Good for them, but I got fooled by the title. 3 of the 4 awards were in vegan cheese categories, I thought they were going toe to toe with traditionally made cheeses. Like, I would hope a vegan...
Good for them, but I got fooled by the title. 3 of the 4 awards were in vegan cheese categories, I thought they were going toe to toe with traditionally made cheeses.
Like, I would hope a vegan brand won best vegan gouda or whatever
I assume processed cheese category is for everything nontraditional so that is a pretty big win. Probably "best gouda" or whatever is a strict category, I wonder how easy it is for vegan stuff to...
One of the awards it won was for “Best Cheese in Processed Cheese Section.” For this, the brand was nominated alongside dairy and vegan products.
The creators also took home three further awards in vegan categories, including: Best Vegan Feta (Greek Style), Best Vegan Cheese Slices (Cheddar Flavor Slices), and Best Vegan Cheese for Pizza (Mozzarella Style Block).
I assume processed cheese category is for everything nontraditional so that is a pretty big win. Probably "best gouda" or whatever is a strict category, I wonder how easy it is for vegan stuff to get anywhere close to the stuff that's competing in those categories. There's really no incentive for animal based cheeses to open themselves up to the direct vegan competition if it can be helped.
My understanding is that cheese is one of the hardest things to emulate with vegan materials, so even for these processed products it's impressive to make a decent substitute!
My understanding is that cheese is one of the hardest things to emulate with vegan materials, so even for these processed products it's impressive to make a decent substitute!
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to make something taste and feel even like processed cheese without any non-vegan ingredients. That said, of course it makes sense that these products...
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to make something taste and feel even like processed cheese without any non-vegan ingredients. That said, of course it makes sense that these products are where they start out being relatively successful.
Personally I think texture/mouthfeel is super, super important, maybe even moreso than flavor. Flavor has more room for variation because there's a ridiculous range of flavor profiles even in...
Personally I think texture/mouthfeel is super, super important, maybe even moreso than flavor. Flavor has more room for variation because there's a ridiculous range of flavor profiles even in dairy cheese, but if you don't nail the texture it's going to immediately register to tasters as something that's trying to be but isn't.
Sure. If you're trying to make Parmesan and you nail the flavor (doubtful IMO), and the texture is that of liver pate, you're going to have a hard time convincing me. But with processed cheese...
Sure. If you're trying to make Parmesan and you nail the flavor (doubtful IMO), and the texture is that of liver pate, you're going to have a hard time convincing me. But with processed cheese that's kinda the easy bit; the texture has basically been intentionally processed away using emulsifiers. No problem there, so all that's left to do is the flavor profile.
Which, if my anecdotal experience is worth anything, is very hard to get right. Many vegan substitute foods are more forgiving than cheese, flavor-wise. So clearing even that is an achievemnt imo.
You might be surprised. Do you eat a lot of these vegan products? There are some decent vegan cheese products out there nowadays (much better than when I originally stopped eating dairy a decade...
You might be surprised. Do you eat a lot of these vegan products? There are some decent vegan cheese products out there nowadays (much better than when I originally stopped eating dairy a decade ago,) but I've never been able to find anything like Kraft slices or even things like the faux-artificial cheese taste of Cheetos, for example.
For all the flaws of Kraft slices, one of the biggest benefits is meltability, and all vegan cheeses have always struggled to melt properly and predictably. Many "vegan Kraft slices" take too long to melt while your grilled cheese bread burns, or it dries up if you try to melt it on top of something. Usually vegan cheeses that try to replicate a less processed cheese taste better, even though vegan cheese never successfully replicates a really good dairy cheese. They at least taste good as their own thing.
There are vegan "Cheetos" and they're a nice snack, but they're always inherently less processed than Cheetos. Pretty much none of them will have MSG, won't have a bit too much salt, and they won't taste as deep fried as mainstream snacks. They also never have the crazy food coloring that I'm pretty sure adds to the experience of eating junk food like that. Not that all of that is good or good for us, but I'm just saying that there are a lot of random, processed dairy products you'd think are simple to replicate as vegan, but aren't. This might be more of a marketing choice (to make products that appeal to health concious people) rather than an issue of it being possible to make junk food vegan Cheetos, but regardless.
On the other hand, it's very easy to replicate some other processed products, like chicken nuggets. Good chicken in a nice meal is nothing like vegan chicken, but I genuinely cannot tell the difference between fast food nuggets and vegan ones. I wish it was that simple for cheese, or eggs!
I have a cool tip for melting vegan cheese that I learned from Thee Burger Dude, steam it! You just pour a little bit of water around the cheese, cover it, and it melts perfectly.
I have a cool tip for melting vegan cheese that I learned from Thee Burger Dude, steam it! You just pour a little bit of water around the cheese, cover it, and it melts perfectly.
Yep, basically you have to manage the moisture level somehow! I usually do it by covering any baked dish with aluminum foil so the steam from the food keeps the cheese from getting dry. For my...
Yep, basically you have to manage the moisture level somehow! I usually do it by covering any baked dish with aluminum foil so the steam from the food keeps the cheese from getting dry. For my guilty pleasure microwaved nachos, I put a second plate on top of the nachos to slightly contain the steam. (I can't seem to manage vegan nachos in the oven, they get way too dry unless there is a metric shit ton of cheese piled on top.)
I haven't tried anything as direct as what you suggest, but it sounds like it would work well, depending on the situation. Seems great for burgers, I think people even use that trick for normal cheese soemtimes. But I wouldn't want to put water in a pan of grilled cheese (obviously!) Only careful timing and buying the best kinds of vegan cheese seems to work.
Texture isn't the main problem. Also, I doubt the dairy runner-up was Kraft singles. The thing about processed anything is that you can add bullshit and filler to make an inferior and cheaper...
Texture isn't the main problem. Also, I doubt the dairy runner-up was Kraft singles.
The thing about processed anything is that you can add bullshit and filler to make an inferior and cheaper product. But you don't have to. You can make a high quality processed product, and one would suppose that's what they're looking for.
Having eaten a vast array of vegan cheeses, I can assure you that there is no such thing as an even vaguely realistic vegan Gouda substitute. Which is not to say that vegan cheeses taste bad, they...
Having eaten a vast array of vegan cheeses, I can assure you that there is no such thing as an even vaguely realistic vegan Gouda substitute.
Which is not to say that vegan cheeses taste bad, they just don’t taste like cheese.
Cheese has lots of flavours and textures, but none of them are well approximated by vegan products with the exception of those varieties which are commonly referred to (for legal reasons) as...
Cheese has lots of flavours and textures, but none of them are well approximated by vegan products with the exception of those varieties which are commonly referred to (for legal reasons) as "edible oil products" or "cheese product".
I don’t eat dairy anymore, but personally I think think the flavors and textures of cheese are so diverse that it doesn’t really make sense to say something tastes “like cheese” or not. I’ve never...
I don’t eat dairy anymore, but personally I think think the flavors and textures of cheese are so diverse that it doesn’t really make sense to say something tastes “like cheese” or not. I’ve never had a vegan cheese that I liked the flavor and texture of more than my favorite authentic cheeses, but at the same time, I’ve had plenty that have a more “classic” cheese flavor or texture than plenty of real cheeses. And I’ve had plenty of real cheeses whose flavor and texture reminded of vegan cheese.
I do agree though that if you wanted to replace a particular cheese, then all the vegan options will probably leave you unsatisfied. But it’s still a different statement.
This is a good point. For every cheddar or gouda or parmesan, there are 100 other less popular styles of cheese that aren't terribly popular outside of whatever region they were made in.
This is a good point. For every cheddar or gouda or parmesan, there are 100 other less popular styles of cheese that aren't terribly popular outside of whatever region they were made in.
I love cheese, and when I went full-time vegan (after a prolonged mostly-vegan period) I was worried I would struggle. But, hilariously, I completely forgot what cheese tastes like within two...
I love cheese, and when I went full-time vegan (after a prolonged mostly-vegan period) I was worried I would struggle. But, hilariously, I completely forgot what cheese tastes like within two weeks. My brain just couldn't store that data, for whatever reason. So convenient!
So I can't tell you whether vegan cheese tastes like animal cheese, but I can definitely say that vegan cheese is delicious as its own thing. There's been a ton of innovation over the last decade, and it's awesome. Daiya brand frozen pizza is my favourite pizza, if you want to try something available at many grocery stores.
Good for them, but I got fooled by the title. 3 of the 4 awards were in vegan cheese categories, I thought they were going toe to toe with traditionally made cheeses.
Like, I would hope a vegan brand won best vegan gouda or whatever
I assume processed cheese category is for everything nontraditional so that is a pretty big win. Probably "best gouda" or whatever is a strict category, I wonder how easy it is for vegan stuff to get anywhere close to the stuff that's competing in those categories. There's really no incentive for animal based cheeses to open themselves up to the direct vegan competition if it can be helped.
My understanding is that cheese is one of the hardest things to emulate with vegan materials, so even for these processed products it's impressive to make a decent substitute!
Even for processed cheese? Processing anything typically results in some kind of homogenized mash/spreadable. It’s not a high bar to reach.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to make something taste and feel even like processed cheese without any non-vegan ingredients. That said, of course it makes sense that these products are where they start out being relatively successful.
Personally I think texture/mouthfeel is super, super important, maybe even moreso than flavor. Flavor has more room for variation because there's a ridiculous range of flavor profiles even in dairy cheese, but if you don't nail the texture it's going to immediately register to tasters as something that's trying to be but isn't.
Sure. If you're trying to make Parmesan and you nail the flavor (doubtful IMO), and the texture is that of liver pate, you're going to have a hard time convincing me. But with processed cheese that's kinda the easy bit; the texture has basically been intentionally processed away using emulsifiers. No problem there, so all that's left to do is the flavor profile.
Which, if my anecdotal experience is worth anything, is very hard to get right. Many vegan substitute foods are more forgiving than cheese, flavor-wise. So clearing even that is an achievemnt imo.
You might be surprised. Do you eat a lot of these vegan products? There are some decent vegan cheese products out there nowadays (much better than when I originally stopped eating dairy a decade ago,) but I've never been able to find anything like Kraft slices or even things like the faux-artificial cheese taste of Cheetos, for example.
For all the flaws of Kraft slices, one of the biggest benefits is meltability, and all vegan cheeses have always struggled to melt properly and predictably. Many "vegan Kraft slices" take too long to melt while your grilled cheese bread burns, or it dries up if you try to melt it on top of something. Usually vegan cheeses that try to replicate a less processed cheese taste better, even though vegan cheese never successfully replicates a really good dairy cheese. They at least taste good as their own thing.
There are vegan "Cheetos" and they're a nice snack, but they're always inherently less processed than Cheetos. Pretty much none of them will have MSG, won't have a bit too much salt, and they won't taste as deep fried as mainstream snacks. They also never have the crazy food coloring that I'm pretty sure adds to the experience of eating junk food like that. Not that all of that is good or good for us, but I'm just saying that there are a lot of random, processed dairy products you'd think are simple to replicate as vegan, but aren't. This might be more of a marketing choice (to make products that appeal to health concious people) rather than an issue of it being possible to make junk food vegan Cheetos, but regardless.
On the other hand, it's very easy to replicate some other processed products, like chicken nuggets. Good chicken in a nice meal is nothing like vegan chicken, but I genuinely cannot tell the difference between fast food nuggets and vegan ones. I wish it was that simple for cheese, or eggs!
I have a cool tip for melting vegan cheese that I learned from Thee Burger Dude, steam it! You just pour a little bit of water around the cheese, cover it, and it melts perfectly.
Yep, basically you have to manage the moisture level somehow! I usually do it by covering any baked dish with aluminum foil so the steam from the food keeps the cheese from getting dry. For my guilty pleasure microwaved nachos, I put a second plate on top of the nachos to slightly contain the steam. (I can't seem to manage vegan nachos in the oven, they get way too dry unless there is a metric shit ton of cheese piled on top.)
I haven't tried anything as direct as what you suggest, but it sounds like it would work well, depending on the situation. Seems great for burgers, I think people even use that trick for normal cheese soemtimes. But I wouldn't want to put water in a pan of grilled cheese (obviously!) Only careful timing and buying the best kinds of vegan cheese seems to work.
Texture isn't the main problem. Also, I doubt the dairy runner-up was Kraft singles.
The thing about processed anything is that you can add bullshit and filler to make an inferior and cheaper product. But you don't have to. You can make a high quality processed product, and one would suppose that's what they're looking for.
Having eaten a vast array of vegan cheeses, I can assure you that there is no such thing as an even vaguely realistic vegan Gouda substitute.
Which is not to say that vegan cheeses taste bad, they just don’t taste like cheese.
What does “cheese” taste like?
Cheese has lots of flavours and textures, but none of them are well approximated by vegan products with the exception of those varieties which are commonly referred to (for legal reasons) as "edible oil products" or "cheese product".
I don’t eat dairy anymore, but personally I think think the flavors and textures of cheese are so diverse that it doesn’t really make sense to say something tastes “like cheese” or not. I’ve never had a vegan cheese that I liked the flavor and texture of more than my favorite authentic cheeses, but at the same time, I’ve had plenty that have a more “classic” cheese flavor or texture than plenty of real cheeses. And I’ve had plenty of real cheeses whose flavor and texture reminded of vegan cheese.
I do agree though that if you wanted to replace a particular cheese, then all the vegan options will probably leave you unsatisfied. But it’s still a different statement.
This is a good point. For every cheddar or gouda or parmesan, there are 100 other less popular styles of cheese that aren't terribly popular outside of whatever region they were made in.
GreenVie Foods of Cypress.
I love cheese, and when I went full-time vegan (after a prolonged mostly-vegan period) I was worried I would struggle. But, hilariously, I completely forgot what cheese tastes like within two weeks. My brain just couldn't store that data, for whatever reason. So convenient!
So I can't tell you whether vegan cheese tastes like animal cheese, but I can definitely say that vegan cheese is delicious as its own thing. There's been a ton of innovation over the last decade, and it's awesome. Daiya brand frozen pizza is my favourite pizza, if you want to try something available at many grocery stores.