharp cheddar.
Cheese is a thing that historically has required milk. Animal product free cheese is a brand new thing maybe what...20 years old at best?Ā
So you have literal 10,000 years of cheese making with milk vs 20 years of vegan cheese. Of course it's gonna suck. And few companies are going to research good vegan cheese while less than 1% of their country is vegan.Ā
The issue is that it's super easy to make amazing vegan cheese, as long as you use traditional methods with milk. But most of these companies are focused on making a starch/oil mixture and calling it cheese, which definitely sucks (some of them are okay, but most of them are just flavored plastic).
Hopefully all of the wonderful companies using traditional cheese making methods will start to gain in popularity and prominence.
Yeah absolutely. A decent amount of people and companies are doing this, which is awesome. It just seems like it's going to take a while until we can find it in every grocery store
I mean, it is an entirely different protein with different properties. The goal of many mass market vegan cheeses is to replicate the end product because that's where the market demand is. The starches are generally used in mass market cheeses to recreate the properties of casein (poorly).
We should definitely also support more artisan efforts to recreate the process but the end results are generally not comparable.
Yeah exactly. Many companies are doing this and the results are amazing. Miyokos is probably the largest most readily available one. But there's cheese shops in NYC, DC, and all around the US.
Oats don't have a great fat content and probably wouldn't be thaaaaat ideal for cheese, although I think some people use it (I honestly don't know much about cheese so I might be talking out of my ass). But cashew milk seems to work really well.
I know Miyoko Schinner is currently working on developing recipes for traditionally cultured plant milk that doesn't involve cashews. I'm not sure what she's using, but I'm looking forward to the recipes when she releases them.
Yeah, when I first learned about it just seemed like it made so much sense.
Why do a weird starch/oil mixture when people have been perfecting cheesemaking for thousands of years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
the issue is that dairy proteins (casein) are what give cheese many of it's distinctive properties. Switching milks (and therefore proteins) won't give you the same results. Think of tofu, which is essentially a similar process to cheese making, but isn't very comparable to cheeses.
The new daiya made from oat is so better but definitely not cheesy. It tastes good so id eat it but I canāt say its cheesy. Just tried the new vegan Laughing Cow cheese, that was good
I remember someone one telling me that all fast food cheese is fake and American singles are fake. If that were true we would have been able to make those cheese easy!Ā
True Goodness Slices and Green Babel are good enough to eat straight.
I got downvoted a bunch in some thread because I confessed this exact sentiment. Going to try to make some 'fresh' mozzarella using Schinner's (Miyoko's founder) recipe.
I have, and again i think it tastes great, but its not a cheesy taste imo. It works for me bc i never liked too much of a cheesy taste even when i was just a vegetarian, so itās fine. But i dont think any vegan cheese available now is gonna help our cause in convincing people lmao
In France we are lucky that the country's long cheese tradition is helping with the crossover. Many new generation vegan cheese makers are active here. I just had a camembert that was delicious, croute and all.
Daiya has done pretty well for pizza products that need cheese, and it tastes like a fantastic pizza to me. I get Chao cheese on my Vegan deli sandwiches, and the deli clerks do a great job (most of the time), because when I get it toasted, it tastes like real cheese. I can't tell the difference.
You can also turn Daiya cheese into a cheese sauce for pizza that makes it fairly incredible. I'll melt a tablespoon of vegan butter then throw in an equal amount of flour until it's thick like a roux. Then add in maybe a 1/4 cup of unsweetened oat milk, once it's hot I just melt in a whole bunch of Daiya (or any vegan mozz brand will do). Pour that melted cheese sauce onto your pizza pie and then bake it. I've fed it to a lot of non-vegans who were pretty impressed at how similar to dairy pizza it was.
Same. I was accidentally served something with animal cheese a year or so ago while traveling, and even in that one bite, it reminded me how much I hate animal cheese now. Itās sooo salty, and my burps after were so gross.
Vegan cheese is delicious.
This is where I'm at too. On pizza, in quesadillas, in sandwiches, etc., I'm not only fine, but perfectly happy with most offerings out there.
But the Babybel's, cheese sticks, etc. still need some work.
This is true in a lot of cases, but thereās a good amount of (kinda pricey) charcuterie type cheese at sprouts and other markets. Where I live (los Angeles) there are even vegan delis with super delicious cheeses. Even my non-vegan eleven year old LOVES the vegan cheese boards I make.
They are great. Itās more charcuterie board cheese though, versus mozzarella that works for pizzas, etc. They use real quality ingredients like cashew and tofu, and a number of aging processes. Theyāre legit. Mark Cuban even invested.Ā
Some lady buys a lot of rebel cheese from tx and sells it at a farmers market in my city in CA. I wanna try but its too expensive probably her profit margin
And I'm so proud of all of it. We've done so much to create an incredible and wondrous variety of satiating and flavorful alternatives to non-vegan foods.
The cheese sucks tho.
For me the cheese is tolerable in sliced form on a sandwich or something, but in melted form or powdered on chips/snacks, it's dogshit and any vegan who says it's just as good as the real thing is either lying to you or lying to themselves.
I say this going on my 4th year of being vegan, vegan cheese is ass and pizza is the only thing I miss about not being vegan.
If you have the chance, you should try the brands that come out of the UK. Personally I think cheese in the Netherlands sucks entirely, vegan or not. I'm used to a strong, crumbly ful of flavour nature cheddar and that is impossible here. My personal recommendation is the plant based Cathedral City. What a vibe.
Recommendation for the ones I actually use here.. in the Netherlands, jumbo's white block, AH smoked, max and Bien for cheese boards.
Youāre right!! Half the time I just go without cheese bc I end up regretting putting it on. Like itās so gummy and squishy, the texture is all wrong.
Iām definitely not delusional about some vegan cheeses Iāve tried. The thing is that they typically work better for different applications, instead of a sort of one size fits all product.
I have used some Follow Your Heart slices for different things and handed them out to non-vegans and it was met only with praise, and when the next time they can have more is.
I think people just have differing expectations, or rose tinted goggles, or maybe they just donāt like cheese, vegan or otherwise.
Follow your heart parmesan- I have no idea how someone could think it's NOT parmesan- sure it doesn't melt but damn if it isn't feety and pretty authentic.
Mac and chee"z"- all terrible...
Kite Hill Philadelphia style? Seriously tastes exactly the same to me. I've made cheesecakes with it and non vegans have no idea.
Boursin spreadable garlic and herb? Dang good but texture is a bit off.
Chao and the "improved" daiya oat milk slices- not bad. But really, I'd Rather just go without... I buy some vegan cheese here and there for fun but yeah, just skip it.
Yup. This has been my thinking the entire time and I've yet to find an example that was any good.
I'm really not a big fan of imitation animal products for other reasons but generally speaking for me in all but a very few cases, they just remind me that they're not meat/cheese/dairy and those meals suck because it makes me feel like I'm eating an inferior meal.
I'd much vegan food that is naturally awesome with no or very minor subs than eat food trying to imitate carnist food.
Gotta make your own cashew cheese for pizza, buy tofutti for bagels, get the vegan feta for salads, make tofu ricotta for lasagnaā¦the pre bought slices only work on sandwiches when they can blend into the background, otherwise yea, most options you can buy at the store suck
They all suck. I don't even bother getting vegan pizza anymore. Once the cheese melts it never really goes back to solid form and your left with this gross goop.
Im okay with it being terrible, to be honest. Our best and priciest cheese replacement is fundamentally no better than the cheapest nastiest velveetaextruded sliced cheese whiz garbage. And thatās fine! Really! I never want to be in a situation where Iām taking a chance the cheese is actually vegan because you know people will get it wrong and weāll spend the next three days in the bathroom cursing the day anyone ever stole milk from cows and let it ferment in a baby cowās stomach.Ā On sandwiches, I like hummus and avocado better anyway. On pizza, cook it without any cheese replacement and the tomato sauce caramelizes nicely, and becomes the perfect substrate for copious nooch and olive oil. And I never have to wonder in the back of my mind if I am going to be the victim of lazy cross contamination by people that just donāt care. And if people need fake cheese to feel right, they can have all the terrible cheese like product out there to their heartās content.
Itās not terrible though. Yāall grew up eating cow cheese and now thatās your standard so you donāt like vegan cheese. I grew up the opposite so my standard for cheese is vegan cheese, itās not nasty and weirdly stretchy and plastic like real cheese. Sucks for yāall. Real cheese tainted your perception tbh
Lmao this isn't a flex. You're bragging that you like the thing that doesn't actually taste like cheese better than cheese.Ā
"Jokes on you guys, I LIKE eating shit food!"
Might just be a texture thing then. Soft cheezes are in the bag at this point, but I've yet to have a banger hard cheeze. Were you mostly into the really hard cheeses?
Vegan cheese has come a long way since I went vegan 15 years ago. There was no Daiya. We had that sweaty FYH block that was barely edible. The kids these days donāt know how good they have it. Maybe just make your own if you can do better?
This exactly. Iāve been vegan for 20+ years and the vegan cheese has come a long way! I donāt know why you would expect cheese thatās not made from dairy to taste like dairy anyway. When Daiya first came out it was a game changer, before that we had that bouncy block of FYH and a bunch of cheeses that were almost vegan but had casein in them. If you donāt like any of them, just donāt eat them, itās not that hard.
Some vegan cheeses are up there in the most disgusting foods I have ever tasted. And I've never tasted a single one that came even close to actual cheese, which is one of the tastiest foods in my opinion.
A lot of us have found cheeses here and there that we like (local vegan pizza place makes an amazing cheese) and I make some cheeses that work really well for specific uses. A cream cheese I use for cheese balls for gatherings, a tangy sunflower seed cheese that's great on fruit, the cultured almond cheese that's great on some crusty bread - I wouldn't say there is good as dairy cheeses, but so what? They're good. A beer doesn't make you feel as good as heroin, but it's still enjoyable and doesn't have them nasty side effects
In warm dishes it's OK-ish, but I agree plant-based cheese tastes worse than dairy based cheese.
I usually just avoid cheese dishes altogether. Put different stuff on sandwiches, nooch in pasta dishes, etc.
I don't really miss cheese, because there's a lot of totally different good stuff to eat, but I agree the plant-based cheeses just aren't that great.
I agree, it's usually absolutely dreadful and particularly bad when it's trying to be cheddar or whatever. The soft ones are somewhat better. I think we should probably just abandon all hope and put up with it TBH.
There is some good vegan cheese (though I agree, most of it is just tasteless fat). In time there wil be more but it will probably never reach the sophistication and diversity of real cheese and that's probably fine.
The only nom dairy cheeses worth fucking with are ones that are actually aged & made like cheese. Cashew cheeses & various other types made from nuts or chickpeas/legumes etc. inoculated with cultures & fermented.
All those coconut oil & starch based ones are fucking gross
Iād prefer zero cheese to commercially made fake cheese. That said, I love the Swiss cheese sauce recipe Isa Chandra provides in her beet Reuben sammy. https://www.theppk.com/2021/01/tempeh-beet-reubens/ The ricotta cheese recipe she has is great, too. Come to think of it, I have everything to make her mozzarella ball recipe. I think thatās gonna happen today.
Other people's senses adjusting differently from yours doesn't mean that we're delusional, just lucky in one respect. For me, probably about 2/3 of the commonly seen vegan cheeses taste pretty good, even though they probably wouldn't have in my carnist days.
[This recipe](https://lovingitvegan.com/vegan-cheddar-cheese/) is really good. I leave out the agar and use it as a cheese sauce. Itās really good for vegan mac.
Thereās also a really good vegan, potato-based cheese dip that I get at Safeway but I forgot the name of it.
idk, i like the violife mozzarella and chedder shreds, the follow your heart feta, the chao cheese slices, the miyoko liquid cheese.. others ive had sucked but it's all about finding the right stuff.
[www.vegancheese.co/discover](https://www.vegancheese.co/discover)
You just haven't had a good one yet, i've had hundreds from around Europe and can say that there are some out there that are better than dairy cheese.
Select the artisanal filter here [https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/production/artisan](https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/production/artisan) and your country and you'll find an amazing one.
Lab grown/vegan dairy is here now and being released this year made from vegan casein/whey [https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/article/everything-we-know-about-lab-grown-and-cultivated-cheese](https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/article/everything-we-know-about-lab-grown-and-cultivated-cheese)
Yeah I completely agree. Cheese is literally the one thing vegans havenāt been able to properly replicate which is while bc all cheese is, is fermented milk or cream so youād think SOMEBODY would be able to do the exact same thing to plant milks like soy milk. If they can make decent vegan yogurt Iām sure they could make good vegan cheese if they tried. Itās like no matter what thereās something wrong with it. If the flavors good then it doesnāt melt (chao), if it melts (daiya) it tastes disgusting, sometimes it does not of these and tastes like rubber. Iāve had good vegan CREAM cheeses just not like shredded or block cheese. Theyāve definitely come a long way but I think some ppl just will never like vegan cheeses so thereās not point in trying and you are better off just finding other things to eat. It sucks when companies sell shitty vegan substitutes especially cheese that tastes like feet bc if itās the first vegan product that someone tries and they were already hesitant to try vegan substitutions in the first place then itāll scar them away from all vegan products for life. They may never get to experience all the delicious vegan foods like vegan āchickenā nuggets, impossible ābeefā tacos, crispy fried tofu, tempeh, vegan āseafoodā like imitating shrimp and scallops that taste so legit you can barely tell the difference, and many many more. It may even result in them not going vegan bc they think if they do then theyāll be eating disgusting food for the rest of their lives.
Im sure one day theyāll invent good vegan cheese but until then im not gonna lie to people and claim that itās good only for them to try it and be majorly disappointed. Iād much rather encourage them to try vegan substitutes that taste amazing so they can see that vegan food doesnāt have to be restrictive, boring, or gross.
>It still sucks. We are delusional about this shit and need to step up our game.
You seriously lack perspective. They have hundreds of years head start on developing cheese over many different culture. You tried a few recipes at home and some products from some new companies and you expect way to much based on your tiny anecdote. The cheese does not suck. It sucks that we used animals for great tasting products and dulled our tastebuds for something less harmful. Nobody finds the childish complaining new or helpful.
thank you!! Vegan cheese is so good in lasagna, grilled cheese, pasta! Some people just donāt know how to cook or have only tried bad recipes. To say vegan cheese as a whole is bad is crazy
Try this recipe:
3 spoons of nutritional yeast flakes
2 spoons of vegan butter
3 teaspoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon mustard
150ml water
Heat up while whisking until you get a paste.
Put it on lasagna, pizza, casserole, burgers, anything. It gets nice and crispy when you bake it and it's consistency is like melted cheese.
Total gamechanger for my boyfriend and I and we were serious cheese lovers.
As a vegan I can honestly say the pizza never hits the same anymore because of the ācheeseā imo. Iāve given up on the āza and it hurts my heart. A sacrifice well worth it to save lives.
I had some amazing vegan macānācheez the other day with chickpea elbow macaroni and for the life of me forgot to ask about the cheez sauce, and itās killing me. It was from a food truck and I didnāt even get the name. I hate my brain sometimes.
Amen.
We can make vegan casein now, and we can make lactose. If there was a will, we could make chemically real vegan cheese... it's just that there's not much market for "vegan cheese with lactose."
There are some reasonably good cheese that are homemade at restaurants/nut cheeses/etc just not in a bag.
Miyoko's "mozza" and aged smoked "cheddar" aren't bad. Daiya has actually really stepped up its game with a "cheddar" block that I have enjoyed in "cream" of broccoli soup, and they have slices that taste quite good in a grilled "cheese." I recently enjoyed a "bacon" grilled "cheese" with it and it was delicious. I don't miss cheese, oddly enough (really thought I would), but I wouldn't enjoy my "cream" of broccoli soup as much if it were just topped up with nooch.
>It still sucks. We are delusional about this shit and need to step up our game.
Or maybe it's just a matter of taste? There are many vegan cheeses that I and every vegan I know like. Just because you don't like vegan cheeses doesn't mean they're not good to many people.
I get the Violife ones and I think they taste great. But I put them in tacos, pizza etc. If youāre just looking to eat a block of cheese on its own yeah it definitely wonāt be as good as dairy cheese.
Most of them suck, but I love the Follow Your Heart and the Dayia American cheese. Perfect for grilled cheese and for Mac n cheese. But, I used to love the Kraft deluxe American cheese so....
I love VioLife cream cheese spread and cheddar cheese slices, though you have to melt the slices in something like grilled cheese or on burgers, they aren't really meant to be eaten as-is.
The ones I've found that I like the most, I have to special order, and it's expensive as fuck.
I really love the cheeses by Rebel, especially the Maverick. It's a real bloomy rind like a camembert. I've started making my own bloomed rind cheeses, but I haven't gotten mine to that level yet, I think I need to age them longer.
I really love the Aged Black Ash cheese by Miyoko's.
The pink peppercorn wheel I had by Cheese the Queen was also fantastic.
Cashews are pretty standard as a base but they aren't very ethical or sustainable imo, so I am excited to experiment making bloomed rind cheeses with things like hazelnuts, walnuts, peas, peanuts, and pumpkin seeds.
I make a pretty bomb homemade goat chevre, too.
Miyokos makes my favorite soft cheese followed by Chao slices. For some reason daiya is popular and I don't like it. A long time ago I was vegetarian and I think the only thing I miss cheese on/in is pizza and burritos. People ask if the vegan cheese taste like real cheese and I really don't know anymore because it's been so long.
So the only vegan cheese that I have heard has any value is cashew cheese. Did you try this one? Iāve had a hard time finding it so I sadly havenāt tried it yet but I was hoping this would be a shot at something decent.
I don't dislike it as much as at the beginning.
There are some vegan cheeses that I actually like though, but all those oily immitations are more like butter and not it.
I have had some ok/good enough vegan cheese, but we're a long way from it being indistinguishable from the huge variety of cheeses that have hundreds of years of history.
My transition to vegan wasn't ever about replacing anything. Explore more than just replacing what you're used to with lesser tasting things.
I don't care for vegan cheeses, but I got this vegan havarti at my local food bank and it was killer! I think where people go wrong is trading out their binki for their thumb. Vegan products like cheese and meat aim to recreate the real version and most of it doesn't even end up tasting good. Sucks to suck. Nothing's gonna be as good as the real thing to your taste buds. You don't have to like it, consume it or buy it. There are plenty of vegan options around
Real cheese has a milk protein called casien, which causes the release of a peptide called casomorphin.
Notice the 'morphin' in that last word, the cheese causes a dopamine realease that makes you a little high.
That is a bad thing, because you'll naturally want more cheese is not exactly healthy.
Vegan cheese does not do that. It has no casien.
So it will never feel like real cheese. Which is fine, because it is good enough for pizza.
Itās true most of them do suck. Youāre right that we do delude ourselves. Iāve been vegan about 7 years and I only enjoy any of them now because itās been so long since I had the real thing. Iāve found a bit of a hack for topping something like a pizza or a lasagne, and itās to use minimal cheese and mix breadcrumbs and olive oil into the grated cheese mix. The breadcrumbs will give the illusion of the cheese crisping up, because the cheese wonāt do it by itself.
I have a few recipes that I like making, but they have more of a jello texture rather than cheese texture, which is fine with me but probably not with everyone
I agree, but recently a vegetarian friend of mine told me he prefers the vegan cheese. I was like.... wuttt? Tastes differ.
I am not delusional about it though. Cheese is the one thing vegan products don't yet imitate right.
I agree, vegan hard cheese sucks. (Parmesan, cheddar, etc.) I almost never eat them because it's kinda pointless. But soft, spreadable cheeses are usually pretty good though. Miyoko's and Kite Hill soft cheeses are quite good. Miyoko's liquid mozz is great on pizza and lasagna, too.
I prefer it to normal cheese these days tbh. Once I hadnāt eaten real cheese for a long time whenever I go back Iām put off. Mainly by the stringy texture but still. Vegan cheese has quite a nice flavour to it too, but I was never the biggest cheese connossieur anyways.
Vegan of ~19 years chiming in: I agree. I don't like fake cheese.
BUT there is hope. Miyoko's is great. It isn't fake cheese. It is real, fermented nuts and fat. There are other companies doing that, but Miyoko's are the most well known and most successful proper vegan cheese company.
Before going vegan, I added cheese nearly EVERYWHERE (fried eggs, all pasta, pea soup etc), just couldn't live without it. I think I discovered vegan cheese 5 years into being vegan and loved it instantly. There's been only a couple I didn't like.
Funny thing, during non-vegan times I found absolute most of dairy cheeses repulsing to the point the sight of some would make me gag, I'd eat only neutral-tasting semi-hard cheeses like emmental or tilsiter, string cheese and for some reason dorblu. The vegan ones now? Goat cheese, stilton, mature cheddar, parmesan, gouda, anything really - give me them all!
I am typically not a lover of vegan cheese, but recently I tried some of the vegan cheeses made by New Roots in Switzerland, using traditional cheese making processes. AMAZING. Really really astounding work.
I agree, vegan cheese you buy from the grocery store is terrible. It is super processed and just oil. Disgusting.
What has saved my life is vegan cheese made from nuts, artisan style. Plant City stocks a bunch. I love the bandit barn cat, similar to a blue cheese. Miyokos roadhouse cheddar for spreading on crackers. And dare Ashville cheese is to die for. They are much more expensive.
About 10 years ago, I regularly did vegan food tastings at county fairs and other public events. Among other offerings, we offered various store-bought vegan cheeses on relatively cheap crackers - a typical cheese-eating experience.
Most people (overwhelmingly non-vegan) found at least one cheese that they liked, and often I would hear comments such as āsurprisingly goodā and āI would buy this,,ā and ātry thisā to their friend or partner. And trust me, they had no qualms expressing their dislike or ambivalence, etc. if they didnāt like it.
So in my tests, the generally non-vegan public gave the cheese a much better rating than the OP writer. Granted, it takes more than āthis isnāt badā to induce a sea change in the publicās eating habits. Other foods (e.g., Field Roast sausage) got about 99% good ratings, but have barely made a dent in non-vegansā shopping carts.
The only vegan cheese that comes close to tasting as good as real cheese is called DarĆ« vegan cheese. The texture is amazing and itās great for charcuterie boards and cooking.
There's some good stuff. Properly matured cashew cheese can be great, but it's expensive.
This in my country is fantastic. https://www.coop.ch/de/lebensmittel/milchprodukte-eier/abgepackter-kaese/vegane-alternative-zu-kaese/new-roots-vegan-creamery-soft-white/p/6309222?gs=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=freeshopping-de&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAACthwQ9NeEFNooMq0WV8HOzihQcqS&gclid=CjwKCAjwzN-vBhAkEiwAYiO7oIM-ywNGeeRNOqkNaxteGrsy2_2UF_cFPqFckE6LbClBgQnM59cVuxoCLCIQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
They make a lot of how they use traditional techniques for dairy cheeses but with vegan cheese. I was skeptical and never believed a vegan cheese can taste so good but tried it and it's amazing. I wish I hadn't though because at 10 USD for 120 grams it's bad on my wallet
I'm so lucky that i hated cheese prior to become vegan, truly, and meat as well. It was like " good riddance yucky food" LOL!! So i don't wanna taste any of it, no disappointment. :D
I actually really love a number of vegan cheeses. My favorite pizza dump uses Daiya and itās lovely. I buy the Violife or Daiya slices for burgers and sandwiches and find them delicious. Good old Tofutti cream cheese is always in my fridge. The vegan Baby Bells are a nice snack.
Meh, š¤·āāļø I donāt know, I love Violife slices, smoked slices and Greek Style block.
I donāt think we need to āup our gameā or do anything at all just because you personally didnāt like it, taste is subjective, at the end of the day no one needs cheese.
Anyways, each to their own, I love the stuff and always buy it.
It makes sense you say this as a 2 yr old vegan. Vegan cheese has come a LONG way so it's funny to hear you say "we" need to do better as if there aren't new formulations and styles coming out rapidly. You wouldn't have surviveddddddd pre pandemic if you feel there are no better options now. Also, it's just not something "we" need to come to a consensus on since it's ya know...food that involves highly specific preferences lol.
I kind of agree. There are several vegan cheeses that I like ok but they just lack something major. Most of them work ok as a condiment but just don't feel substantial. It's especially apparent on pizza. But I've heard there are new companies coming out with vegan cheese that contains a vegan version of casein so I'm really hoping those will be it!
Parmela creamery had the best vegan cheese shreads ever! They weren't starch based they were cashew based I think but it's no longer available near me so miyoko vegan liquid cheese from Walmart it is.
I tried the new plant-based Babybel the other day and was pretty impressed. The flavour and texture reminded me of those Laughing Cow āparti cubesā we used to get back in the day. These Babybels are coconut-based.
One day I had some leftover pasta at work, and I crumbled one of the vegan Babybels over the pasta and microwaved it. It was SO good! Melted beautifully, nice flavour, etc. Plus it has green wax instead of red, so you can make little green candles and mini figurines along with your red ones. :)
First day vegan I bought the first random vegan cheese I saw and made a grilled cheese. and had a vegan cheese pizza from pizza pizza. no complaints here.
Cashew cream cheese with herbs is nice. My husband makes that for us.
But I also just don't miss eating cheese. I'm only in my third month now, granted, but really don't care for cheese anymore.
But beans....mmmhhh butter beans! I find them strangely addictive.
Go to the Netherlands. Normally priced vegan cheese from the supermarket. Tastes like real cheese! So much so I fooled my family. Love the Dutch cheese. I was impressed.
In Australia, vegan cheese tastes like crap. Or it's super expensive cashew type stuff.
I love this post. I agree. The expensive nut based cheeses are ok but the fermented tang that many have I fine off putting. Then you have the rest that are almost all coconut oil based and tastes like plastic and sticks to my mouth leaving a terrible aftertaste.
Yes vegan cheese sucks and needs to step up.
i know a few decent ones; rest of them taste like plastic ass or something. haven't eaten plastic ass, but that's what I imagine it would taste like. I usually use nooch as cheeze.
They are in the process of making vegan cheese with lab grown algea whey and casein give it a few years and vegan cheese is going to be just as addictive (and just as bad for you) as dairy cheese.
For me, while I'm excited I also know that a huge reason I lost 60 pounds is because I'm not consuming cheese as ridiculously as before lol. But I will say Miyokos cultured air dried cheese is the closest I've come and I'm obsessed. Oddly enough I recommend adding steak seasoning to it š Mccormick grill mates Applewood smoked rub makes a nearly identical chedder to the nonvegan Applewood smoked chedder cheese I used to love, just honestly a bit more grainy.
Vegan cheese tends not to be good, but a lot of them function quite well just to add that sort of cheesy funk you need sometimes. Even if it's not good enough to be the main focus of a dish.
Some suck for sure, but there are some delicious ones out there.
For either a snack or for making pizza the plant-based Babybel mozzarella circles are incredible. For making pizza I cut them in half (so I have two thinner circles) and spread them out on the pizza.
Miyokoās cheeses are to die for. I had a vegan charcuterie board with them for my birthday and they were delicious.
Krogerās Simple Truth brand makes great shredded cheese. I also love the Chao shredded cheese and the Chao slices for burgers.
At the end of the day itās your opinion, but Iād keep trying them, especially if you have a chance to try some specialty cheeses. I went out to a nice restaurant in a neighboring city recently with all meat-and-cheese-eating friends and they were all over my vegan charcuterie board cheeses.
not much of a cheese eater myself (itās dairy crack after all which is why non-crack versions canāt compete) but if i was iād adventure into this vegan cheese database of over 1,800 cheeses https://www.vegancheese.co/discover
I know what you mean, but it actually is improving slowly. Follow Your Heart just revamped their American style cheese and I think itās really good. And Iām not sure how accessible it is, but Peaceful Rebel cheese is good, too.
I also experimented with making my own vegan cheese, but it was way more work than I wanted to do (specifically hard cheeses are difficult for me, but Iāve had and made plenty of tasty vegan cheese sauces). Iād rather just not eat it rather than work hard for it.
I'm not gonna act like I love them all because some of them definitely do suck, but I can honestly say i have a few vegan cheeses I really love. I also make cashew cheese and when I feed them to my non vegan friends they love them too so idk what to tell ya š¤·š»āāļø
Do you have a cashew cheese recipe? šš»šš»š„ŗ
[THIS](https://www.thecheesemaker.com/products/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese.html?sku=BK1013&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwqdqvBhCPARIsANrmZhPrUd2eopDQK_he01YQ9gHAYJ7orlU-JUvDat1louDOFxIJm7RI7JAaAiSDEALw_wcB) This book is amazing
Nice try, Miyoko Schinner
Yes. Get this book^^^
Miyoko's liquid Mozerella is good for pizzas. Daiya has a javarti that is good to eat straight off the block. That covers it. We could easily do better. Why aren't we?
I mean respectfully I disagree. A lot of the soft Miyokos wheels are amazing imo. The violife feta is on point too... my last ex was a very talented (non vegan) chef and even liked a lot of the vegan cheeses I fed him.
i agree! i also get this cheese from my local farmers market thatās SO much better than any dairy cheese i ever had. we have a soft spreadable sharp cheddar from them now thatās absolutely to die for. i feel like OP hasnāt ventured outside the grocery store, there are lots of small businesses making amazing cheese
Wait, you've got a local farmer market and they sell vegan cheese there? O boy, the farmer markets here are more of the old fashioned kind. If there is a vegan cheddaer for sale somewhere, I find it sooner in a supermarket then at a farmers market.
i live in LA so iām a little spoiled š we have a lot of little local small businesses with great vegan cheese
Violife feta has the mouthfeel of pure fat and tastes like coconut oil, canāt be remotely compared to real feta. Iām vegan but letās stop this madness lol
The salty fattyness of the violife feta makes it perfect in salads imo. It's great!
I agree! It's delicious over thick tomatoes with basil too. I also make a bruschetta pizza with it.
Violife fermta reminds me more of goat cheese. Its my favorite. Some roasted beets, a drizzle of balsamic glaze, and some chunky crumbles of violife feta *chef's kiss* š
In my opinion all violife products taste like pure coconut. The fyh feta crumbles are delicious though.
Yeah, Iāve hated every violife product Iāve tried for this reason.
Didnāt we all agree a long time ago that cheese was never going to be a 1:1? I *prefer* vegan cheese to animal cheese. That feta is my favorite and it reminds me more of a cream cheese block but more dense. I add it to my just egg scrambles, put it in lasagnas, and straight up eat it with tofurky and crackers. Why do we have to be a monolith on this issue? Why canāt we just disagree, like animal consumers do? Not everyone hates American cheese. Not everyone loves sharp cheddar.
Their gouda rocks.
Cheese is a thing that historically has required milk. Animal product free cheese is a brand new thing maybe what...20 years old at best?Ā So you have literal 10,000 years of cheese making with milk vs 20 years of vegan cheese. Of course it's gonna suck. And few companies are going to research good vegan cheese while less than 1% of their country is vegan.Ā
The issue is that it's super easy to make amazing vegan cheese, as long as you use traditional methods with milk. But most of these companies are focused on making a starch/oil mixture and calling it cheese, which definitely sucks (some of them are okay, but most of them are just flavored plastic). Hopefully all of the wonderful companies using traditional cheese making methods will start to gain in popularity and prominence.
Yes, why canāt they culture the cheese in the way itās supposed to be made, that adds to the taste.
Yeah absolutely. A decent amount of people and companies are doing this, which is awesome. It just seems like it's going to take a while until we can find it in every grocery store
I mean, it is an entirely different protein with different properties. The goal of many mass market vegan cheeses is to replicate the end product because that's where the market demand is. The starches are generally used in mass market cheeses to recreate the properties of casein (poorly). We should definitely also support more artisan efforts to recreate the process but the end results are generally not comparable.
Do you mean, like, they should be using a vegan milk alternative for making cheese? Like oat milk or something?
Yeah exactly. Many companies are doing this and the results are amazing. Miyokos is probably the largest most readily available one. But there's cheese shops in NYC, DC, and all around the US. Oats don't have a great fat content and probably wouldn't be thaaaaat ideal for cheese, although I think some people use it (I honestly don't know much about cheese so I might be talking out of my ass). But cashew milk seems to work really well. I know Miyoko Schinner is currently working on developing recipes for traditionally cultured plant milk that doesn't involve cashews. I'm not sure what she's using, but I'm looking forward to the recipes when she releases them.
That makes sense!
Yeah, when I first learned about it just seemed like it made so much sense. Why do a weird starch/oil mixture when people have been perfecting cheesemaking for thousands of years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
the issue is that dairy proteins (casein) are what give cheese many of it's distinctive properties. Switching milks (and therefore proteins) won't give you the same results. Think of tofu, which is essentially a similar process to cheese making, but isn't very comparable to cheeses.
The new daiya made from oat is so better but definitely not cheesy. It tastes good so id eat it but I canāt say its cheesy. Just tried the new vegan Laughing Cow cheese, that was good
In addition to the jalapeƱo havarti, Daiya also makes a killer smoked Gouda.
I remember someone one telling me that all fast food cheese is fake and American singles are fake. If that were true we would have been able to make those cheese easy!Ā
Do it then if itās so easy
True Goodness Slices and Green Babel are good enough to eat straight. I got downvoted a bunch in some thread because I confessed this exact sentiment. Going to try to make some 'fresh' mozzarella using Schinner's (Miyoko's founder) recipe.
There's a pizza place near me that makes their own almondmilk mozz and they sell it to me by the bricks. mmmmm so good
I like the Field Roast Chao brand! It melts nicely and tastes pretty good. š
Agreed, I love chao! I also love follow your heart for putting on vegan burgers, it seems to melt the best.
It doesnāt taste cheesy at all. Its delicious to eat but not a cheese taste
Add nutritional yeast
Have you tried it melted like in a toasty or a grilled cheese? The flavor honestly improves a lot for me once it is melted.
I have, and again i think it tastes great, but its not a cheesy taste imo. It works for me bc i never liked too much of a cheesy taste even when i was just a vegetarian, so itās fine. But i dont think any vegan cheese available now is gonna help our cause in convincing people lmao
i must have garbage taste because iāve enjoyed a good 80% of vegan cheese
Me too omg, Violife and Daiya can fuck me up
In France we are lucky that the country's long cheese tradition is helping with the crossover. Many new generation vegan cheese makers are active here. I just had a camembert that was delicious, croute and all.
Rebel Cheese Brie is the bomb
Daiya has done pretty well for pizza products that need cheese, and it tastes like a fantastic pizza to me. I get Chao cheese on my Vegan deli sandwiches, and the deli clerks do a great job (most of the time), because when I get it toasted, it tastes like real cheese. I can't tell the difference.
I tried the daiya pizza. It was the first time I threw a pizza in the trash. Chao is really good though.
really? i love their pizza, the cheese melts and it tastes identical to a non vegan pizza. i canāt even notice itās GF
Yes, Chao is pretty good. For the longest time, Daiya was my only option, but now I've got at least 3ā4 different choices at my grocery store.
You can also turn Daiya cheese into a cheese sauce for pizza that makes it fairly incredible. I'll melt a tablespoon of vegan butter then throw in an equal amount of flour until it's thick like a roux. Then add in maybe a 1/4 cup of unsweetened oat milk, once it's hot I just melt in a whole bunch of Daiya (or any vegan mozz brand will do). Pour that melted cheese sauce onto your pizza pie and then bake it. I've fed it to a lot of non-vegans who were pretty impressed at how similar to dairy pizza it was.
I love vegan cheese. This is a personal opinion not a fact. Iām not pretending when I say I prefer vegan cheese to real cheese ā¦
Same. I was accidentally served something with animal cheese a year or so ago while traveling, and even in that one bite, it reminded me how much I hate animal cheese now. Itās sooo salty, and my burps after were so gross. Vegan cheese is delicious.
I find in food it's fine, but if you're just sitting there like "boy, I want to just eat a block of cheese", then yeah a lot of it won't be great
This is where I'm at too. On pizza, in quesadillas, in sandwiches, etc., I'm not only fine, but perfectly happy with most offerings out there. But the Babybel's, cheese sticks, etc. still need some work.
Have u tried the vegan Laughing Cow? Its good
I haven't. I don't think it's carried by any of my local grocery stores but I'll keep an eye out and give it a shot if I can find it.
Whole Foods is the only one that has it, even in a vegan friendly city like LA
This is true in a lot of cases, but thereās a good amount of (kinda pricey) charcuterie type cheese at sprouts and other markets. Where I live (los Angeles) there are even vegan delis with super delicious cheeses. Even my non-vegan eleven year old LOVES the vegan cheese boards I make.
I agree!! We do need to step up our game. Best one I e found was a blue cheese, from Rebel Cheese in Austin, TX. Soooo good, if youāre into that
Rebel Cheese has an amazing cheddar and brie too!
They are great. Itās more charcuterie board cheese though, versus mozzarella that works for pizzas, etc. They use real quality ingredients like cashew and tofu, and a number of aging processes. Theyāre legit. Mark Cuban even invested.Ā
Some lady buys a lot of rebel cheese from tx and sells it at a farmers market in my city in CA. I wanna try but its too expensive probably her profit margin
Just don't eat it if you don't like it. Plenty of other vegan foods out there.
And I'm so proud of all of it. We've done so much to create an incredible and wondrous variety of satiating and flavorful alternatives to non-vegan foods. The cheese sucks tho.
For me the cheese is tolerable in sliced form on a sandwich or something, but in melted form or powdered on chips/snacks, it's dogshit and any vegan who says it's just as good as the real thing is either lying to you or lying to themselves. I say this going on my 4th year of being vegan, vegan cheese is ass and pizza is the only thing I miss about not being vegan.
Yeahhh. The cheese isn't great. I can't say I really ever miss cheese, but if I did, I'd be pretty sad.
Cheese was harder to quit than liquor, and I had a half liter a day vodka habit. 10+ years later and I don't miss either. Much
Thatās surprising to hear, but you sound like a fighter
Vegan cheese doesn't suck of you know how to cook and which ones to use
nuts for cheese black garlic cashew cheese changed my life sooo
The nacho cheese at my favorite vegan restaurant is the only perfect vegan cheese Iāve tried. Iām with you for the most part, op.
If you have the chance, you should try the brands that come out of the UK. Personally I think cheese in the Netherlands sucks entirely, vegan or not. I'm used to a strong, crumbly ful of flavour nature cheddar and that is impossible here. My personal recommendation is the plant based Cathedral City. What a vibe. Recommendation for the ones I actually use here.. in the Netherlands, jumbo's white block, AH smoked, max and Bien for cheese boards.
Factual. Most vegan cheeses are ok at best, but Cathedral City actually replicates the flavour really well. The slices could melt better, though.
En vemondo van de Lidl?
It's not bad. It's usually the grated variant that I buy..
Youāre right!! Half the time I just go without cheese bc I end up regretting putting it on. Like itās so gummy and squishy, the texture is all wrong.
Been vegan for 5+ years. Agreed vegan cheeze is not very good. I definitely avoid . Lots of other things to eat
Iām definitely not delusional about some vegan cheeses Iāve tried. The thing is that they typically work better for different applications, instead of a sort of one size fits all product. I have used some Follow Your Heart slices for different things and handed them out to non-vegans and it was met only with praise, and when the next time they can have more is. I think people just have differing expectations, or rose tinted goggles, or maybe they just donāt like cheese, vegan or otherwise.
If people complain about vegan cheese not being good it's not because they don't like cheese in general lol
Follow your heart parmesan- I have no idea how someone could think it's NOT parmesan- sure it doesn't melt but damn if it isn't feety and pretty authentic. Mac and chee"z"- all terrible... Kite Hill Philadelphia style? Seriously tastes exactly the same to me. I've made cheesecakes with it and non vegans have no idea. Boursin spreadable garlic and herb? Dang good but texture is a bit off. Chao and the "improved" daiya oat milk slices- not bad. But really, I'd Rather just go without... I buy some vegan cheese here and there for fun but yeah, just skip it.
Sucks for you
I can only agree š Somebody told me that āPrecision Fermentationā will make it better. But that's probably a long way in the future ā¦
This is so true!
Yup. This has been my thinking the entire time and I've yet to find an example that was any good. I'm really not a big fan of imitation animal products for other reasons but generally speaking for me in all but a very few cases, they just remind me that they're not meat/cheese/dairy and those meals suck because it makes me feel like I'm eating an inferior meal. I'd much vegan food that is naturally awesome with no or very minor subs than eat food trying to imitate carnist food.
Gotta make your own cashew cheese for pizza, buy tofutti for bagels, get the vegan feta for salads, make tofu ricotta for lasagnaā¦the pre bought slices only work on sandwiches when they can blend into the background, otherwise yea, most options you can buy at the store suck
They all suck. I don't even bother getting vegan pizza anymore. Once the cheese melts it never really goes back to solid form and your left with this gross goop.
Im okay with it being terrible, to be honest. Our best and priciest cheese replacement is fundamentally no better than the cheapest nastiest velveetaextruded sliced cheese whiz garbage. And thatās fine! Really! I never want to be in a situation where Iām taking a chance the cheese is actually vegan because you know people will get it wrong and weāll spend the next three days in the bathroom cursing the day anyone ever stole milk from cows and let it ferment in a baby cowās stomach.Ā On sandwiches, I like hummus and avocado better anyway. On pizza, cook it without any cheese replacement and the tomato sauce caramelizes nicely, and becomes the perfect substrate for copious nooch and olive oil. And I never have to wonder in the back of my mind if I am going to be the victim of lazy cross contamination by people that just donāt care. And if people need fake cheese to feel right, they can have all the terrible cheese like product out there to their heartās content.
Itās not terrible though. Yāall grew up eating cow cheese and now thatās your standard so you donāt like vegan cheese. I grew up the opposite so my standard for cheese is vegan cheese, itās not nasty and weirdly stretchy and plastic like real cheese. Sucks for yāall. Real cheese tainted your perception tbh
Lmao this isn't a flex. You're bragging that you like the thing that doesn't actually taste like cheese better than cheese.Ā "Jokes on you guys, I LIKE eating shit food!"
Have you tried Rebel cheese?
Might just be a texture thing then. Soft cheezes are in the bag at this point, but I've yet to have a banger hard cheeze. Were you mostly into the really hard cheeses?
Try GoodPlant smoked Gouda
Vegan cheese has come a long way since I went vegan 15 years ago. There was no Daiya. We had that sweaty FYH block that was barely edible. The kids these days donāt know how good they have it. Maybe just make your own if you can do better?
This exactly. Iāve been vegan for 20+ years and the vegan cheese has come a long way! I donāt know why you would expect cheese thatās not made from dairy to taste like dairy anyway. When Daiya first came out it was a game changer, before that we had that bouncy block of FYH and a bunch of cheeses that were almost vegan but had casein in them. If you donāt like any of them, just donāt eat them, itās not that hard.
Some vegan cheeses are up there in the most disgusting foods I have ever tasted. And I've never tasted a single one that came even close to actual cheese, which is one of the tastiest foods in my opinion.
On a related note, Iāve never seen or found vegan Swiss cheese. Anybody?
A lot of us have found cheeses here and there that we like (local vegan pizza place makes an amazing cheese) and I make some cheeses that work really well for specific uses. A cream cheese I use for cheese balls for gatherings, a tangy sunflower seed cheese that's great on fruit, the cultured almond cheese that's great on some crusty bread - I wouldn't say there is good as dairy cheeses, but so what? They're good. A beer doesn't make you feel as good as heroin, but it's still enjoyable and doesn't have them nasty side effects
Love it and love the word delusional used here.
In warm dishes it's OK-ish, but I agree plant-based cheese tastes worse than dairy based cheese. I usually just avoid cheese dishes altogether. Put different stuff on sandwiches, nooch in pasta dishes, etc. I don't really miss cheese, because there's a lot of totally different good stuff to eat, but I agree the plant-based cheeses just aren't that great.
I agree, it's usually absolutely dreadful and particularly bad when it's trying to be cheddar or whatever. The soft ones are somewhat better. I think we should probably just abandon all hope and put up with it TBH.
There is some good vegan cheese (though I agree, most of it is just tasteless fat). In time there wil be more but it will probably never reach the sophistication and diversity of real cheese and that's probably fine.
Tell me about it... I'm french, I don't miss meat at all but cheese... Cheese I do
The only nom dairy cheeses worth fucking with are ones that are actually aged & made like cheese. Cashew cheeses & various other types made from nuts or chickpeas/legumes etc. inoculated with cultures & fermented. All those coconut oil & starch based ones are fucking gross
Iād prefer zero cheese to commercially made fake cheese. That said, I love the Swiss cheese sauce recipe Isa Chandra provides in her beet Reuben sammy. https://www.theppk.com/2021/01/tempeh-beet-reubens/ The ricotta cheese recipe she has is great, too. Come to think of it, I have everything to make her mozzarella ball recipe. I think thatās gonna happen today.
Try rebel cheese! Brie is insanely good. I like the smoked cheddar too. Only one I donāt really like is GruyĆØre.
100% agree
Preach
Vegan Babybel! It was amazing.
Other people's senses adjusting differently from yours doesn't mean that we're delusional, just lucky in one respect. For me, probably about 2/3 of the commonly seen vegan cheeses taste pretty good, even though they probably wouldn't have in my carnist days.
[This recipe](https://lovingitvegan.com/vegan-cheddar-cheese/) is really good. I leave out the agar and use it as a cheese sauce. Itās really good for vegan mac. Thereās also a really good vegan, potato-based cheese dip that I get at Safeway but I forgot the name of it.
idk, i like the violife mozzarella and chedder shreds, the follow your heart feta, the chao cheese slices, the miyoko liquid cheese.. others ive had sucked but it's all about finding the right stuff.
Yep, they all suck.
[www.vegancheese.co/discover](https://www.vegancheese.co/discover) You just haven't had a good one yet, i've had hundreds from around Europe and can say that there are some out there that are better than dairy cheese. Select the artisanal filter here [https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/production/artisan](https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/production/artisan) and your country and you'll find an amazing one. Lab grown/vegan dairy is here now and being released this year made from vegan casein/whey [https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/article/everything-we-know-about-lab-grown-and-cultivated-cheese](https://www.vegancheese.co/discover/article/everything-we-know-about-lab-grown-and-cultivated-cheese)
I do not want to pay $20 for 4oz of something mostly just "good enough."
Yeah I completely agree. Cheese is literally the one thing vegans havenāt been able to properly replicate which is while bc all cheese is, is fermented milk or cream so youād think SOMEBODY would be able to do the exact same thing to plant milks like soy milk. If they can make decent vegan yogurt Iām sure they could make good vegan cheese if they tried. Itās like no matter what thereās something wrong with it. If the flavors good then it doesnāt melt (chao), if it melts (daiya) it tastes disgusting, sometimes it does not of these and tastes like rubber. Iāve had good vegan CREAM cheeses just not like shredded or block cheese. Theyāve definitely come a long way but I think some ppl just will never like vegan cheeses so thereās not point in trying and you are better off just finding other things to eat. It sucks when companies sell shitty vegan substitutes especially cheese that tastes like feet bc if itās the first vegan product that someone tries and they were already hesitant to try vegan substitutions in the first place then itāll scar them away from all vegan products for life. They may never get to experience all the delicious vegan foods like vegan āchickenā nuggets, impossible ābeefā tacos, crispy fried tofu, tempeh, vegan āseafoodā like imitating shrimp and scallops that taste so legit you can barely tell the difference, and many many more. It may even result in them not going vegan bc they think if they do then theyāll be eating disgusting food for the rest of their lives. Im sure one day theyāll invent good vegan cheese but until then im not gonna lie to people and claim that itās good only for them to try it and be majorly disappointed. Iād much rather encourage them to try vegan substitutes that taste amazing so they can see that vegan food doesnāt have to be restrictive, boring, or gross.
>It still sucks. We are delusional about this shit and need to step up our game. You seriously lack perspective. They have hundreds of years head start on developing cheese over many different culture. You tried a few recipes at home and some products from some new companies and you expect way to much based on your tiny anecdote. The cheese does not suck. It sucks that we used animals for great tasting products and dulled our tastebuds for something less harmful. Nobody finds the childish complaining new or helpful.
thank you!! Vegan cheese is so good in lasagna, grilled cheese, pasta! Some people just donāt know how to cook or have only tried bad recipes. To say vegan cheese as a whole is bad is crazy
Try this recipe: 3 spoons of nutritional yeast flakes 2 spoons of vegan butter 3 teaspoons flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon mustard 150ml water Heat up while whisking until you get a paste. Put it on lasagna, pizza, casserole, burgers, anything. It gets nice and crispy when you bake it and it's consistency is like melted cheese. Total gamechanger for my boyfriend and I and we were serious cheese lovers.
This is just a bechamel sauce
Taste-wise, I only like chao and the vegan Babybel, but I don't want to give Babybel my money. Otherwise, I agree, it all sucks.
As a vegan I can honestly say the pizza never hits the same anymore because of the ācheeseā imo. Iāve given up on the āza and it hurts my heart. A sacrifice well worth it to save lives.
I had some amazing vegan macānācheez the other day with chickpea elbow macaroni and for the life of me forgot to ask about the cheez sauce, and itās killing me. It was from a food truck and I didnāt even get the name. I hate my brain sometimes.
Amen. We can make vegan casein now, and we can make lactose. If there was a will, we could make chemically real vegan cheese... it's just that there's not much market for "vegan cheese with lactose." There are some reasonably good cheese that are homemade at restaurants/nut cheeses/etc just not in a bag.
I love vegan cheese better than real stuff..to each their own.
Miyoko's "mozza" and aged smoked "cheddar" aren't bad. Daiya has actually really stepped up its game with a "cheddar" block that I have enjoyed in "cream" of broccoli soup, and they have slices that taste quite good in a grilled "cheese." I recently enjoyed a "bacon" grilled "cheese" with it and it was delicious. I don't miss cheese, oddly enough (really thought I would), but I wouldn't enjoy my "cream" of broccoli soup as much if it were just topped up with nooch.
I don't miss cheese either. Luckily.
No cheese > vegan cheese
Just make your own. Consentingly obtained human breastmilk is legal and vegan.
>It still sucks. We are delusional about this shit and need to step up our game. Or maybe it's just a matter of taste? There are many vegan cheeses that I and every vegan I know like. Just because you don't like vegan cheeses doesn't mean they're not good to many people.
I get the Violife ones and I think they taste great. But I put them in tacos, pizza etc. If youāre just looking to eat a block of cheese on its own yeah it definitely wonāt be as good as dairy cheese.
I just tried some for the first time and I was actually surprised on how good it was. āCream cheeseā and ācheddarā
Most of them suck, but I love the Follow Your Heart and the Dayia American cheese. Perfect for grilled cheese and for Mac n cheese. But, I used to love the Kraft deluxe American cheese so....
I love VioLife cream cheese spread and cheddar cheese slices, though you have to melt the slices in something like grilled cheese or on burgers, they aren't really meant to be eaten as-is.
Cashew cheese is so good. I eat too much on my own i cant have it in the house i literally eat it within 5 minutes
The ones I've found that I like the most, I have to special order, and it's expensive as fuck. I really love the cheeses by Rebel, especially the Maverick. It's a real bloomy rind like a camembert. I've started making my own bloomed rind cheeses, but I haven't gotten mine to that level yet, I think I need to age them longer. I really love the Aged Black Ash cheese by Miyoko's. The pink peppercorn wheel I had by Cheese the Queen was also fantastic. Cashews are pretty standard as a base but they aren't very ethical or sustainable imo, so I am excited to experiment making bloomed rind cheeses with things like hazelnuts, walnuts, peas, peanuts, and pumpkin seeds. I make a pretty bomb homemade goat chevre, too.
Miyokos makes my favorite soft cheese followed by Chao slices. For some reason daiya is popular and I don't like it. A long time ago I was vegetarian and I think the only thing I miss cheese on/in is pizza and burritos. People ask if the vegan cheese taste like real cheese and I really don't know anymore because it's been so long.
So the only vegan cheese that I have heard has any value is cashew cheese. Did you try this one? Iāve had a hard time finding it so I sadly havenāt tried it yet but I was hoping this would be a shot at something decent.
I don't dislike it as much as at the beginning. There are some vegan cheeses that I actually like though, but all those oily immitations are more like butter and not it.
My heart bleeds for you
I have had some ok/good enough vegan cheese, but we're a long way from it being indistinguishable from the huge variety of cheeses that have hundreds of years of history.
Most of them are completely fine.
My transition to vegan wasn't ever about replacing anything. Explore more than just replacing what you're used to with lesser tasting things. I don't care for vegan cheeses, but I got this vegan havarti at my local food bank and it was killer! I think where people go wrong is trading out their binki for their thumb. Vegan products like cheese and meat aim to recreate the real version and most of it doesn't even end up tasting good. Sucks to suck. Nothing's gonna be as good as the real thing to your taste buds. You don't have to like it, consume it or buy it. There are plenty of vegan options around
Real cheese has a milk protein called casien, which causes the release of a peptide called casomorphin. Notice the 'morphin' in that last word, the cheese causes a dopamine realease that makes you a little high. That is a bad thing, because you'll naturally want more cheese is not exactly healthy. Vegan cheese does not do that. It has no casien. So it will never feel like real cheese. Which is fine, because it is good enough for pizza.
Itās true most of them do suck. Youāre right that we do delude ourselves. Iāve been vegan about 7 years and I only enjoy any of them now because itās been so long since I had the real thing. Iāve found a bit of a hack for topping something like a pizza or a lasagne, and itās to use minimal cheese and mix breadcrumbs and olive oil into the grated cheese mix. The breadcrumbs will give the illusion of the cheese crisping up, because the cheese wonāt do it by itself.
I have a few recipes that I like making, but they have more of a jello texture rather than cheese texture, which is fine with me but probably not with everyone
I agree, but recently a vegetarian friend of mine told me he prefers the vegan cheese. I was like.... wuttt? Tastes differ. I am not delusional about it though. Cheese is the one thing vegan products don't yet imitate right.
I agree, vegan hard cheese sucks. (Parmesan, cheddar, etc.) I almost never eat them because it's kinda pointless. But soft, spreadable cheeses are usually pretty good though. Miyoko's and Kite Hill soft cheeses are quite good. Miyoko's liquid mozz is great on pizza and lasagna, too.
I prefer it to normal cheese these days tbh. Once I hadnāt eaten real cheese for a long time whenever I go back Iām put off. Mainly by the stringy texture but still. Vegan cheese has quite a nice flavour to it too, but I was never the biggest cheese connossieur anyways.
Vegan of ~19 years chiming in: I agree. I don't like fake cheese. BUT there is hope. Miyoko's is great. It isn't fake cheese. It is real, fermented nuts and fat. There are other companies doing that, but Miyoko's are the most well known and most successful proper vegan cheese company.
Trader Joe's vegan cream cheese is actually good. I also like vegan parmesan available at most grocery stores. But otherwise, yeah, it's rough.
Before going vegan, I added cheese nearly EVERYWHERE (fried eggs, all pasta, pea soup etc), just couldn't live without it. I think I discovered vegan cheese 5 years into being vegan and loved it instantly. There's been only a couple I didn't like. Funny thing, during non-vegan times I found absolute most of dairy cheeses repulsing to the point the sight of some would make me gag, I'd eat only neutral-tasting semi-hard cheeses like emmental or tilsiter, string cheese and for some reason dorblu. The vegan ones now? Goat cheese, stilton, mature cheddar, parmesan, gouda, anything really - give me them all!
I am typically not a lover of vegan cheese, but recently I tried some of the vegan cheeses made by New Roots in Switzerland, using traditional cheese making processes. AMAZING. Really really astounding work.
I agree, vegan cheese you buy from the grocery store is terrible. It is super processed and just oil. Disgusting. What has saved my life is vegan cheese made from nuts, artisan style. Plant City stocks a bunch. I love the bandit barn cat, similar to a blue cheese. Miyokos roadhouse cheddar for spreading on crackers. And dare Ashville cheese is to die for. They are much more expensive.
It's a lot better than it used to be.
About 10 years ago, I regularly did vegan food tastings at county fairs and other public events. Among other offerings, we offered various store-bought vegan cheeses on relatively cheap crackers - a typical cheese-eating experience. Most people (overwhelmingly non-vegan) found at least one cheese that they liked, and often I would hear comments such as āsurprisingly goodā and āI would buy this,,ā and ātry thisā to their friend or partner. And trust me, they had no qualms expressing their dislike or ambivalence, etc. if they didnāt like it. So in my tests, the generally non-vegan public gave the cheese a much better rating than the OP writer. Granted, it takes more than āthis isnāt badā to induce a sea change in the publicās eating habits. Other foods (e.g., Field Roast sausage) got about 99% good ratings, but have barely made a dent in non-vegansā shopping carts.
I make my own mozzarella from tofu.
I recently had some vegan feta without me knowing it was vegan and I thought it was pretty good I couldn't tell it wasn't cheese and it tastes fine.
Cathedral city extra mature plant based is amazing.
Dairy cheese is oily, stinky and sticky. I donāt miss it at all.
The only vegan cheese that comes close to tasting as good as real cheese is called DarĆ« vegan cheese. The texture is amazing and itās great for charcuterie boards and cooking.
There's some good stuff. Properly matured cashew cheese can be great, but it's expensive. This in my country is fantastic. https://www.coop.ch/de/lebensmittel/milchprodukte-eier/abgepackter-kaese/vegane-alternative-zu-kaese/new-roots-vegan-creamery-soft-white/p/6309222?gs=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=freeshopping-de&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAACthwQ9NeEFNooMq0WV8HOzihQcqS&gclid=CjwKCAjwzN-vBhAkEiwAYiO7oIM-ywNGeeRNOqkNaxteGrsy2_2UF_cFPqFckE6LbClBgQnM59cVuxoCLCIQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds They make a lot of how they use traditional techniques for dairy cheeses but with vegan cheese. I was skeptical and never believed a vegan cheese can taste so good but tried it and it's amazing. I wish I hadn't though because at 10 USD for 120 grams it's bad on my wallet
Yup. Vegan cheese is pretty bad.
I'm so lucky that i hated cheese prior to become vegan, truly, and meat as well. It was like " good riddance yucky food" LOL!! So i don't wanna taste any of it, no disappointment. :D
Frankly speaking, I never liked any cheese, not only vegan ones. Simply don't like the taste
I don't think all of it is terrible, but it's nowhere near cheese.
I actually really love a number of vegan cheeses. My favorite pizza dump uses Daiya and itās lovely. I buy the Violife or Daiya slices for burgers and sandwiches and find them delicious. Good old Tofutti cream cheese is always in my fridge. The vegan Baby Bells are a nice snack.
Meh, š¤·āāļø I donāt know, I love Violife slices, smoked slices and Greek Style block. I donāt think we need to āup our gameā or do anything at all just because you personally didnāt like it, taste is subjective, at the end of the day no one needs cheese. Anyways, each to their own, I love the stuff and always buy it.
It makes sense you say this as a 2 yr old vegan. Vegan cheese has come a LONG way so it's funny to hear you say "we" need to do better as if there aren't new formulations and styles coming out rapidly. You wouldn't have surviveddddddd pre pandemic if you feel there are no better options now. Also, it's just not something "we" need to come to a consensus on since it's ya know...food that involves highly specific preferences lol.
That stuff isnāt healthy anyways
I love vegan cheese idk what you're talking about. I had a vegan smoked provolone on a beyond burger yesterday and it was so good.
I kind of agree. There are several vegan cheeses that I like ok but they just lack something major. Most of them work ok as a condiment but just don't feel substantial. It's especially apparent on pizza. But I've heard there are new companies coming out with vegan cheese that contains a vegan version of casein so I'm really hoping those will be it!
Parmela creamery had the best vegan cheese shreads ever! They weren't starch based they were cashew based I think but it's no longer available near me so miyoko vegan liquid cheese from Walmart it is.
I tried the new plant-based Babybel the other day and was pretty impressed. The flavour and texture reminded me of those Laughing Cow āparti cubesā we used to get back in the day. These Babybels are coconut-based. One day I had some leftover pasta at work, and I crumbled one of the vegan Babybels over the pasta and microwaved it. It was SO good! Melted beautifully, nice flavour, etc. Plus it has green wax instead of red, so you can make little green candles and mini figurines along with your red ones. :)
Violife & Cathedral City are tolerable. The rest can get in the bin.
Cheese is definitely an area that needs some work. Short of Violife cheddar slices and feta, I stay away from it.
Have you tried this great recipe for [fermented cashew cheese](https://rainbowplantlife.com/fermented-cashew-cheese/) by Rainbow Plant Life? Also, try the brand DarƩ if you can find it in a store (or you can order it online from their website)
First day vegan I bought the first random vegan cheese I saw and made a grilled cheese. and had a vegan cheese pizza from pizza pizza. no complaints here.
I like violife a lot. (shrug)
I would agree and I have been criticized for making that point every vegan cheese I have tried except for the spreads stink.
Cashew cream cheese with herbs is nice. My husband makes that for us. But I also just don't miss eating cheese. I'm only in my third month now, granted, but really don't care for cheese anymore. But beans....mmmhhh butter beans! I find them strangely addictive.
Can't relate. I think it's yummy and honestly better than dairy cheese
Go to the Netherlands. Normally priced vegan cheese from the supermarket. Tastes like real cheese! So much so I fooled my family. Love the Dutch cheese. I was impressed. In Australia, vegan cheese tastes like crap. Or it's super expensive cashew type stuff.
I dunno man. Violife does it for me. I eat the slices straight out the pack. Tastes like cheese to me. Love that shit
I love this post. I agree. The expensive nut based cheeses are ok but the fermented tang that many have I fine off putting. Then you have the rest that are almost all coconut oil based and tastes like plastic and sticks to my mouth leaving a terrible aftertaste. Yes vegan cheese sucks and needs to step up.
i know a few decent ones; rest of them taste like plastic ass or something. haven't eaten plastic ass, but that's what I imagine it would taste like. I usually use nooch as cheeze.
They are in the process of making vegan cheese with lab grown algea whey and casein give it a few years and vegan cheese is going to be just as addictive (and just as bad for you) as dairy cheese. For me, while I'm excited I also know that a huge reason I lost 60 pounds is because I'm not consuming cheese as ridiculously as before lol. But I will say Miyokos cultured air dried cheese is the closest I've come and I'm obsessed. Oddly enough I recommend adding steak seasoning to it š Mccormick grill mates Applewood smoked rub makes a nearly identical chedder to the nonvegan Applewood smoked chedder cheese I used to love, just honestly a bit more grainy.
Cashew cheese is king. Had some jackfruit enchiladas with that it was superb
Vegan cheese tends not to be good, but a lot of them function quite well just to add that sort of cheesy funk you need sometimes. Even if it's not good enough to be the main focus of a dish.
Some suck for sure, but there are some delicious ones out there. For either a snack or for making pizza the plant-based Babybel mozzarella circles are incredible. For making pizza I cut them in half (so I have two thinner circles) and spread them out on the pizza. Miyokoās cheeses are to die for. I had a vegan charcuterie board with them for my birthday and they were delicious. Krogerās Simple Truth brand makes great shredded cheese. I also love the Chao shredded cheese and the Chao slices for burgers. At the end of the day itās your opinion, but Iād keep trying them, especially if you have a chance to try some specialty cheeses. I went out to a nice restaurant in a neighboring city recently with all meat-and-cheese-eating friends and they were all over my vegan charcuterie board cheeses.
Follow your Heart Feta and Trader Joeās Spicy are my Go toās.
Miokoās vegan cheese is insane
not much of a cheese eater myself (itās dairy crack after all which is why non-crack versions canāt compete) but if i was iād adventure into this vegan cheese database of over 1,800 cheeses https://www.vegancheese.co/discover
I use Daiya and it's great. I melt it down and make nacho cheese for nachos. Have you tried daiya?
I know what you mean, but it actually is improving slowly. Follow Your Heart just revamped their American style cheese and I think itās really good. And Iām not sure how accessible it is, but Peaceful Rebel cheese is good, too. I also experimented with making my own vegan cheese, but it was way more work than I wanted to do (specifically hard cheeses are difficult for me, but Iāve had and made plenty of tasty vegan cheese sauces). Iād rather just not eat it rather than work hard for it.