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Simple Raw Cultured Cashew Cheese for all my cheeseaholics out there.
This simple and easy recipe for Raw Cultured Cashew Cheese is going to blow your mind! It’s sharp, tangy, has a delicious outer rind, while the inside is still super creamy, and it’s totally cheesy. This cultured cashew cheese is just perfect to set up an epic vegan cheese platter, but it’s also great as a little snack on toasted baguette slices. Or with veggies. Or on pasta….let’s be honest, it’s amazing with anything!
I still have a few weeks left until I can finally taste my homemade cashew blue cheese, so now I have to keep my aged-cashew-cheese-cravings in control with this Raw Cultured Cashew Cheese. It does the job for sure! Plus my boyfriend said that this is the best vegan cheese of all the cheeses I’ve ever made, so it would be crazy not to share this recipe with you.
Though this recipe is not an instant fix for your cheese cravings, since you have to ferment the cheese for a few days, you won’t have a lots of work with it actually. All you have to do is placing cashews, rejuvelac, miso, nutritional yeast and salt to a blender and process to get a creamy mixture, then just let the cheese ferment for 1-2 days. At this point you can eat the cheese as cream cheese, or you can dehydrate it to get a firmer, sliceable version.
If you own a dehydrator, then I’m jealous, then feel free to make a proper raw cheese with it. But since I don’t have one, I simply set my oven to the lowest temperature to dehydrate the cheese. Depending on your oven/dehydrator this could take anywhere between 3 to 6 hours. The longer you dehydrate the cheese, the harder/more sliceable it gets. Once you reached the desired consistency all you have to do is try not to eat the whole cheese in a minute. I warn you, it’s dangerously good!
And if you can’t get enough vegan cheese, check out some of my other cheese recipes:
- Vegan Tofu Feta Cheese
- Walnut and Herb Vegan Cheese
- Basic Cashew Cheese with Herbs
- Baked Almond Feta
- Quick and Easy Vegan Fondue
- Cauliflower Cheese Sauce
If you try this recipe, let me know! I would highly appreciate if you could leave a comment and rate it. Also don’t forget to take a picture and tag it on Instagram (use the hashtag #greenevi) or post it on Facebook! I love seeing what you come up with! ♥︎
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Simple Raw Cultured Cashew Cheese
- Total Time: 3 hours 30 mins
Ingredients
- 2 cups of cashews, soaked
- 1/2 cup of rejuvelac*
- 1 tbsp white miso
- 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
- salt
- seasoning of your choice**
Instructions
- Add cashews, rejuvelac, miso, nutritional yeast and salt to a blender and process until very creamy and smooth. This might take a few minutes, depending on your blender.
- Place a fine mesh strainer over a large bowl or pot, and lay down two layers of cheesecloth. Scoop cheese mixture over the cheesecloth, then wrap it in a tight bundle and tie with a rubber band. Cover with plastic film and let sit at room temperature for 24-48 hours, so the cheese can ferment. After fermentation place the cheese (still in the bundle) in the fridge for at least 2 hours, so it’s easier to work with.
- Remove the cheese from the cheesecloth. It should be a firm ball. You can stir in your seasoning and extras at this point, if you want.
- Shape the cheese into a ball and place on a baking tray***. Set your oven to the lowest heat (about 50°C/120℉) and dehydrate for 3-6 hours, or until dry and sliceable. Enjoy!
Notes
* I use store-bought rejuvelac, but you can find recipes for a homemade version here, here or here.
** You can keep the cheese plain, as I did here, or you can add fresh or dry herbs, garlic, toasted nuts, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, dried cranberries, black pepper, etc. too. Make sure you only add your extras after the cheese had been fermented.
*** Or use a dehydrator to keep the temperature below 45°C/115℉.
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 3 hours
- Category: Snack
- Cuisine: Vegan
Vegan or not, nuts are always great!
I agree with you very much, my friend 🙂
O I want to try this! How fun!
I think you’d like this one 😉
I would have never imagined it’s possible to make cheese out of cashews (If I hadn’t known your blog, hah). However, I’ve made some kind of dips and sauces based on cashew so I can imagine this cheese is indeed delicious and with a rich texture! Well done, Evi.
Thank you so much, Ben! 🙂
OMG, that cheeseCashews are one of my favorite nuts but I have yet to try cashew cheese. Yours look and sound wonderful, Evi. Will give it a go sometime soon.
Thanks, Anu! Let me know how you liked it 😉
Jeeeeeezzzzz!!! You killed me with this cheese! This looks unbelievable Evi! I can almost taste it… 🙂 beautiful work, and I still can’t wait to see the ‘other’ cheese 🙂 xoxo
Thanks, Anna! Just two weeks to go 🙌
wow awesome recipe thanks for sharing
Thank you 🙂
Sounds very interesting. I never had homemade vegan cheese, but I would love to.
Thanks, Anca! It’s actually quite addictive, once you start to make them at home you just can’t stop anymore 😀
Looks good – how much salt please?
Hi James,
I didn’t write exact measurements for the salt, because I find it’s strongly depending on one’s personal taste. I normally use very little salt for my foods, so I just used a tiny pinch of it here, since the miso gave enough flavour for me. However if you like your food with a bit more salt, you can add 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of salt to the mixture. Maybe start with a little, then taste how you like it. The cheese gets sharper and tangier after fermentation, but it doesn’t affect the saltiness.
I hope I could help. Let me know if you try this, I’d love to hear your feedback 🙂
This Cheese Cashews looks awesome. I can imagine how tasty it would be. 🙂
Thanks, Puja 🙂
love this Evi! We made our own cashew cheese some years ago and it was SO much nicer than store bought vegan cheese! Cant wait to try your recipe out! Delicious!
Thanks, Lucie! Homemade cashew cheese is really just the best thing ever 😉
What a finger-licking recipe, Evi! I love your recipes!
Thanks, Agness 🙂
Hi. I just made this recipe and put the cheese mixture in the cheese cloth. Now, I don’t understand if the cheese should have access to the air or not during the fermentation period. When it is covered with plastic film, what does it mean? 🙂 thank you.
Hi there, sorry for the late answer.
The cheese doesn’t need air, so you can cover it, but it’s important to keep it at room temperature, so it can ferment.
I hope you liked the recipe 🙂
What happens if you put the extras in to ferment along with the cheese?
Hi Mitra,
As far as I know those ingredients can change the process of fermenting, and things like fresh herbs could even go bad. However if I’m honest, I’m sometimes super lazy, and added the extras at the beginning too, and had no problem…but it’s always a good idea to keep it safe and just add those after the fermentation, so you don’t end up with a bunch of expensive ingredients to throw away 😉
Is it suppose to smell like butt lol? It stunk up my whole house, and I don’t know if I did something wrong or if it’s suppose to smell like that.
Hahaha, no, I don’t think so. 😀
It definitely has a strong smell that comes from the rejuvelac, but it’s more like a tangy, aged-cheesy smell, not so much like a butt. Actually a similar thing happened to me once when making cultured cashew blue cheese, I think something was not 100% clean or my cashews were too old, so things went bad pretty quickly, and everything smelled rotten. Maybe that’s what happened here too…
Thank you so much for the recipe. This is definitely the best vegan cheese I’ve made and it’s also the easiest! I make it all the time now.
Hi Rain, I’m so glad to hear you enjoy this recipe 🙂
Hi there. I’m wondering if the drying out in the oven or dehydrator is necessary? Would it be more like cream cheese if I skipped that step? My oven only goes as low as 175 F which is quite hotter than 125F. I don’t have a dehydrator. Thanks!
Hey Alexis,
Yes, you can totally skip that step. Your cheese won’t be that firm, and it won’t have an outer rind, but it’s gonna be still good.
TBH I’ve also made this cheese with the oven at 100 C/200 F already. It’s a little bit different result, plus the baking time was shorter, but I enjoyed it just as much as the dehydrated version 😉
Let me know if you try the recipe (with or without oven)!
Hi Evi, do you think it would be possible to use water kefir instead of rejuvelac?
Recipe sounds amazing!
Hi Laura,
I have only tried water kefir once, and I never ‘cooked’ with it, so I can’t tell you if it works or not.
If rejuvelac is hard to find where you live, you could try making your own, here’s a great recipe: http://www.marystestkitchen.com/make-rejuvelac-culturing-cheese/
Otherwise I’d love to hear about your results, if you decide to experiment with the water kefir 😉
I finally took the risk and used the water kefir, the result was indeed amazing.
Thank you so much for the recipe!
Yay, that’s great news! Thanks for sharing your result with me, I wish I could try it too 😉
This is soooo good- there needs to be a new food category though cuz i can’t think of a “cheese” that tastes like this! It’s creamy but sharp like a cheddar. Hard to describe, but i put it in scrambled eggs and ate it with crackers or black bean chips- both excellent!
Thank you for the awesome feedback, I’m really glad you enjoyed the recipe. 😊