NEW SERIES: Will it Cheese?! Starting with the AFFORDABLE

Can we make REAL tasting cheese without dairy? Let’s find out on this first episode of Will it Cheese?! Watch it below and read the background of how this series came to be.

Will it Cheese?! Episode 1

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Why “Will it Cheese?!”

Following the success of “Will it Tofu?!”, the series where I take the traditional method of making soy tofu and apply it to non-traditional ingredients, “Will it Cheese?!” felt like the natural progression. Plus, it’s what the viewers want. When the requests kept rolling in over the years, how was I to say no?

The method of making tofu is similar to making dairy cheese. The only step that’s missing is the inoculation and fermentation that goes along with most popular dairy cheeses. 

I have some experience with making really delicious vegan cheeses. From the “instant” sort to quick cultured to longer processes that produce complex flavors and firm textures. Plus pizza-ready mozzarella that combines techniques. That said, I am a little rusty. I haven’t touched aged vegan cheese-making for a number of years.

Why now?

I’ve been planning and developing this series for years but hesitated to pull the trigger. Questions and self-doubt blocked my way.

• Would I be able to persevere when things when inevitably went wrong? A previous bad experience with plant-based yogurt experimentation put me off making “Will it Yogurt?!” and I still haven’t regained the desire to continue.
• I would be exploring uncharted territory and there are risks. What knowledge gaps might put my experiments in danger?
• Fermentation can take days but aging cheese can take weeks or months.
• How much space would I be taking up from my household? And for how long?
• Would the audience stay engaged even if there were long breaks between episodes since the cheese takes time to cure.
• What if I develop a set of cheeses for months and then it doesn’t turn out?

Despite all these persistent thoughts, I knew this series had to be done. I already told my audience that I would. It was just a matter of when. And a little courage. 

What Kind of Cheese?

Hard aged cheese, soft cultured cheese, cream cheese, melty cheese? I’m not really set on any one type. My main goal is to use traditional methods of dairy cheese-making, apply it to non-traditional ingredients, and simply record the results whether they are good or bad. Part of this is to add to our plant-based culinary world’s base of knowledge. Part of this is just plain curiosity.

Given that plant-based ingredients have different qualities, I don’t have a lot of hope or desire to replicate dairy cheese exactly. But I know that some of the audience will. So my happy compromise will be to try different methods with each main ingredient that we try. 

What About Cheese Pull?

There’s nothing quite like the visual of the super stretchy pull of a mozzarella pizza slice or grilled cheese. But the protein responsible for this effect, casein, is not present in plant-based ingredients. Vegan recipe creators, including myself, have used starches to replicate the visual to a fair degree but not the true texture or mouthfeel. Even as we can already create lovely plant-based sauces and melty vegan cheeses, I submit that we create cheese goop rather than cheese pull.

I honestly do not have hope for a TRUE cheese pull to be replicated in this series. But I am taking suggestions!

What Kind of Ingredients?

I want to keep the ingredients as simple as possible: a main ingredient and a starter culture. That said, there are some extras that we already know of in the vegan cheese-making space that can lend useful or aesthetic properties. For example, added coconut oil makes hard cheeses more firm. Kappa Carageenan can help some cheeses be firm when cold but melty when hot. Starches like potato and glutinous rice can make vegan cheese appear stretchy. All that said, I want to keep the extras to a minimum in order to discover the true flavors from fermentation.

For main ingredients, I want to go beyond the usual suspects (expensive cashews, macadamia nuts, and almonds). I want to explore affordable nuts, seeds, and legumes. Let’s find out if there’s a good reason these aren’t used often. Or if they’ve just been overlooked.

Challenge with Vegan Cultures?

While I’m sure new challenges will pop us as we go, I expect one main challenge already.

Finding vegan cultures. I’ve been looking and I generally find dairy cheese cultures to come from dairy-based strains (of course!). There are so-called vegan strains which are grown on plant-based substrate. However, I have found it difficult to find any that I can source to my location in Canada within my budget.

For this first episode, I used vegan probiotics which are fine. Using store-bought vegan yogurt and making our own probiotic-rich rejuvelac are also options. But I’d like to explore more starters that are more specific to cheese-making.

What do YOU want “Will it Cheese?!” to be?

All that said, these are just ideas that have bounced around in my head. It’s a brand new series still under production to there’s still time for you to have your say! What would you like to see from “Will it Cheese?!” Please let me know in the comments below!