Smoked Vegan Cheese Recipe
These days, I’ve become extremely fond of nut based and vegan cheeses because not only are they quite easy to make but the added benefit is that I get gluten free food to eat. While normal cultured cheeses will easily take a day or two to ferment, my vegan cheese recipe will have you licking your fingers in under an hour.
The main reason for the lesser time is because we’re not waiting for the cheese to become cultured as it already has some nutritional yeast in it that imparts a cheddar flavor on the whole. You’ll need to add an ingredient called agar to make your vegan cheese a little firm as addition of agar will act as a gelling agent.
Agar is one of the most important ingredients that you’ll need for this recipe because it acts like a thickening agent in the overall process. You don’t need to refrigerate food that has agar in it so basically the addition of this stabilizing agent changes liquid food to a jelly like substance.
Now you don’t need to stick to this recipe very closely and can easily make your own alterations. As an example, you’ll notice that I personally use both almonds and cashews whereas you can add simply one of those or any other nut that you prefer. I also use liquid smoke in this recipe to give it the smoky flavor while you could omit this step and simply use a digital smoker to get the same flavor.
However, please remember that you can’t substitute the agar else this recipe will not come out properly. So quickly, let’s move on to the ingredients that are needed for making this lovely vegan smoked cheese.
Ingredients:
- Half a cup of soaked raw cashews
- Half a cup of soaked raw almonds
- Two tablespoons of lemon juice
- Half a cup of tap water
- One tablespoon of mustard
- One tablespoon of agave nectar
- Half a tablespoon of liquid smoke
- Quarter cup of yeast
- Salt as per your taste
- 1 tablespoon of smoked paprika
- Sprinkle of garlic powder
- Little bit of dried onion
- 2 tablespoons of agar
Preparation:
- You’ll need to fist soak the almonds and cashews (preferably for a couple of hours) and then blend them using a blender.
- Then add the water, lemon juice, liquid smoke, agave nectar, yeast, salt, paprika and garlic powder and blend again till you see a thick creamy mixture. If you prefer, you can use a small electric smoker also to add to the flavor.
- Make sure your mixture is not gritty. If you feel some grittiness by rubbing it between your finger and thumb that means you need to blend for some more time.
- Once you have your cheese mixture all set, take a small sauce pan and boil one cup of water in it and then add the agar. Make sure you keep stirring till the agar dissolves completely.
- Again start your blender and slowly add the agar gel that you’ve just prepared. This is the most important step so you’ll need to be focused and ensure that both the mixtures combine well together.
- Now take this final mixture and pour into a mold and then place it in a freezer for 30-45 minutes.
- Your vegan cheese is now ready to be eaten sliced or shredded!
- Pour into mold and then place in the fridge, uncovered, for at least 30 minutes.
- Eat sliced or shred!
From my experience, I’ve noticed that the vegan cheese remains good to eat for the next 5 days
