Vegan cheese manufacture using legume ingredients and associated methods

Abstract

Vegan cheese analogues (VCA) made from legume-derived and / or legume-based ingredients. Pea flour can be used where pre-treatment or engineered blending delivers specific functionality to the VCA. The addition of different components such as glycerol monostearate, starches, fibres, oils, and acids give properties to these VCA’s that more closely mimic traditional dairy based cheeses relative to the prior art VCAs. The VCA comprises 13% legume flour. Preferably, the VCA comprises pea protein isolate (PPI) or concentrate (PPC) and / or modified starch made from legume flour. The VCA may be a meltable cheese or a white non-meltable cheese made from mechanically processed yellow pea. There may be preprocessing steps on the pea or pea flour comprising: pre-soaking, compression popping, boiling, pressure treatment, roasting, baking, wet steaming, dry steaming, milling, pressing, protein extraction, and / or drying. A method of making a VCA is also claimed comprising: mixing two or more of pea flour, starches, proteins, fibres, salts, hydrocolloids, or acids; adding an aqueous solution in two stages to generate a dispersion pre-mix; blending the dispersion pre-mix; heating it while blending further; and pouring and moulding the product to generate the VCA.