Given that Healthline reports that they are filled with nutritional benefits, this swap also has a high potential to feel good for your body.

Additionally, research shows that many varieties of cashews are high in glutamic acid, which is a derivative of that umami-developing protein, glutamate.

So, cashews also make a great dairy-free alternative when it comes to flavor. Nut cheeses are very simple to make at home, but they're also becoming more readily available in supermarkets.

To make this vegan cashew cheese recipe , all you need to do is soak your nuts for at least half an hour. Drain the water and then blend them with nutritional yeast, lemon juice, water, salt, and some spices. Bonus tip: if you don't have a high-powered blender, try soaking your cashews overnight.

In general, the longer they soak, the softer they will become. Nut cheeses are great in recipes but also as part of any cheese platter or charcuterie board.

If you're looking for a dairy-free cheese that isn't very processed, nut cheeses may be for you! If you have a nut allergy, sunflower seeds work well in plant-based cheeses, but be aware they do leave a greenish tinge behind. Speaking of the supermarket, dairy-free cheeses are more widely available than ever.

But store-bought vegan cheese isn't a recent invention by any means. We weren't kidding when we said tofu is the original vegan cheese. Moreover, the report suggests that the first recorded sale of fermented tofu as a piece of cheese was in France in While we think tofu is one of the best plant-based cheese choices, people want options.

They want that ooey-gooey, melts on your pizza, pulls when you slice your grilled cheese, kind of deal. And dairy-free options are constantly fighting against the idea that vegan cheese doesn't melt like regular cheese. Luckily, there are now so many brands and flavors available to mitigate this.

com has a comprehensive list of all available vegan cheese brands on the market. Whether you want cream cheese, mozzarella, pepper jack, or halloumi, there truly is something for everyone these days.

If you want to achieve this texture at home, all is not lost. The secret to that stretch in homemade dairy-free cheese is tapioca starch. A word of caution: Since some lactose-free cheeses contain casein, which is a milk protein, they're not actually vegan per Healthline.

Even more strangely, some vegan changes aren't dairy-free. According to VegNews , food scientists have managed to make plant-based whey identical to that derived from cows' milk. With that in mind, read food packaging carefully to ensure what you're buying fits your dietary needs.

It's no secret that a vegan or plant-based diet is an easy way to increase your vegetable intake, but did you know you can turn veggies into dairy-free cheese? These options are often the best dairy-free cheese alternative if you're looking for something lower in fat and calories and higher in vitamins A and C.

Some common hacks include carrots and potatoes, like in our all-purpose vegan cheese recipe. Consider using this sauce for nachos or mac and cheese. And while most people are familiar with sweet potatoes as an alternative to regular spuds — did you know they're a great cheese alternative, too? Sweet potatoes are another common vegetable base for dairy-free cheese since they've already got that orange cheddary color.

To make a yummy mac and cheese using sweet potatoes, all you have to do is mix some mashed sweet potatoes with some oil, flour, plant milk, and seasonings.

Mix the sauce on the stove until it's thick and smooth, and then toss it with your noodles via The Washington Post. If you're looking for something you can sink your teeth into, zucchini cheese might be up your alley. This golden flaked, inactive yeast contains extra B vitamins, like B12, which vegans notoriously lack.

You can build a liquid cashew cheese sauce or dip to pair with healthy salty snacks or enjoy a more solid cheese block by altering your recipe and preparation process. In many recipes, we blend nutritional yeast into a recipe for cashew cheese without milk, along with vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon, fresh garlic, and salt.

Build a straightforward ricotta cheese with soft, silken tofu to make a beautiful non-dairy cheese substitute in lasagna and other classic dishes containing ricotta - simply blend or mash the tofu and add some fresh-squeezed lemon juice. On the other hand, Firm tofu can give you a whole new cheese without dairy experience - slice some smoked tofu to replace harder cheese, like mozzarella.

Beware of non-vegan recipes that contain gelatin, and substitute with agar, a seaweed-based ingredient that works to harden the zucchini cheese similarly. Almond cheese has a nutty, rich flavor that makes plenty of healthy cheese alternatives, from soft ricotta and cream cheese to hard vegan cheddar blocks.

Make soft almond cheese at home by soaking the nuts and blending in a high-powered blender with your favorite herbs, spices, nutritional yeast, and lemon juice. Any of the options above make a healthy cheese substitute, but sometimes, you might want something a little more convenient. Luckily you can find a vegan cheese substitute at the grocery store to suit all your cheesy needs, but our two favorite store-bought, dairy-free cheese alternatives are Daiya and Kite Hill.

There's one essential piece of the tofu cooking process that many people miss - the press. Read our four best reasons to press your tofu here. We've heard loads about the health benefits of this Mediterranean oil, but some vegans refuse to use it - find out if olive oil is vegan. Imitation crab isn't crab, but it still isn't always safe for vegan consumption.

A vegan diet can have some impressive effects on your health. This article looks at the science behind these benefits, and vegan meal ideas to get you…. The vegan military diet is a vegan version of the standard military diet.

This article explains how to follow it, its benefits and downsides, and…. Going vegan has several health and environmental benefits, but can it help with weight loss? Here's what you need to know.

Some people do well on a vegan diet, while others really don't. There are many reasons for this, but evidence shows your genes and gut bacteria play…. For a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet, make sure you avoid these 12 pitfalls.

This is an analysis of 16 studies on vegan diets and health. All of the studies are randomized controlled trials, the gold standard of science.

Choosing the right diet is very personal — and listening to your body is key. After two years as a vegan, health influencer Alex Ashback felt terrible. A Quiz for Teens Are You a Workaholic? How Well Do You Sleep? Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. By Ansley Hill, RD, LD on December 6, Sources Styles Is It Healthy?

Recommendation Bottom Line Cheese is one of the most beloved dairy products across the globe. Share on Pinterest. Made From a Variety of Sources.

Available in Multiple Styles. Is It Healthy? Which Ones Should You Choose? The Bottom Line. Share this article. Read this next. Vegan vs. By Alina Petre, MS, RD NL. The Vegan Diet: A Complete Guide for Beginners. What Is Veganism, and What Do Vegans Eat? What Is the Vegan Military Diet, and Should You Try It?

By Katey Davidson, MScFN, RD, CPT.

For starters, the first two ingredients are vegetables—cauliflower and red bell pepper—followed by almonds. In true dip style, this queso has a smooth, creamy consistency. It deserves its own category. Base: Almond Labels: Dairy-free Certifications: High pressure certified.

Stuffed shells, lasagna, and cheesecake are just a few things you can make with this dairy-free ricotta cheese from Tofutti. Known for its vegan cream cheese, Tofutti also makes a mean non-dairy ricotta. Like the brand name suggests, this cheese is made from a tofu base. Base: Soy Labels: Kosher, gluten-free, non-GMO Certifications: Halal.

Vegan cheeses are made with an assortment of ingredients, though some are more common. Processed, store-bought vegan cheeses are usually nut-based or made from various starches and flours, Means explains.

For this reason, nuts like cashews and almonds are common primary ingredients in some vegan cheeses. Seeds, such as sunflower and hemp seeds, are also used in some dairy-free cheese products.

Starches and flours are often used as thickening agents in dairy-free cheese. This adds structure to shreds, slices, and blocks of vegan cheese. Coconut oil is also a key ingredient in vegan cheese with good melting properties. This helps vegan cheese stay firm at cooler temperatures but allows it to soften at warmer temperatures.

The ingredients in vegan cheese can vary wildly from brand to brand, notes Newgent. Generally, vegan cheese will contain its base ingredients along with ingredients to add thickness and flavor.

In some cases, vegan cheese may contain ingredients that add color, such as beta carotene, and preservatives, Newgent adds. Still, they can hold some weight if you follow a specific meal plan or lifestyle. Vegan certifications are issued by independent bodies like Natural Food Certifiers , Vegan Action , and The Vegan Society.

On top of being made from plant-derived ingredients, foods donning this seal must be made from at least 90 percent plant-based ingredients with the remaining 10 percent coming from ingredients of non-plant or -animal origin aka natural flavors, added colors, etc.

Other certifications to look for, depending on your values:. In the past, vegan cheeses have been grainy, gritty, and chalky, which has scared some people into trying the newer formulas we have today. While there will always be some outliers, dairy-free cheeses can have a similar feel and consistency to real cheese.

Of the ones we tried, Field Roast Chao Creamy Original Chao Slices have the most realistic texture. It may not be a perfect copycat, but some dairy-free options get pretty close.

While taste is somewhat subjective, some vegan cheeses are more popular than others simply because they taste better. Like regular cheese, you can seek out various types—swiss, cheddar, ricotta, mozzarella, etc.

Certain ingredients can affect how cheesy a dairy-free cheese will taste. Cashew Grated Cheeze. Other formulas rely on seasonings, such as the spices in the Good Foods Plant Based Queso Style Dip.

Your best bet is to give some a whirl. While some vegan cheeses come in blocks or rounds that can be used for snacking, melting, or cooking, most vegan cheeses do not.

Will it be a midnight snack with crackers? Do you want to make a melty grilled cheese sandwich? Do you want to sprinkle it over your pasta? It will soften and become creamier and stretchier, but it can still look similar to how it looked before heat was added.

If melting properties of vegan cheese are important to you, Newgent recommends looking for options that contain coconut oil. Miyoko's Fresh Vegan Mozzarella is one of the more meltable picks, and we may have coconut oil to thank for that. Grating or thinly slicing vegan cheese will help it melt better, which is a perk since vegan cheese can take longer than regular cheese to melt down.

Vegan cheese is made from a variety of plant-derived ingredients. Cehn adds that traditional cheese is mostly comprised of fat, so added oils like coconut oil are common in processed vegan cheese. To gain more control of what your vegan cheese is made from, you can give DIY recipes a try.

You can make vegan cheese at home with ingredients like potatoes, cashews, and nutritional yeast. Since vegan cheese has come a long way, there are many types of vegan cheese that can melt similar to real cheese, allowing people who avoid or limit dairy products to enjoy melted cheese on sandwiches, burgers, and pasta.

Ingredients like coconut oil also increases the chances that vegan cheese will melt. Not all vegan cheese will melt, but many do—and some melt better than others.

There are some perks to freezing your vegan cheese. Like regular cheese, many dairy-free cheeses are highly perishable and prone to going bad. Some manufacturers recommend against freezing some of their products, so check the label to see if your vegan cheese can be frozen.

If getting a longer lifespan out of your product is more important than the potential textural changes, then freeze away! All vegan cheese is plant-based, but not all plant-based cheese is vegan.

In some cases, "plant-based" can also refer to a product that is made mostly from plant-derived ingredients but also contains small amounts of animal-based ingredients. Our team of editors and contributors spent hours researching the best vegan cheeses on the market, evaluating their key features—like ingredients, meltability, and price—in addition to reviews from customers and other trusted sources.

We then used our own knowledge and first-hand experiences to choose the items listed above. Lacey Muinos is a wellness and food writer with six years of vegan experience under her belt. Her cheese adoration is so strong that she has a whole podcast dedicated to it.

She is a Certified Cheese Professional through the American Cheese Society. She wrote the original version of this story. Use limited data to select advertising.

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Develop and improve services. Use limited data to select content. List of Partners vendors. What to Buy Food. The 9 Best Vegan Cheeses of Here are our picks for the most delicious dairy-free mozzarella, parmesan, cheddar, and more.

By Lacey Muinos. Lacey Muinos. Lacey Muinos has written about health, wellness, food, and skincare for five years. Learn about The Spruce Eats' Editorial Process. Our Top Picks. Best Mozzarella:. Best Cheddar:. Best Shredded:. Best Grated Parmesan:.

Best Hard Cheese:. Best Slices:. Best Cream Cheese:. Best Ricotta:. In This Article Expand. Our Picks. What to Look for. How We Selected. Why Trust The Spruce Eats? Best Mozzarella. Miyoko's Fresh Vegan Mozzarella. View On Amazon View On Instacart. What We Like Short list of organic ingredients Soy- and gluten-free Melts, slices, and shreds.

Best Cheddar. Field Roast Chao Creamy Original Chao Slices. In chemistry terms, the difficulty of replicating the special properties of real dairy ranks somewhere between cold fusion and turning lead into gold. The combination of proteins and carbohydrates enable bubbling and browning for perfect pizza and baked pastas.

The second generation were based on coconut oil and little else, so they melted, but with an unappetizing ooze and meager flavor. When I occasionally made a dairy-free pizza over the years, I usually skipped the cheese entirely rather than suffer a slice with the texture of stale gum, or pools of tepid goo.

Which ones manage it best? This brand makes some excellent ice creams, but its shredded cheese has the texture of packing peanuts when cold, and when hot, it has the texture of hot packing peanuts. This is certainly the most convenient of the bunch in terms of offering up a whole entree with very little effort, but the flavor leaves something to be desired, relying mostly on salt.

It's got a school glue texture, and the flavor is too mild to be truly evocative of cheese. It fortifies its coconut oil and potato starch mixture with calcium. I have a lot of respect for this groundbreaking brand made from palm oil and non-GMO tofu, but Toffutti Better Than Cream Cheese Despite the soy, it offers only a single gram of protein per serving.

Cashew-based Treeline has a broad variety of vegan cheeses, and it's one of only a couple producing a French-style spreadable cheese. It spreads beautifully, and unlike most other dairy-free cheeses, it has almost half the protein of peanut butter. Unfortunately, the foundation flavor of lemon juice results in a sour nip rather than a balanced tang.

If you love goat cheese well, you still might hate this. The main ingredient is cauliflower , with other ingredients like peppers, cashews and almonds. Is it cheesy though? The effect is more like sour cream sauce or ranch dressing than queso.

Still, you can bake it into enchiladas, quiches and casseroles without it splitting, which is a major win. It fares a bit better toasted in dry heat, but the layer underneath remains sticky. In general, cashews work better than anything else to replace the mouthfeel of dairy, and Parmela has done something interesting here using prolonged aging, but with real cheese, the fermented and savory flavors are up high, noticeable as soon as you taste.

They have very little nutritional value, sadly, but extra marks for having a spicy Jack flavor. Field Roast uses fermented soybeans along with coconut in its Chao Slices , so they have a little bit more of an umami bite than some of the others, but they also have olive extract in a creative attempt to mimic cheesy tang.

The original flavor is pretty mild, but the olive gives it a faint musty aftertaste. Although based on coconut like most other modern plant-based cheeses, this one does not turn into a slick pool to the degree that the other similar formulae do.

It melts well if you give it long enough and retains some opaqueness. It works pretty well when sprinkled on something hot, like sauteed broccoli or a baked potato, rather than really melted so that some of the not-quite-right background flavors come to the forefront.

That said, I prefer this brand to most others for melting into sauces, too. The flavor? The common problematic coconut oil mouth-coating effect is thankfully absent. This brand is one of the few to start with almonds. It makes ricotta and cream cheese , but nothing sliced or shredded.

This one with chives has a very credible tang that could actually be mistaken for the real thing, and it even has as much protein as dairy cream cheese. It benefits from a little stirring before spreading. I use cream cheese as a substitute for heavy cream in sauces and soups a lot, and this one works for that if you whisk really well and are OK with a few particle-sized lumps.

For more product picks, visit our reviews section. This review was last updated in January If you have any questions, suggestions for future reviews or spot anything that has changed in price or availability, please get in touch at goodfoodwebsite immediate.

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A nutritional yeast cheese substitute most closely resembles Parmesan with its nutty, rich, and salty flavor. This golden flaked, inactive yeast contains extra B vitamins, like B12, which vegans notoriously lack.

You can build a liquid cashew cheese sauce or dip to pair with healthy salty snacks or enjoy a more solid cheese block by altering your recipe and preparation process. In many recipes, we blend nutritional yeast into a recipe for cashew cheese without milk, along with vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon, fresh garlic, and salt.

Build a straightforward ricotta cheese with soft, silken tofu to make a beautiful non-dairy cheese substitute in lasagna and other classic dishes containing ricotta - simply blend or mash the tofu and add some fresh-squeezed lemon juice. On the other hand, Firm tofu can give you a whole new cheese without dairy experience - slice some smoked tofu to replace harder cheese, like mozzarella.

Beware of non-vegan recipes that contain gelatin, and substitute with agar, a seaweed-based ingredient that works to harden the zucchini cheese similarly.

Almond cheese has a nutty, rich flavor that makes plenty of healthy cheese alternatives, from soft ricotta and cream cheese to hard vegan cheddar blocks. Make soft almond cheese at home by soaking the nuts and blending in a high-powered blender with your favorite herbs, spices, nutritional yeast, and lemon juice.

Any of the options above make a healthy cheese substitute, but sometimes, you might want something a little more convenient.

Luckily you can find a vegan cheese substitute at the grocery store to suit all your cheesy needs, but our two favorite store-bought, dairy-free cheese alternatives are Daiya and Kite Hill. There's one essential piece of the tofu cooking process that many people miss - the press.

Read our four best reasons to press your tofu here. We've heard loads about the health benefits of this Mediterranean oil, but some vegans refuse to use it - find out if olive oil is vegan. For a firmer texture you can make it with less water. And if you want to use it in sweet recipes, just cut back on the lemon juice.

See my Cashew Sour Cream Recipe here. Adding some maple syrup or sugar to sweeten this cashew cheese will turn it into a delicious dairy-free cream cheese frosting. Firm tofu either grated or crumbled or pureed in the food processor can be a surprisingly good plant-based substitute for firmer style soft cheeses.

Puree silken tofu for a creamy soft cheese alternative. Of course the flavor of tofu is super bland, so be generous with the salt. If you want to boost the cheesy flavours to get a closer match, add some nutritional yeast flakes.

For a closer match to the tangy flavor of goats cheese add a squeeze of lemon juice. All these dairy-free yogurts like soy yogurt will work as a soft cheese substitute — the texture will be runnier than most soft cheeses.

For a closer match, try lining a sieve with kitchen paper and drain the yogurt for a few hours. Works really well as an alternative to ricotta as a spread for toast or as a sauce component for pasta or lasagna.

Can work as an alternative to smooth ricotta in a tub but will be too soft and runny to work in firm ricotta applications. Chunks of avo will add creamy goodness and substance to your dish. But a completely different appearance.

For an even closer match to tangy goat cheeses add in a squeeze of lemon or lime and some sea salt flakes or herbs. These are the best dairy-free substitutes for hard cheeses like parmesan, pecorino or ricotta salata. Can be grated with a miroplane to make a dust that looks a lot like parmesan.

A similar idea to olives, sun dried tomatoes are bursting with flavour and will add a little sweetness to your dish instead of a salt hit. Excellent to use as a dairy-free alternative to parmesan in pesto. Other nuts like walnuts or macadamias will also work.

Another option to replace the salty hit from parmesan is to sprinkle your dish with sea salt flakes. Work in a similar way to olives. Salted capers will be the best choice although capers in vinegar are better than nothing.

They are great for adding crunch and visual interest when sprinkled over pasta. While there are some commercial plant-based cheese options that are OK.