Shredded Vegan Mozzarella Cheese
This shredded vegan mozzarella cheese melts, shreds and stretches just like any cheese should. It tastes + feels just like the real deal. Also, it’s super simple to make. I make this almost every month and make sure there’s homemade vegan mozzarella cheese on hand in my fridge.
“Why does this taste more like cheese, than cheese?”
– Chelsy (my non-vegan friend)
This first thing you’re gonna wanna do is soak a cup of raw cashews into a bowl of boiling water. Make sure the cashews are raw and unsalted. Also, be sure that all cashews are fully immersed in the hot water. Let that soak for 5 minutes or more.
While the cashews are soaking, get all of your high powered blender and ingredients out if you haven’t already. Get your container that you will be chilling the cheese in clean and ready. I used a glass pyrex food container. It needs to at least hold 3 cups. You can purchase some pyrex food containers in the link below.
Key kitchen tools to make this shredded vegan mozzarella cheese
You can find some ingredients and tools on The Plant Based Palette Shop.
In a small pot, stir the agar agar powder and 1 1/2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and whisk until it firms into a gel consistency. It should look like this:
Separately boil water and measure it out to 1 1/2 cups.
Drain the soaked cashews. Then add the soaked/drained cashews, tapioca starch, agar agar gel, nutritional yeast, salt, refined coconut oil, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar and boiling water into a blender and blend. Blend until smooth consistency. Blend for about a minute.
Immediately pour the cheese into your container as it will start to harden.
Place the container full of cheese in the refrigerator, uncovered, for at least 2 hours. Once chilled it should look like this:
Use a butter knife to help pop the edges of the cheese onto a cutting board. You can either shred it or slice it. You can enjoy it hot or cold. As I said, it melts and shred really well. It’s great on plant-based pizzas, quesadillas, sandwiches, tacos, etc.
Vegan Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup raw cashews
- 4 Tbsp tapioca flour
- 3 Tbsp agar agar powder
- 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 Tbsp refined coconut oil (it's important to get refined oil so avoid the coconut taste)
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 3 cups boiling hot water
Instructions
- Soak the raw cashews in a bowl of hot water for at least 5 minutes. Make sure all cashews are completely immersed in the water.
- Get a container that can hold up to 3 cups. I used a 6 cup rectangular glass pyrex container.
- In a small pot, stir the agar agar powder and 1 1/2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and whisk until it firms into a gel consistency.
- Heat up 1 1/2 cups of boiling water. This will be placed into the blender. I heated up a tea kettle then set aside 1 1/2 cups of water once it reached a boiling point.
- Drain the soaked cashews. Then add the soaked/drained cashews, tapioca starch, agar agar gel, nutritional yeast, salt, refined coconut oil, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar and boiling water into a blender and blend. Blend until smooth consistency. Blend for about a minute.
- It will start to harden to immediately pour the cheese into your container.
- Place the container full of cheese in the refrigerator, uncovered, for at least 2 hours.
- After has chilled and hardened, use a butter knife to help pop the edges of the cheese onto a cutting board.
- You can either slice the cheese or shred them. I suggest placing it in either a zip lock bag or food storage container lined with paper towels. Keeping the cheese in the paper towels will help keep them dry.
- This cheese is versatile and can be enjoyed either hot + melted or cold.
