Homemade soy and nut free vegan cheddar cheese
Cannellini bean-based vegan cheese
Pros: Tangy, holds its shape, easily sliceable, can be customized into many flavours, versatile, cheapest vegan cheese I’ve made
Cons: Cannot be grated easily, doesn’t melt, takes several days of waiting for it
I decided that it was about time I looked into my own cheese recipe. It had been niggling me lately that to get a nice smooth paste using nuts you need a pretty decent food processor. I am largely reliant on a stick blender – which has previously served me well with chutneys, soup, tomato bases and hummus – and so I was pondering over what product I could use instead of nuts and the usual soy with which to base a cheese. I also wanted something cheaper – macadamias and cashew nuts are outrageously expensive, and also leave me personally feeling over full and a little sick.
It dawned on me when I was making pate. Why not a bean based cheese? I’d been making two versions of a kidney bean-based cheese, and it blended smoothly with my stick blender and cost me around $2 for two tins of beans on special. I ended up choosing cannellini beans, for their softness, light colour and muted flavour.
Making cheese is always going to be a tricky one. My standards are pretty high for cheese, despite being vegan for almost 10 years now, and while I love to cook I am certainly not one for measuring out ingredients and spending endless time waiting around for the food. For this recipe, and its various attempts at refining it, I decided to take my time and carefully check the process.
I’ve previously tried making a cashew cheese, which I said was great but expensive and reminded me a lot of hummus – and I already make pretty damn good hummus. It eventually set in a shape that wasn’t like a dip, but it still wasn’t really a sliceable platter cheese, so using beans did make me a little hesitant as they are even softer. I mean, frankly, I’d love to make a vegan cheese out of pinenuts, but with current prices it’s basically like sprinkling your food with gold dust or mulched $50 notes.
I also had a few other rules in the making of my “cheese”. No cheese cloths and no dehydrator. While some will disagree, I don’t consider them staple equipment I have floating around, and as someone who once needed cheesecloth to make homemade tofu, I can attest to how difficult it can be to find if you’re not in the right area (I actually ended up using an old pillowcase. It was a disaster).
Having recently devised the recipe for a firm pate (below) and attempted the same one successfully twice, I decided I could use those learnings and the texture to come up with something resembling a solid cheese. The base I used for the pate was kidney beans (for the colour and harder texture), and so for my homemade cheese I elected for cannellini beans – close to Kidney Beans on the family tree, subtle in colour and flavour, far too easy to come across and ridiculously cheap (mine were discounted to $1 a tin in my local supermarket, and even if you buy organic you’re looking at around $2.20 a tin – hardly outside many peoples’ grasps). I absolutely love legumes, so any chances I have to use beans in my cooking I take them!
I also heavily relied on VegeSet, which is a vegan gelatine. I’ve had a packet of this in my cupboard, never before used, for about eight months (it even came interstate unopened) and I decided it was time to try it out. Now I’m kicking myself for not using it earlier and previously fearing that it would create gelatinous food. It’s available at Go Vita, Prahran Convenience, Habib Wholefoods and, of course, the Cruelty Free shop.
My pate recipe went as follows (amounts are estimates)
Kidney beans (two tins, drained)
Salt and pepper (to taste)
Smoked paprika (half a teaspoon)
Sesame oil (half a cup)
Turmeric (quarter of a teaspoon)
Lemon juice (quarter of a lemon)
Nutritional yeast (two tablespoons)
VegeSet (one and a half tablespoons)
Blend everything apart from the VegeSet. In a pan, put the VegeSet in with some water (say half a cup) and boil, whisking as best possible.
While still on the heat, add your mixture to the pan. Blend again.
Quickly put your pate into molds.
Allow to cool before putting into the fridge for 24 to 48 hours.
After this, coat with your topping of choice. I did one with a pepper crust and one with a nutritional yeast crust. Both were great. They’re spreadable, even when using the setting agent, and act almost as a Terrine or Galantine. I feel it likely needs a coating on top, or another layer of something savoury jelly-style, to make it really stand out on a platter.
I tried another with kalamata olives and balsamic vinegar, which sadly didn’t come out too well – so I’ll be trying again next time! My wife said it was nice and subtle, but the after taste for me was horrendous.
But, now onto what you’re really here for, our homemade cheese. I was terrified this was going to go horribly wrong, particularly when it came to getting it out of the new containers I’d bought as molds. I was also worried about the colour – I wanted something cheese-like, but I also didn’t want that bright fake yellow colour from turmeric and mustard that I put in my macaroni cheese (you can see my recipe for that as well).
If you haven’t heard about the fifth taste ‘umami’ and you want to make cheese, I recommend doing a bit of research online before hitting up your pantry. Here’s a good link to start with.
Essentially, this savoury flavour sensation is what gives cheese, in particular parmesan, a sense of depth and meatyness. When it comes to making vegan cheese, it’s primarily about ingredients like nutritional yeast, miso and nuts – three umami products. Things like mushrooms, olives, seaweed, soy sauce and avocado are also often said to include the umami sensation. Cumin, smoked paprika and caraway seeds are also noted as helping to bring out umami notes (though I am unsure as to whether they contain umami themselves).
These flavours, and the desire for something with a slight sharpness that might resemble a mature cheddar, were what I kept in mind when creating this cheese. I also wanted to make something soy, gluten and nut free, as well as inexpensive, so it’s easily made and eaten by all vegans.
I am going to be a pain here with the amounts as I really just threw things in to taste and by eye, but I’ll share with you roughly what I used.
First cheese attempt
Two tins of cannellini beans (drained, rinsed and roughly patted dry)
Oil (0.25 of a cup, type your choice – I chose olive oil. Coconut oil may be a good decision for a potentially meltable outcome, but it does rack up the cost of the recipe)
Vegeset
Nutritional yeast (around a third to half a cup)
Salt (to taste)
Ginger powder (1/4 teaspoon)
Cumin (1/4 teaspoon)
Mustard seeds (One teaspoon, ground or rehydrated in water)
Fresh garlic (one clove, finely diced)
Lemon juice (Half a fresh lemon, squeezed gently)
I blended all of the above together.
Then, I got some Vegeset (I bought mine at Go Vita for about $4, but you can get it at Habib’s Wholefood, Cruelty Free Shop and many other places). You could consider using agar flakes/powder instead if you’re more comfortable with that. I then boiled about three teaspoons of vegeset in a cup of water (maybe a little less) before adding the blended ingredients while it was over the heat.
I blended it again, while on the heat, with my stick blender (only do this with a metal stick blender!).
Then, quickly place the mixture into molds overnight.
When you are done, turn the molds upside down and tap gently to release the cheese. Sprinkle with topping of your choice (I recommend chives).
The colour was perfect. The texture initially left something to be desired. I’d tried it out with three shapes – one very small container (that is actually a tea cup from T2 I was gifted), one large container (mini-casserole shape) and one medium-sized.
The small one I took out first and it was close to perfect. I stuffed it up by freaking out that it wouldn’t come out of the container, and then using a blunt (doh!) knife to cut around it, ruining the gloss that you see on the above pate. A real shame, but you could still see the gloss on the side, and it was easy to cut and excellent. It was slightly crumbly as well, and I was really happy with it for a small block of cheese.
I then went to the other extreme to try the large container, expecting a similar outcome. After a lot of bashing on the pot and a bit more blunt knife stabbing, it came out. It was not completely set – suggesting I either didn’t use enough VegeSet, didn’t stir it in properly or needed to leave it for longer – although the parts that were more solid I absolutely loved. The other sections of it were surprisingly gooey, in the way you might expect the inside of a Camembert to be. And, hey, I’m not complaining about that… it’s just not what I signed up for and was a bit frustrating.
And so, fearing the worst, I decided to leave the other container for another 24 hours before attempting to remove it – on the off chance that this would somehow help. The other pate, which was in the same type of container, came out really easily after just 24 hours – so I was concerned that perhaps the cannellini beans acted different with the VegeSet.
After 48 hours in the fridge, it was a lot better.
Once I’d taken it out, and tried it a little, I then left it out of the container in the fridge to create a drier crust, which was great and actually improves the colour for both of the large and medium sized cheeses.
After an extra half a day in the fridge, the crust had firmed up enough and it had coloured beautifully in a manner that was like having a rind. It remained gooey in the middle, and reminded me – in texture, if not in taste – of a camembert. This final step is optional – if you prefer the cheese slightly more muted in colour, then it may suit you to have it out at the earlier stage. I enjoyed the rind, as it was a texture I don’t normally get to have with food.
I then decided to try one last time, with just one tin of cannellini beans, to see if I could get a better result in a shorter timeframe.
The second/third attempt
This time, I was very selective about my spices used, and I added the tiny bit of turmeric for colour. Here’s a quick diagram of what I used (bear in mind, this is zoomed in very close so in total it added up to perhaps a tiny bit over a teaspoon): Ground cumin, smoked paprika, mustard seed, turmeric, ground ginger. I used a whole clove of garlic, one tin of cannellini beans, a sprinkling of dried garlic and dried onion, plus salt, pepper and lemon juice. In total I used about half a cup of nutritional yeast, a third of a cup of robust olive oil and a generous slosh of sesame oil.
To avoid the previous problem of it sticking to the pot, I used some baking paper at the bottom of one and stuck it down with some oil. I also gave the other a crust of sesame seeds and black pepper. Remember that the main side that will be seen is actually what is the bottom of the container at the moment, so if you’re confident then you can add something to the bottom of your container (preferably not the sloped edged ones) before putting the mixture in. I also followed the same boiling procedure as before, but with a little more Vegeset than previously.
After 24 hours in the fridge, I took the cheese out from the molds. It was glossy, came out relatively easily (baking paper was hugely helpful in the larger pot).
Another 24 hours in the fridge outside of their molds, they tasted great. Slightly sharp, garlicky and with a tanginess to it that I was hugely happy with.
It was definitely the best of the batches to date. In texture, it’s easily sliceable, and spreadable. It’s not grateable, and you can’t really melt it (though go ahead and eat it on hot things, still great!). I’m thinking of using coconut oil next to try and make it meltable. It also doesn’t coagulate together, I’ve read that casein is the usual ingredient in omnivore cheese that causes the stretchyness.
Other mixtures I’m considering trying (for extra umami and flavour) include half a teaspoon of tomato paste, liquid smoke and perhaps even stirring in some of my pesto next time.
So there you have it, that’s the result of my experimenting. It’s 95% preparation and tweaking, but I’m pretty happy with the overall flavour – though I’ll be continually refining it to get a better result next time.
I’m also currently waiting on an online order I made for the book Artisan Vegan Cheese by Miyoko Schinner. I will definitely be making one of those recipes and letting you know how it goes! Sadly, Book Depository seems to have lost it in the post and hasn’t yet given me a refund, so I guess we’ll see if that appears.
The price, the ingredients and the nutritional value
I’ve harped on enough so I’m going to keep this short. I think it’s definitely cheaper (once you have a recipe you like and you can stick to it) than buying any commercially available cheese. Trust me, spend good money on a good oil for far better results. It can also be as healthy or as unhealthy as you choose – you can alter the amount of oil you put in and use lighter oils (like rice bran) if you want.
