Biohackers making "real vegan cheese"

My guess is thats probably the responsibility of the cheese maker since certification always involves production facility inspections, however since what you are doing is new, it might be worth contacting a certification agency like the Orthodox Union in advance and talking to them about your process. They have staff food chemists who are thoroughly familiar with modern food manufacturing.

There are other certification agencies like Star K, Kof K, OK and others which are also considered reliable. It is generally “better” to go with a well respected certifier than a less know but cheaper one as the kind of customers who want a parve (kosher food classification for things that are neither meat nor dairy) cheese analog will definitely want a reliable certification.

“Kosher” only applies for things you ingest by mouth, not for things which are injected.

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I don’t know why I originally typed “nearly always”, although I was likely thinking of Western cooking, where it’s usually considered a meat substitute. But I think I’ve made my love of tofu and my opinion of meat substitutes pretty clear, so let’s move on instead of trying to entrap folks.

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That’s why they get invited to all the parties!

I’ve often said that some of the best home cooking (and most definitely the best homemade baked goods) I’ve had have been from vegans, because of the sheer attention and care that has to go into every single ingredient. Sure, you can just grab some faux-beef and some egg substitute and just use standard recipes, but they’ll be pretty crappy. Carefully planning out a muffin or a pasta dish to taste great without a single animal-derived ingredient is high art when done right.

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I was responding to something Israel_B wrote, which was not clear to me. I asked a question, and Israel_B gave a very complete answer. We’re good.

You and I are not good yet. Is there a reason you felt you needed to give me the penny tour of beginning veg*nism? Especially after quoting me as saying:

What made you think I needed such thorough educating?

I was using it in the 1970s in the Midwest, so it’s not as novel as you think!

FWIW I recall tofu on the dinner table as a kid in the early 70s as well but we lived near NYC so proximity to a major chinatown could have had something to do with that. Just as a qualifier, my parents were not gourmet/exotic cooks either.

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@Israel_B Yep: The uptick in use of the word began around the 1970’s. I don’t remember seeing the stuff in non-asian grocers until… the mid nineties maybe?

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=tofu%2Csoy%2Csoybean&year_start=1800&year_end=2014&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctofu%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csoy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csoybean%3B%2Cc0

Use of the term “tofu” in the U.S. started around 1910? Wowza.

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Crazy, huh. My guess is that early books about Japan included references to the food and 1910 would somewhat match-up with the timeline of Japan opening itself to world visitors. Remember, that graph is not “usage in the US” it’s usage in english-language books.

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There’s some really interesting stuff in Jennifer 8 Lee’s “Fortune Cookie Chronicles” about tofu; in the 1860s, journalists were reporting that the new Chinese immigrants were eating ‘bean cheese’ that had no flavor.

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French Canadian voyageurs ate a sort of thick pea porridge: it’s easy and safe to carry dried peas, soak and then cook them overnight into a paste which can be stuffed into a breast pocket to eat as needed while on the go. Meat (even if made into jerky) isn’t the best way to carry protein while traveling. “Bean cheese” should have proved its worth and caught on out west back in the 1860’s, but I suppose it was too foreign to be taken seriously.

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