Anyone that know me, knows I *LOVE* cheese! Dare I say that I "Hanker for a Hunk O' Cheese!" I have searched high and low for a recipe that is not only very tasty, but super easy to make as well. I wanted something that tasted as closely to what cheddar cheese does as I can remember.... and I found it! The original recipe for this is from the mind of Sauce Stache. That dude is awesome! I did, however, like I usually do, change it some to fit what I prefer. I still give him credit for the recipe, as I should, as I just adjusted it to my personal preferences. I will say too that if you watch his video, you will see it turns out much different than mine. He even comments how it is *not* shreddable. As you can see from the picture below, mine clearly is. This is now my go to cheddar cheese as I have made several blocks of this over the last month or so and it always turns out great!
Cheddar-style Cheese
Yield: ~19.25 ounces
Recipe From: Sauce Stache but with my tweaks
What you will need:
2 good sized carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
2 cups of water
1 tbsp juice from a jar of green olives
1.5 tbsp of mushroom powder
3 tbsp of nutritional yeast
2 tsp lactic acid
.5 tsp pink Himalayan sea salt (*optional - I have stopped adding it)
3 tbsp of refined coconut oil
1 cup potato starch
1 tbsp corn starch
How to Make The Cheese:
You will need to take the carrots and the water and blend them for about a minute in a high speed blender. Once done, you will need to strain out the carrot pulp. I use my yogurt strainer for this and it works great, but you can also use a cheese cloth, or a nut bag.
This should leave you just under 2 cups of the carrot juice. Add that to your small sauce pan.
Add the remaining ingredients to the sauce pan and stir well. The starch will have a tendency to clump, so make sure you stir it in well.
Turn the heat on to medium/high and continue to stir. As it starts to heat up the starches will thicken the mixture and it will become tough to stir it. Just before this happens, I like to switch to a silicone scraper (spatula) and that helps me keep mixing it.
This mixture will eventually become a mass of what looks like melted, gooey, cheese. The best you will be able to do is to keep flipping it over to make sure that it cooks evenly.
You will see it go from a soft, wet, very sticky mixture, to a firmer, not wet, not really sticky mass. When you get to this point, cook it just about 2-3 more minutes, making sure that you are flipping it around. I will often lift the pan off the heat when I go to move it and then put it back onto the heat for a bit, and then repeat until it's done.
When it's ready to go, all you have to do is put it into the container you want to use. I use one similar to the one he uses in the video, but you can use anything.
I suggest trying to push it down as much as you can so it becomes a solid block. This isn't always possible though.
I then put this into the fridge to sit 2-3 hours. In that time it will firm up a lot. After that time, I like to wrap it in clingfilm and put it back in the fridge to sit at least 12 hours, or over night.
The next morning you should have a firm block of vegan cheddar-style cheese that you can slice, dice or even shred.
Tip: This is meltable, sort of. You will want to slice it fairly thin, and then steam it. It's the heat/moisture that helps it "melt". If you try to microwave it, or even heat it in an air fryer, it will become pliable, but it wont really melt.
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