There are lots of foods that sound as good as they taste. Chocolate hobnobs. Raspberry meringues. Pomegranate. Take a moment to savour these words.
By contrast — there is nutritional yeast. It doesn’t sound very nice. I love nutritional yeast. Yet I hate the name as much as anyone.
With the clinical accuracy of ‘protein supplement’, ‘vital wheatgerm’ or ‘fermented cabbage’, ‘nutritional yeast’ is even less appealing when you learn that it’s sold in the form of flakes. Flakes are fine when they’re made from corn or bran. Or even soap. You wouldn’t eat soap flakes. But you’d know what to do with them.
Yet for all its nominative problems, nutritional yeast is a vital tool for flavouring savoury vegan dishes. You can think of it as a version of parmesan, for people who’ve forgotten what parmesan tastes like (though really it’s far more versatile than that). To put it put simply — nutritional yeast is not only at the heart of a decent vegan mac and cheese; it makes everything taste better.
Now there’s something worth talking about. If you’re trying to make satisfying and tasty plant-based food at home, and you don’t yet know about nutritional yeast, the time has come to do a bit of reading.
Selling Flakes
Amidst these days of plant-based enthusiasm, we’re used to hearing about plant-based products that diverse audiences find attractive.
But vegan products did not become persuasive and desirable by accident.
It wasn’t so long ago that Oatly was putting its oat milk in packaging that would appeal to — who?
At a guess, old-style Oatly was for people who had independently decided that they didn’t want to consume dairy products. It took a radical re-think of Oatly’s public persona to become the global driver of non-dairy alternatives to moo-milk.
It’s not just Oatly, of course: Minor Figures and Sproud are just two other companies that want us to know that dairy-free milks are quirky yet chic, mass-produced but authentic, down-to-earth but playful. We trust these folks because they know how to have fun. Sustainable, ecologically-sounded, ethically-sourced fun.
Other niche food brands have certainly attempted a similar transformation — just check out 9 meals from anarchy, who want to get you excited about vegetable stock, or OGGS, who present aquafaba (the water from of cans of chickpeas) as cartons of ‘egg alternative’. Pretty cute!
So far, yeast flakes have not quite enjoyed this vivacious rejuvenation. For more than a decade people have been trying to call it “nooch” — a colloquialism that I’ve never once heard in real life — though we are finally starting to see a few brands putting their aesthetic spin on plain ol’ yeast (we’ll talk about this more later).
In the UK, you’re still most likely to find it in big round tubs from Marigold, marketed as Engevita. Don’t expect to start salivating with delight when you peel off the lid.
However, once you’ve experienced nutritional yeast, you won’t be thinking about its dusty appearance or its modest packaging for much longer.
What Nutritional Yeast is
Before we talk about nutritional yeast’s MANY uses, let’s think about its origins — surely there must be some wonderful rustic story behind nutritional yeast that will help us all connect with its easy vegan cheesiness?
I was once told this about how it’s made. At midnight, the Engevita pixies go out to the yeast flowers in the garden. They dance among the nutritional blooms, one big yeast bag between two, gently gathering the flakes until they can carry no more. They go back inside, have a snack of nutritional yeast biscuits, and go to bed happy in the knowledge that they have done the world a good turn.
Ok. You got me. That’s not really how nutritional yeast is made. But you might tell children such a story to make the boring truth sound a lot nicer — just like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.
There’s actually little romance in the production of nutritional yeast — in that sense, its clinical name is well-earned! Yeast production uses heavy industrial processes. They start with a little bit of culture (biological, not artistic) in a great big tank. It’s fed with a load of sugar; the culture grows and grows and grows. And perhaps here is the magic of yeast — producing nutrition and flavour almost out of thin air.
The resulting mushy growth is finished in various ways before being packed off to bakers, brewers, distillers — and for consumers at home, to health food stores. Nutritional yeast is deactivated through heating: this is one type of yeast that won’t help your bread to rise or your beer to ferment.
Make no mistake about it. Nutritional yeast is a highly processed food — in the way that bread, tofu, or tempeh are highly processed. But that shouldn’t put anyone off.
What you can do with nutritional yeast
Nutritional yeast is exciting because of what it does to your cooking. Forget about any origin myths and look into your kitchen. Here’s some places where it’s massively valuable:
- Stirred into vegan minestrone soup, pasta e ceci, or any soupy dinner.
- Used in the stock base for polenta and mash potato.
- Sprinkled on top of mushroom risotto.
- Sprinkled on the inside contents of a burrito.
- Let’s face it, sprinkled on more or less anything savoury.
- The batter for chickpea pancakes.
In all these places, you’ll find that nutritional yeast gives your food a unique kick. Cheesy, nutty, umami — call it what you will. It’s good.
If your experience with a little sprinkle is good, you can take it up another notch: as there’s plenty of dishes that you shouldn’t make WITHOUT nutritional yeast. For example:
- Plant-based sour cream.
- Mac and cheese.
- Pesto.
- Lasagne.
- Carbonara
- Ok, anything anything with white sauce.
For specific recipes, I would say the Bosh team are the princes of yeast. Take a look at their recipe for mac and cheese, and their books are full of uses for this wonderful product. Once you’ve done all that Bosh has to offer head over to the Spruce Eats or BBC good food for plenty more recipe ideas.
Where can you buy it
Nutritional yeast isn’t as hard to find as it used to be. Once upon a time it was only available in vegan groceries and health food shops — now, it’s much more widely sold in regular supermarkets.
I’ve never personally foundmajor differences between brands of yeast flakes. Don’t worry too much about choosing — It’s rare to find a store that sells more than one variety and I suspect that you’ll be fine with whatever you can get locally. I like to go for Engevita with B12 — just because this gives me more of the nutrition that vegans need.
There are, however, those companies out there nobly selling yeast flakes in packaging that matches the superlative excellence of the yeast itself. Bosh do their own version — and boldly call it ‘nooch’ (against the language of every vegan I’ve ever met). Or just look at over at Bulk, who offer a chunky bag at a reasonable price.
Now there’s the kind of flake that would be at home in a lavishly understated kitchen renovation.
Nutritional Yeast Rocks my Socks
So now, when you hear ‘nutritional yeast’, you don’t need to get held up on the horrors of the name. Your mind can leap to a whole new world of descriptive vocabulary. Fulfilling. Enriching. Pleasant. Better!
Nutritional yeast earns its place in your cupboards and your table through its flavour — to say nothing of its health benefits. A nicer name may never stick to it; the dark masters of marketing may never make it the hottest item in the supermarket. But you can rest assured that day in, day out, nutritional yeast will be there to quietly raise your plant-based cooking to another level.