Plant Based Foodie

Vegan Cheese Review: Vegusto No Muh Chas

July 19, 2010 | 1 Comment

Not long ago I had the great good fortune to have a windfall of vegan cheeses from Switzerland delivered to me from a company called Vegi-Service AG who own the brand Vegusto, under which they make several vegan food products.  I stumbled upon this company’s website last winter when I had been looking for a vegan Gouda cheese that someone had told me about from Germany (which I never did find).  I contacted the company and requested some samples to try or even to buy and was told that refrigerated shipping costs would be prohibitive, so I reluctantly gave up being able to try the cheeses for the near or foreseeable future.

A few months later I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from the owner of the company saying that a friend of his would be visiting the States and that he’d also found a reasonable means of shipping his product in the States.  So, lo and behold, a box of vegan cheeses in 5 different flavors arrived at my doorstep shortly thereafter!

The first thought I had after tasting them was Oh.My.God.  The second thought I had was to share them and get feedback to make sure I wasn’t entirely overreacting, so I held a little cheese tasting soiree at the lovely apartment of our friend Richard’s.

The small group of friends that came were all vegan except our host Richard who is pescetarian.  I also had another couple, omni friends who I consider foodies and cheese lovers, try the cheeses too at a later date.  Altogether, all feedback was very positive and confirmed my opinion that these were the best commercial vegan cheeses I’d ever had that stood up to  eating on its own!

The vegan cheeses I like well enough to use with any frequency are Follow Your Heart Monterey Jack, and the Daiya cheeses.  I occasionally eat the FYH Monterey Jack cheese on its own when I crave something like mozzerella, and I like it on sandwiches, and in tacos but the Daiya cheeses are strictly for dishes where a melty cheese is called for.  I do like one of the Dr. Cow cheeses (can’t recall which) but they are prohibitively expensive for regular use, plus I’d like to experiment with making my own.  I’ve had Cheezly, Teese, Sheese and they were varying degrees of being ‘ok’ but none of them come close to the No Muh Chas cheeses.  Which is sad, since they are not yet available in the U.S.

We can only hope that the manufacturer will at some point consider expanding his market!  I am borrowing the rating system I use below from my friend Mattie, who attended the tasting and also posted a review of the cheeses here.

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No-Muh-Chas Classic

Review: Strong garlicky flavor with a dry finish.  Assertive flavor, but not sharp.  A great party or sandwich cheese.  The texture of all of the cheeses has a slight grittiness to them, and some are more pronounced than others, however I didn’t find this to be a detraction.

Ratings (0 to 5 with 5 being highest)

Flavor:  4

Texture:  4

Overall:  4

Package Description: Mild, slightly sour

Ingredients: Water, vegetable oil and fats, potato starch, rice flour, nut butter, cereal flour, rock salt, carrageen, spices, yeast and yeast extract, flavor (vegetable), lactic acid (vegetable), colour (beta-carotene)

Nutrition: 100 g contain: Energy: 1240kJ / 297 kcal, Protein: 4.5 g, Carbohydrates: 27 g, Fats: 19 g

No-Muh-Chas Herbs

Review: Similar flavor base to the Classic style, but saltier and less garlicky, with the addition of herbal flavors.  I actually prefer the bolder overall flavor of the Classic to this one.

Ratings (0 to 5 with 5 being highest)

Flavor:  3

Texture:  4

Overall:  3.5

Description: Selected mild herbs

Ingredients: Water, vegetable oil and fats, potato starch, rice flour, nut butter, cereal flour, rock salt, herbs and herbal extracts (2.2%) carrageen, spices, yeast and yeast extract, flavor (vegetable), lactic acid (vegetable), colour (beta-carotene)

Nutrition: 100 g contain: Energy: 1194 kJ / 287 kcal, Protein: 4.8 g, Carbohydrates: 22.8 g, Fats 19.6 g

No-Muh-Chas Walnuts

Review: The only real flavor I could detect in the cheese base was salt.  This was my least favorite, though I wanted to like it more because I love walnuts.  But somehow their addition didn’t compensate for the cheese flavor base.  Also the texture of this was slightly grittier than the others.

Ratings (0 to 5 with 5 being highest)

Flavor:  2

Texture:  3

Overall:  2.5

Description: Walnuts, mild-aromatic

Ingredients: Water, vegetable oil and fats, potato starch, rice flour, nut butter, cereal flour, rock salt, walnuts (6.4%) carrageen, spices, yeast and yeast extract, flavor (vegetable), lactic acid (vegetable), colour (beta-carotene)

Nutrition: 100 g contain: Energy 1371 kJ / 330 kcal, Protein: 4.2 g, Carbs: 21.6 g, Fats: 25.2 g

No Muh Chas Piquant

Review: Wonderfully complex, a nice balance of rich and sharp – reminiscent of Gruyere or Parmesan cheese (this was also noted by our omni friends).  Here I think the slight gritty texture was entirely appropriate to the flavor, like Parmesan.  High on the umami meter and my favorite.

Ratings (0 to 5 with 5 being highest)

Flavor:  5

Texture:  5

Overall:  5

Description: Picquant, strongly aromatic

Ingredients: Water, vegetable oil and fats, potato starch, rice flour, nut butter, rock salt, carrageen, spices, yeast and yeast extract, flavor (vegetable), lactic acid (vegetable), colour (beta-carotene)

Nutrition: 100 g contain: Energy: 1286 kJ / 309 kcal, Protein: 7.1 g, Carbs: 24.4 g, Fats: 20.3 g

No Muh Chas Mildly Aromatic

Review: Also a very complex cheese, and the one with the strongest and sharpest flavor.  Slight sweet aftertaste, with notes of mustard and split peas (!).  I’d say this cheese comes closest to a sharp cheddar out of the bunch.  Also the grittiness factor was strongest for me in this cheese, however its flavor more than made up for it.

Ratings (0 to 5 with 5 being highest)

Flavor:  5

Texture:  4

Overall:  4.5

Description: Mildly aromatic

Ingredients: Water, vegetable oil and fats, fruit juce, potato starch, rice flour, yeast powder, nut butter, rock salt, flavour (vegetable), carrageen, spices, antioxidant (ascorbic acid), color (turmeric)

Nutrition: 100 g contain: Energy: 1338 kJ / 322 kcal, Protein: 4.9 g, Carbs: 24.4 g, Fats: 22.3 g

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In addition to the cheeses, I prepared some other things to nibble on, including:

• Baby Carrots Roasted with Cumin
• Fingerling potatoes topped with Cashew Sour Cream and a Japanese Nori & Sesame seasoning
• Asparagus Bruschetta with Truffle Oil

People kindly brought astonishingly good beer and wine to go with everything:

And though it rained for much of the evening, at some point it cleared up enough for us to enjoy Richard’s lovely garden:

Other notes about the cheese – I did try to see how it fared when used in cooking in 3 different ways:

1. Grated over parboiled potatoes and heated in the oven at 400 deg F. for 20 minutes
2. Grated into a white sauce for mac ‘n cheese
3. Sliced and heated in a pan on a Grilled Cheese sandwich.

Overall, it did best in the Grilled cheese sandwich.  It also did fine in a cheese sauce but used a lot of the cheese.  It did not however, melt very well over the potatoes in the oven.  These considerations were really not a huge concern for me.

Instead, these cheeses fill a big gap in terms of a commercial product that you can eat as a stand alone vegan cheese.  I can only hope that the company will consider distribution to the U.S. in the not too distant future, before they become a too distant tantalizing memory..!