There are only two things this particular vegan misses: Bacon and cheese (even better if they’re together in an broiled open-top sandwich). It’s worth noting my arteries don’t agree; they’re happy the way things are.
Vegan bacon? That’s a nope. Sure, there are vegan “bacons,” but as tasty as they can be, they’re nothing at all like that greasy, salty, diaphanous, crunchy, delicious evil non-vegans eat. (Feel free to correct me if you know otherwise.)
Cheese, though, is a far bigger deal to me, and for years we missed it painfully. We’d stare agape commercials for Little Caesars and such and marvel how far “pizza technology” (Doc’s term) has come since we’ve been gone. “There’s even cheese inside the pizza now!”
But after years of torture as one vegan cheese after another disappointed us by not melting, tasting nasty, or quietly containing casein, a milk derivative, we discovered Daiya cheese.
That bag above is the Big Kahuna for us. We love this stuff. Their mozzarella shreds, too, and their cheddar slices and blocks that SD and I like to nosh on. (Other Daiya varieties are less popular around here. Non-rubbery Swiss cheese with no holes—please.)
We use Daiya for yummy grilled cheeses, closed or open. SD is addicted to Doc’s killer quesadillas, with cheese browned in the skillet as punishment for oozing out of the sides of a tortilla. We make awesome mini-pizzas on flatbread, and pro pizzas with pro toppings when we take a bag or two of Daiya mozzarella to the local pizza shop where they’ll use it instead of dairy cheese. Our only real problem with Daiya is not just eating it all out of the bag as we prepare the above dishes. The stuff melts, taste great, and even browns. Aaah.
We like a couple of other vegan cheeses, too: Field Roast’s Chao slices and the Sheese line, but they’re not available where we live, so Daiya’s our palate-saving household staple. It’s becoming available pretty much everywhere.
One note about that “ORIGINAL” label on the Daiya bag above and the lesson it holds for other food manufacturers: Stop “improving” products that people like. Late last year, Daiya “refreshed” their entire line with a new formula that, well, ruined the shreds for a lot of people. Props to the company for responding with a return to the old recipe. Hence “ORIGINAL.”
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