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Wait...WHAT? Vegan "goat" cheese???

I'm not a vegan.  I'm not even a vegetarian.  

I am, for lack of a better word, "Plant based food curious."

Like most people today, I got worried about my health.  A lifetime of bacon and cheesy poofs along with the traditional American hobbies of laying around on the couch pushed me close to the diabetic  range.  Heart disease runs in my family and after seeing what my wife has gone through with her diabetes and losing my mother to a heart attack...I started to seriously think about what I could do to improve my health.  Living through a pandemic didn't help either.

The more I learned about diets and where food comes from, the more I realized that I could do lots of little things to help the planet too.  I'm proud to say that generally speaking I go at least two days out of week eating a vegan or vegetarian diet.    My interest in this type of food was sparked by my interest in cheese making, a hobby I picked up during the epidemic. 

I read about how some of the techniques used in diary cheese making (fermentation in particular) could be applied to vegan cheeses.  So with my curiosity engaged, I thought I should try a few.  I enjoyed the taste of vegan cheese for the most part, and took those lessons to heart.   I've not made cheese, either dairy or vegan lately due to the cost of milk and that the harder cheeses require a bit more time and investment than I'm willing to give them right now.  

However I love goat cheese. It's probably one of my favorite cheese and I've been dying to make goat cheese for some time.  In fact, if you look on our recipe page, you will see several dishes using goat cheese!

So finding a vegan goat cheese recipe interested me.  What would it taste like?  How would it work?  

There was only one slight problem, and I've come across this issue before.   I didn't have a particular ingredient.  In this case, it was miso paste.


Miso is one of those ingredients that I just don't think would go over well in the home.   I don't really cook despite having a love of food.  I have purchased fish oil, tapioca flour and asafetida in the past, only to find that I have little use for them in other recipes and that my wife Susan has little interest in experimenting with them.  I'm not sure if this ingredient would fall by the wayside or if I would find other uses for it like I did Tahini; which I've used in hummus, on ice cream and to make a "peanut like" sauce for noodles, and for nutritional yeast.   

I did find a Miso hummus that looks interesting and several meat dishes, so it's not like the paste would go to waste. 

Living in the rural part of Western PA, I've found that the more "exotic" ingredients often mean a trip into Pittsburgh or ordering it from an online grocer.  I didn't mind taking a ride down to one of the grocery stores closer to Pittsburgh or even to the East End Co-op to find something I need, even if I only need a small amount of it.  The East End Co-op has a great bulk selection that allows me to buy small amounts of an otherwise expensive item like beet powder or agar-agar.  

So with everything in hand...what did the final products taste like?  While the goat cheese had a slight tang to it.  Goat cheese in general does, it's not bad...but it is different, and I'm not sure I can put my finger on what it is.  Texture wise I don't think I could tell the difference between the two if given a blindfold taste test. It's something about the taste, it's not bad or all that different from goat's milk cheese...but it is slightly different.  Maybe if I had a better pallet I could give you exactly what that difference is.

The miso hummus was a bit bolder in taste than I expected.  Again it's not a bad thing, it's also a bit saltier.  One tablespoon of miso contains 420 mg of salt and that finds its way into the taste of this hummus.  That's about 18% of the daily recommend allowance.  I love garlic and that comes out nicely.  Although it's also a bit "smokey" which has to be from the miso.   It's not bad...but again not what I'm used too.

Honestly, I have to think about this one.


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