vegan cheese: I have tried several recipes for home made vegan cheese based on nutritional yeast flakes and agar-agar flakes combined with several other ingredients (lemon, onion powder etc), but I'm not happy with the result as it turns out too soft. Does anyone have any recipes he/she has tried out successfully?|||Geez! How rude!! The best web recipes I've found are at veganmania and aboverubies (but I can't find the links, sorry). I've made my own quite a bit through the years and overall my favorites are the sauce types that are based on the recipes in "The new Farm Vegetarian Cookbook" but of course these are sauces. I started 'playing' with block types while snowed in around Xmas. I won't share my exact recipes since there's a chance they might be marketed. What I am willing to share is that the texture can be improved by using extra virgin coconut oil or palm kernel oil as a part of any oils called for in the recipes. Don't freak that those are supposedly evil tropical oils! Those are actually healthy (the tests that showed they were bad were done on refined, partially hydrogenated versions). You can also use small amounts of Xanthan gum to improve the texture. If you aren't familiar with it it's a natural product with a scary name<g>. It has dozens of uses in a vegan and/or allergy-free kitchen! It's ridiculously powerful so start with very small amounts and experiment until you find the amount you like. If you can find it, you can try Konjac but be even more cautious with it than Xanthan. You can literally obtain something so rubbery you'll choke on it (which is why it's hard to find). And one last tip (not related to texture) is to try different brands/strains of N.T. It can make a huge difference in flavor since there are several dozen different yeasts sold as N.T. (and a nasty email to BS is on it's way<g>)|||Thanx! If you ever need more help feel free to email for troll-free assistance. Report Abuse |||Hi, I suspect there will be no satisfactory 'vegan cheese' and don't believe there should be. Cheese is a product made from animal milk and is a favourite in thousands of varieties throughout the world. People who choose a vegan lifestyle eshew the use of any food of animal origin, including milk, eggs and so on. This is their choice and they are right to make it if that is what they want. I believe that trying to recreate a foodstuff of animal origin (cheese) by artificial means is proclaiming they haven't been fully willing to accept their own teachings and beliefs. I feel the same way about vegetarians who despise meat but then make meals to look as much like meat as possible (nut cutlets, minced soya products looking exactly like minced meat, etc.) If you choose a vegan lifestyle you should encompass the whole belief- i.e. that using ANY animal product is wrong and that should be your belief entirely. To attempt to recreate the 'missing' foodstuffs by artificial means must be wrong. Either choose the lifestyle or don't choose the lifestyle. Up to you! Either way, Be happy, BobSpain