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Comment by pcthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Which brands have you tried? There's a wild diversity, and I suspect even with dairy cheeses you could try many kinds and think it's "missing" something (compared to another type of cheese, or even the same cheese from a different producer)

For example, a (dairy) farmer's cheese is going to be completely different from a blue cheese, which is completely different from a sharp cheddar. Each of those is "missing" something compared to the others. Quality vegan cheeses often try to mimic characteristics of different kinds of dairy cheeses, and often come very close. For some kinds of cheese, people actually find them indistinguishable from the classic dairy versions; for example, if you tried 5 kinds of Blue Cheese, you'd likely find differences between them, and might not even be able to identify which one was vegan.

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> Which brands have you tried?

More than I could possibly recall. Violife, chao, follow your heart, miyokos, daiya, parmellas, go veggie, kite hill, Trader Joe’s brand

> For some kinds of cheese, people actually find them indistinguishable from the classic dairy versions

Not a chance that I believe this. Maybe as a minor ingredient in a larger meal but certainly not as a main ingredient or on its own.

Agree. However a homemade “cashew cheese” (flavor from nutritional yeast, cayenne, and turmeric) can be yummier than cheese, if not totally realistic. Why the store brands can’t meet that quality I don’t know.

Anything that tries to be like actual cheese fails miserably and trends to be mostly fat (coconut) and starch with flavour added. Nutritionally terrible, usually very low protein compared with real cheese. At least with cashew cheese you are eating (mostly) cashews with some flavour added. Still higher in fat and lower in protein than a low fat cheese, but at least it isn't just starch and fat.

I use the liquid from sauerkraut or picked gherkins, garlic, onion powder and some salt, with the obligatory nutritional yeast. Just think of it as a nice pate.

Yes, and the lack of protein is horrible. When you are vegetarian, you partially substitute meat with cheese --- no way with these vegan look-like-cheese-somewhat products.

it's like 1.3g of protein per 100g (pseudo pasta 'cheese') vs 32g per 100g (Parmigiano-Reggiano) or 23g per 100g for Emmental cheese.

Depends a little on how puritanical you are - Trader Joe's makes a decent 'Mozarella Style' shredded cheese that's mostly almonds, but has casein from real cheese (to make it melt) and some flavor from parmesan. 40g of protein in a bag, not terrible, but not vegan, just less-dairy.

Cashew cheese is really good, but it isn't at all cheese. It can be used in a few applications where cheese is normally used, but not in the vast majority of them.

Cashew cheese is so freaking food. It's got the perfect texture for nacho cheese dip and buffalo chicken dip. I honestly think it's better than dairy as the base for creamy soups.

Mrrweelll... to be fair, the kind of mass-produced cheese most people recognise as "cheese" these days is not that great either. And most commercial cheese basically tastes the same, no matter what it says it is. That's because it's made with the same industriallly produced lyophilised lactic acid bacteria cultures. The job of those cultures is to give cheese its tastes and flavours and since everyone buys the same brands from the same few makers, everybody's cheese tastes the same.

What's worse, outside the EU you can find cheese with names like "feta", "parmesan", "mozzarella", "camembert" etc, that are nothing like the real deal (pet peeve: feta sold in the US is made with cow's milk). So most people who eat cheeses with these names outside the EU are eating substitutes of very inferior quality. From there, to eating plant-based "cheese" and feeling like you eat the real deal it's not such a big distance.

I find Violife feta cheese to be more delicious than real feta for snacking, and can devour a pack in one sitting if I'm not paying attention. It's a bit different from real feta, in that it's a lot less briny. Thus in recipes like Greek salad real feta is still better.

Sorry if this sounds too grumpy, but if you're outside the EU then you don't know what "real feta" tastes like because you've only tasted imitation feta from cow's milk. Real feta is made in Greece with sheep and optionally up to 20% goat's milk and even a lot of the feta that is exported from Greece with the PDO symbol on it is awful and tasteless, like a block of watery, salted gypsum. So I can understand why you'd say you think Violife "feta cheese" is more delicious than "real" feta. Because that's not real feta, either.

It might be a matter of taste and also certain kind of cheese might be harder to replicate. My partner and I also tried a lot of vegan brands, and while we disliked most (they were fine but not comparable), we both found the "original" Violife line to be really good.

>For some kinds of cheese, people actually find them indistinguishable from the classic dairy versions; for example, if you tried 5 kinds of Blue Cheese, you'd likely find differences between them, and might not even be able to identify which one was vegan.

Maybe for some people, in the same way that smokers drink Tim Hortons because they can't taste the difference. But plenty of us can tell the difference and for us, vegan cheeses taste horrendous.

>Maybe for some people, in the same way that smokers drink Tim Hortons because they can't taste the difference.

Or maybe it's more like beer, most don't like it the first time but after a while you can start appreciating it?

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