A tasty vegan cheese

Is it possible to make a tasty vegan cheese? It seems that the biggest hurdles have been overcome. The first vegan cheese products with natural flavours will be on the market this month. 

Last year, a number of companies already made huge leaps in developing a good vegan cheese base. Many problems relating to structure, processability (slicing, grating) and melting properties have now been solved. "That was no easy task, though," says Ahrend Buckers, sales director at Smoky Light in Reeuwijk. "The most difficult part was the mouth feel. How do you prevent the negative flavours of vegetable ingredients from spoiling the taste? Even more important: how do you ensure that a plant-based basis of, for example, water, coconut oil, potato starch and a vegetable protein, becomes tasty?" 

In a traditional cheese product, the type of feed the animals are given influences the quality of the milk. This is followed by the cheese making process and ripening. The enzymes protease and lipase convert the proteins and fats in the milk into rich flavours. The complicated maturation process ensures that the taste of cheese is largely determined by non-volatile substances. In other words, by smelling cheese you get an impression of how it tastes, but the real rich taste is only released in the nose and mouth when you eat it. "Everything you experience in the mouth, we refer to as 'mouthfeel'. And it is precisely this mouthfeel where various vegan cheeses fail," says Ahrend. "The texture is quite good in the first bite, after that you taste nothing at all, then something that resembles cheese, and finally the aftertaste. It is 'quite okay for vegan', but not good enough for a real cheese experience." 

This taste problem has finally been solved; by First Choice Ingredients (USA), which has specialised in EMD (enzyme modified dairy, ed.) for 25 years. Ahrend: "Two years ago, a team of flavour experts and a cheese maker were given the task of maturing vegetable proteins using enzymes. After two years of research, they succeeded in making delicious vegan cheeses with the right mouth feel. A whole range of flavours has been developed specifically for vegan cheese." Together with Smoky Light, the distributor for the Benelux, FCI is now involved in numerous successful products.

www.smokylight.nl