The best Cheese & Dairy Cooking books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

They probably mean Ben & Jerry's base cream recipe. It's in this book which I highly recommend if you have an ice cream maker.

Well, heck. How about Amazon? Here's a link to her cookbook, Artisan Vegan Cheese.
Hope you're having an awesome weekend :)

Chocolate ice cream with a strawberry swirl! I made the milk chocolate ice cream recipe from Jeni’s book and mixed in a homemade strawberry sauce swirl!

Pear Reisling Sorbet from the Jeni’s Ice Cream book. It’s divine!

Not canning but would definitely preserve the harvest. Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home https://www.amazon.com/dp/1579654363/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_HKGHNNPGM0VQWFPDFGZ7

For a starting point, try the Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Book . It has some good information in it and talks about how to customize the recipes (at least that is what I remember - I lost a lot of cookbooks when we got bedbugs from a neighbor a few years back).

Use really good cocoa, too -- I like Cacao Barry ($20 for a kg on amazon). It also makes fantastic brownies. (People think I am some kind of baking genius but really, it's that they're used to Hershey's cocoa...)

Pick up Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop -- it has a whole section on stuff you can add to ice creams.

It takes a while for your tastebuds to adjust to a plant-based diet. I used to love dairy cheese, but eating wfpb and then becoming vegan changed my desire for it. Wfpb cheese won’t necessarily taste the same as dairy cheese, but in time, it will taste better and more flavorful as your tastebuds change. (-:

A great informative read about why dairy cheese is addictive and dangerous is The Cheese Trap. Reading this was definitely eye opening for me and made it even easier to go dairy-free.

Edit: there’s also r/vegancheesemaking if you’re interested

Sounds like you've never had real vegan cheese, just that modified food starch plus oil cheese product fake stuff.

Miyoko's is the shit. Btw, she wrote a whole book about making your own cheese with cashews and stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese-Miyoko-Schinner/dp/1570672830

Unless you have access to the real good stuff (e.g. Treeline), making it is the way to go. I started with Miyoko's popular book, which is great for nut cheeses. Lately though, I've been using this. The writing could be clearer, but his method for making soymilk-based cheeses is awesome.

Yes. I too think diya is horrific. Some nut based cheeses are making their way into vegan markets = awesome. The downside is that they're typically very expensive to the tune of north of $10 for not a lot

The fantastic news is that you can make fookin super tasting vegan cheese that's not all processed and oily very easily right here

http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese-Miyoko-Schinner/dp/1570672830/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428028879&sr=1-1&keywords=Vegan+cheese

This stuff is so amazing that you can have a wine and cheese party w omnis [and several cheeses from this book] and they'll love it

How about she reads The Cheese Trap by Dr Neal Barnard? Many people will change their eating habits for their own health (and it just happens to be better for the animals).

Yes. The Cheese Trap

My most used go to is Debra Amrien-Boyes.

https://www.amazon.com.au/200-Easy-Homemade-Cheese-Recipes/dp/0778804658

I tried using the other recommendations by Gianclis Caldwell but i found the books set up in illogical way for me. I'd recommend having a flick through all of them and working out what appeals to you.

It might be over the top to suggest an entire book, but the Mac and Cheese from this cookbook is by far the best I've ever had.

Pulling a quote from Debra Amrein-Boyes 200 Homemade Cheese Recipes

> Calcium Chloride

> During homogenization and pasteurization, the calcium in milk decreases and becomes slightly destabilized. Adding calcium chloride boosts the number of calcium ions in the milk and helps firm up the curd and increase the yield. This step is always recommended when making goat's milk cheeses, because the fine fat particles in goats' milk stay in suspension instead of separating out, as in the case of cow's milk. As a result of this "natural homogenization," the resulting curd is often soft and weak.

Another potential cheesemaker from the Island :-) There are a lot of people here that are from your neck of the woods (my parents live there too and my Dad makes cheese :-) ). As long as your intolerance allows some experimentation, then I think you can definitely figure it out eventually.

A sibling poster pointed out that Gianaclis Caldwell's recipe in her book is pretty good. They also sent me Mary Morris's (I think that's the right name..) recipe. I'll try to write it out for you as soon as I can. But to be honest, I recommend buying Caldwell's book: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Artisan-Cheesemaking-Home-Scale-Producers/dp/1603583327/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1630477235&refinements=p_27%3AGianaclis+Caldwell&s=books&sr=1-1

It's a bit pricey ($35 for the kindle version), but it has enough technical info to get you started. I'm trying think of a cheaper place to get the info, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Ive been using this book and almost all of the recipes start out with making this basic cheese and then diverge on how you age them. It’s not quite a flow chart but it’s pretty close!

Mac and cheese

The sooner you get done proofreading the cook book, the sooner you can start reading a cook book about... mac and cheese!

https://www.amazon.com/Mac-Cheese-Cookbook-Homeroom-Restaurant/dp/160774466X

I’ve been a couple of times and have had catered lunches from there the restaurants and it’s legit.

Good luck and thanking for posting a creative contest!

Chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream! I made the milk chocolate ice cream recipe from Jeni’s book and mixed in some mini peanut butter cups and a peanut butter sauce swirl!

My favorite one is Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking by Gianaclis Caldwell, it goes well into the science aspects, explain well the processes and such, there are some troubleshooting exercises that help develop the knowledge of "what went wrong with my cheese" and so on.

It's great for everyone, from beginner to advanced.

> Jealous of the access to orchard fruit. I make my family gather it when in season and save for me!

New England is the epicenter of pick your own whatever. It makes up for winter. Sort of. But really, in the summer it is nice to see which local farms have what, make your reservation (COVID rules!) and go pick.

I use this which is a little dated but it's still pretty good as a starter.

The hot fudge sauce is something I've been making since I first bought the book in 1987, and is simply the best, bar none, hot fudge, I've ever had. You will spoil anyone who has it, forever.

So, most of what I'm about to say is coming from Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking by Gianaclis Caldwell. I'd highly recommend picking up a copy if you're interested in cheese chemistry.

I'm almost certainly going to get at least some aspect of this wrong, so i apologize in advance.

So, rennet is an enzyme that acts on casein micelles (essentially small "hairy" bubbles containing milk fat) by trimming the kappa-caseins (the hairy bits) off which makes them hydrophobic. Since the resulting molecules are now hydrophobic and milk is mostly water they'll tend to want to clump together in order to minimize the amount of water they're exposed to.

Assuming nothing disturbs the process (as happened in your case), these casein networks will also trap milk fat (good) and whey (ultimatley undesirable). When we cut the curd that's really just trying to maximize the surface area of the curd so that more whey can be squeezed out while trying to retain as much of the milk fat as we can. That's why different curd sizes are suggested for different cheeses. They're trying to cause whey to be expelled faster/slower. Larger curds mean slower whey expulsion because they have less surface area.

So, what most likely happened in your case is that none of the milk fat was captured in this casein network. You may have also lost some mineral content, since it would have been hard to hold on to anything fat soluble.

You may have noticed that the whey was a lot cloudier than usual. That would be all of the stuff you wanted to capture in your curds.

Note the serving size for this recipe is about 15 grams. So its carbs are about the same as what the OP is starting with. Cashews are among the highest carb nuts, not really keto. I'm always surprised to see them recommended for keto.

There are some low-carb vegan cheese sauce recipes like this one, which uses blended silken tofu and nutritional yeast (pretty tasty; I've tried it):

https://avirtualvegan.com/easy-vegan-cheese-sauce/

and there are "stretchy" tapioca-based quesos, which are also not really keto, but I've been thinking of trying to keto-ify one by substituting glucomannan and xanthan gum somehow.

The world of cultured, artisan vegan cheese is currently a mystery to me. Miyoko makes a wide variety, and has an interesting-looking book on the subject, but I'm not sure how many low-carb options are available.

https://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese-Miyoko-Schinner/dp/1570672830

I am not vegan myself but I have a lot of vegetarian and vegan friends and all of them tell me, cheese is the hardest to quit.
There are even books on amazon: https://www.amazon.de/Cheese-Trap-Breaking-Surprising-Addiction/dp/1455594687

I recommend this cookbook if you want to check out a bunch of Mac and Cheese variants. I've done five or six from there, all turned out great.

Can confirm. I made a small batch of cream cheese last week using a small amount of already cultured kefir. It turned out excellent. I try to stay away from prepackaged cultures. David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking is a godsend.

Thanks!
I still have no idea how to make cashew cheese. I bought Miyoko Schinner's Artisan Vegan Cheese, failed miserably at making rejuvelac (TWICE!) and just kind of lost the will to try.
Tips?

Have you considered learning to make it yourself? Here's a link to Miyoko Schinner's book: Artisan Vegan Cheese and here's a link to her online cheese shop.

Hands down, best vegan cheese I've ever tasted.

Hello! SO I personally am a vegetarian, but my significant other is a vegan and I eat and cook only vegan at the house, alongside that I work at a 4.8 star restaurant in my town and am inches away from getting soux after climbing up the ranks. The official fine dining training helped me exponentially in refining and learning basic and advanced culinary skills that I can implement at home with a plant based diet. As far as references I would consult a large number of gourmet vegan cookbooks and learn the skills at home yourself, after purchasing books like 'Artisinal vegan cheese' https://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese-Miyoko-Schinner/dp/1570672830

and my all time favorite cook book, the vegetarian flavor bible https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Flavor-Bible-Creativity-Vegetables/dp/031624418X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505111621&sr=1-1&keywords=vegetarian+flavor+bible

and learn enough skills in cooking things like seitans and fake cheeses, you can start looking at more contemporary cookbooks about vegetarian cuisine and just sub out the non vegan items with a vegan substitute I absolutely agree that seeking out a vegan chef and working in their kitchen is the best way to learn good cooking, but in the town I live in, the only vegan restaurant is ran by an asshole so I had to aloft to a omnivorous restaurant, and yes I do have to taste dishes made with meat, but I aspire to veg/vegan place further down the line that could trick any omnivore!

aaaaand you can make it as good if not better than what you buy in the store. It is super easy - just takes a few steps/days

https://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Vegan-Cheese-Miyoko-Schinner/dp/1570672830