Now that we’re well into BBQ season, I thought it was time to review a newer cheese on the block, from a long-standing dairy alternative company: Silk!
If you’ve been around here a while, you’ll know I love Silk’s Chocolate Almond and most of their other flavours of plant-based milks. But did you know they also make cheese?
Yep, it’s true!
Before you get too excited, they only make two flavours that I’ve seen: cheddar and mozzarella. The good news though is that what they lack in flavour offerings, they more than make up for in availability!
I’ve seen their cheese slices in many ‘regular’ stores that stock their milks, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get your hands on some to try!
Also, I’m happy to report the same things I love about their milks, are some of the things that make their cheese great!
It’s hard to describe if you haven’t had them – or tried too many other plant-based cheeses – but their cheddar slices are creamy and soft. The texture was so different from what Daiya and VioLife slices are like, I actually thought the first pack I got might’ve gone bad! I (wrongly) assumed they were ‘slimy’.
Luckily a non-vegan friend told me that that texture was not only normal, but actually made them closer to feeling like real cheese? I’ve been vegan now for 8 years, and have been allergic to dairy for longer, so it’s been a long time since I had ‘real’ cheese, so I had to take their word for it. (This also means if you eat dairy cheese more regularly and decide they’re wrong, come for them, not me)
After learning they weren’t bad, I decided to try a slice by itself, before sticking it into a sandwich. I like to do this with all the products I can, so I can get a taste for the product itself, without it being masked by other flavours.
Again, it’s been a long time since I’ve had dairy cheese, but to me, these slices definitely tasted like cheddar. There was no doubt about what flavour they were supposed to be, unlike some of the VioLife slices. Don’t get me wrong, the VioLife slices I’ve tried all taste good, I just often don’t notice a difference in slice flavour, it’s all just kind of ‘cheese’ to me.
These Silk slices hold up great on their own, though I don’t know if I’d recommend eating them like that exclusively, and they hold up really well in a cold sandwich (deli slices, lettuce, etc.). They have enough taste to not disappear/become overshadowed by the other flavours, but aren’t super distinctive or overpowering enough to completely takeover.
Also, they melt really well if you want to put them on top of a burger! I don’t remember what they’re made out of, but they melt the fastest out of any vegan cheese I’ve tried thus far. One downside to melting these slices I’ve noticed is, sometimes, after they’re melted, if you bite into the burger (or whatever you melted it on), the whole slice will slide off into your mouth, instead of sticking to the burger. Understandably, that can be kind of annoying, but it doesn’t happen every time, so I’m not sure if it just means the slice wasn’t melted long enough, or if it’s only certain batches or what.
Another thing that we can put in the con column for these slices is trying to get them out of the package. They come in a pretty standard cheese pack, there’s 10 in one pack, but trying to peel the slices off/pull them apart can be difficult. Because they’re so soft, unless you’re extremely careful and/or use a knife to slide underneath, they usually end up breaking into a million pieces, instead of peeling off in one full slice.
This isn’t a problem if you say, want to melt them into something, but when you’re trying to make a sandwich, it can get frustrating.
If the don’t want to change the formula to give the slices slightly better structural integrity – which I would understand, because taste-wise, they’ve hit the nail on the head – maybe they should think about adding one of those wax paper separator things that some burgers come with?
If I, someone who has full range of motion/function have this much difficulty pulling their slices apart, sometimes I wonder how much harder would it be for people who have mobility issues?
It might not be considered a big deal for most people, but sometimes it’s annoying enough, it can mean the difference between choosing their slices, and choosing a different brand’s.
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