The Best Vegan Steamed Rice Cheese

This vegan cheese is so easy to make and has the perfect cheese texture! It’s gluten-free, nut-free and soy-free, so perfect for anyone with allergies. And It’s wonderful for slicing or cubing, for sandwiches or a healthy snack, … It’s really great!

I’ve been reading about and trying out lots of different vegan cheese recipes from The Non-Dairy Evolution Cookbook from The Gentle Chef, Full of Plants, Cashewbert and many more that I found online lately. I must admit I’ve really been a bit obsessed by it lately! I’ve even enrolled into a Vegan Cheese Summer Camp later this month!! And so far I can say there are some very good recipes out there!

The Inspiration

Today’s recipe was inspired by a vegan steamed rice cheese that was invented by Martine Van Haperen. I tried her recipe and really liked the texture, it kind of reminded me of a slightly harder cheese. It’s very easy to slice and to grate. It does not melt like normal cheese would, but it does get softer when heated. So I’m still happy with it.

My Own Vegan Steamed Rice Cheese Version

I ended up trying the recipe again with some different flavours and with a different water and oil ratio to make it just a tiny little bit softer. And I used lactic acid instead of lemon juice and vinegar. And I’m very happy with the result!

For the flavouring I was inspired by some of the cheeses in the Non-Dairy Evolution cookbook. I made a version with shiro miso and mustard seed powder, another with shiro miso and garlic and onion powder and another with dried oregano and basil. The oregano version is my favourite! The oregano somehow really adds to the cheesy flavour. And I’m definitely going to try some more different flavours in the future! You can be very creative adding different herbs or spices or using different acids to get different flavours.

Ingredients

The main ingredient for this cheese recipe is non-glutinous rice flour. You can buy this very cheaply in an Asian supermarket. Apparently not all rice flours work well for this recipe, but the kind you find in the Asian supermarkets should be perfect!

I’m also using lactic acid. In many vegan cheese making groups and on blogposts I’ve seen people comment that lactic acid powder really is one of the best ways to give a vegan cheese that cheesy flavour. However it can be a bit hard to find, depending on where you live of course.
Lactic acid liquid that is used for making beer or wine is easy to find here in Belgium. The only problem is that you don’t really know for sure if it has a vegan source. In the end I ordered my lactic acid in the UK with Special Ingredients, they have a wonderful vegan lactic acid powder. It’s just a shame that for people in Europe it’s getting more and more expensive to order things from outside of the EU. This month the rules changed once more . Now we don’t get the €22 order limit anymore to order without having to pay extra taxes, so even cheap things we order will get taxed.

If you can’t find lactic acid you can use another acid like lemon juice and/or vinegar like in the original recipe, or you could try some citric acid.

All the other ingredients I use are fairly easy to obtain.

Update 7 August 2021

I made a spicy version of this steamed rice cheese with sriracha sauce for a vegan cheese tasting with friends and it was one of our favourite cheeses! I definitely recommend this version!

I’ve also been trying out some different rice flours. I recently tried an Indian rice flour and those results were not so great. I think the flour was not fine enough. So try to get Thai rice flour from an Asian shop. This is the one that I’ve been using and getting great results with. I’m sure there are some other good brands out there too though!

Print Recipe

Vegan Steamed Rice Cheese

Prep Time5 minutes mins

Cook Time45 minutes mins

Equipment

• blender (can be food processor or stick blender)
• steamer (can be a regular cooking pot with steamer basket inside)
• ceramic, glass or silicone heatproof container – you can use one big container, big enough to contain about 2 ½ cups of liquid or use several ramekins like I did for smaller cheeses (the volume in this recipe fills about 3 ramekins) – silicone containers would be easiest to take the cheeses out of after they've cooled down

Ingredients

Cheese base

• 1 cup cup non-glutinous rice flour (available at Asian supermarkets)
• ½ cup odourless coconut oil melted (put the jar without the lid in the microwave for 30 seconds)
• 1 cup lukewarm water (if the water is too cold the coconut oil would solidify again)
• ¾ tsp vegan lactic acid powder (or substitute with ¾ tsp of citric acid powder or 1 tsp of lemon juice or vinegar)
• 1 ½ – 3 tsp salt (depending on how salty you'd like the cheese to be

Cheese flavouring for Italian 'Campana' style cheese

• ½ tsp dried oregano
• ½ tsp dried sweet basil
• ¼ tsp chilli flakes (optional)

Cheese flavouring for a garlic & miso cheese

• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp light miso (to keep it soy free you can use chickpea miso)

Cheese flavouring for a spicy Sriracha cheese

• 1,5-3 tsp sriracha sauce

Instructions

• In your blender mix all base ingredients + your choice of the flavouring ingredients til you have a smooth mixed liquid. The resulting mixture will still be quite thin, but don't worry it will thicken up during the steaming process.
• Pour your mixture in a heatproof glass or ceramic container. Make sure you leave about 1 cm of space in the container cause the liquid will expand during the steaming process.
• Place your container with the mixture in your steamer. Do this right away after blending and pouring your mixture in your container. Don't let it sit around for a little while cause the mixture could start to separate – I did this once and noticed afterwards there were parts of the cheese that were harder, I suspect because the rice flour clumped together while it was sitting there before steaming.
• Steam for 45 minutes (make sure there's enough water in the steamer that you can steam for 45 minutes without a problem!)
• After 45 minutes remove the container with the steamed cheese from the steamer. It will already thickened up a lot. Let it cool for a while at room temperature.
• When it has cooled down you can place it in the fridge til at least the next day.
• The next day you can remove the cheese from the container by loosening up the sides of the cheese with a spatula or knife. It should be relatively easy to get the cheese out, though sometimes you have to keep on loosening up those sides before the bottom finally releases.
• Have a taste and enjoy!

Notes

You can play with the flavourings, other ingredients you could add:

• chopped up sun-dried tomatoes
• jalapeño peppers
• cumin seeds
• ground koriander
• mustard
• a pinch of tomato powder (to give it a more reddish colour)
• a pinch of turmeric (to give it a more yellow colour)

If you’d like to try out some more vegan cheese recipes, check out my Bruschetta with Vegan Cream Cheese recipe and my Vegan Peashoot Pesto Recipe (which includes instructions to make homemade vegan parmesan).

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6 July 2021 by INE BEERTEN

Thanks for reading!