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 âbetterâ 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.
âKosherâ only applies for things you ingest by mouth, not for things which are injected.
I donât know why I originally typed ânearly alwaysâ, although I was likely thinking of Western cooking, where itâs usually considered a meat substitute. But I think Iâve made my love of tofu and my opinion of meat substitutes pretty clear, so letâs move on instead of trying to entrap folks.
Iâve often said that some of the best home cooking (and most definitely the best homemade baked goods) Iâve 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 theyâll 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.
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. Weâre 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?
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.
@Israel_B Yep: The uptick in use of the word began around the 1970âs. I donât remember seeing the stuff in non-asian grocers until⌠the mid nineties maybe?
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 âusage in the USâ itâs usage in english-language books.
Thereâs some really interesting stuff in Jennifer 8 Leeâs âFortune Cookie Chroniclesâ about tofu; in the 1860s, journalists were reporting that the new Chinese immigrants were eating âbean cheeseâ that had no flavor.
French Canadian voyageurs ate a sort of thick pea porridge: itâs 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) isnât the best way to carry protein while traveling. âBean cheeseâ should have proved its worth and caught on out west back in the 1860âs, but I suppose it was too foreign to be taken seriously.
