Mooching around Marks and Spencer in Dublin (Ireland), last month, I came across some new vegan cheese from a company called Honestly Tasty. For reasons such as our imminent climate catastrophe, I like to keep abreast of new plant-based food products – especially cheese. No, the word abreast wasn’t intended as a pun – we’re taking about plant-based cheese here! Tempting as it might be, I’m not going to do down that road of researching whether anyone has ever made cheese from human breast milk. (Ok, I did just go down that road a little after all, and then a little more, but I digress). I bought two kinds of vegan cheese from Honestly Tasty at M&S and wanted to share my impressions.

To be clear, Honestly Tasty makes cheese from plant-based ingredients – shea butter, rice bran oil, starches, miso, vegetable protein, yeast, and a few other ingredients. I bought two products in M&S – Shamembert and Bree for somewhere around €7 each, I believe. In the UK, these cheeses are also available from online store Ocado – £5 for the Blue and Bree and £6 for the Shamembert (you can also buy directly from Honestly Tasty). These prices would actually be a bargain in the US, but in the UK and Ireland, where cheese is generally cheaper, they are a little pricier than average. It’s still a small company, relying mainly on crowdfunding so far, so I expect that prices will come down in time.

The bigger question is: are these cheeses any good?

Review of Honestly Tasty cheese

First off, three of the Honestly Tasty cheeses were winners at the Great Taste Awards in 2023! This may not sound that exciting but I’ve learned to look out for the Great Taste Awards logo as winning products often do indeed taste great : ) The Shamembert and Bree won a single star while the Blue won two stars. I’m sorry I didn’t get to try the Blue cheese as I’m really curious to know how close they got to that blue cheese flavor and creamy texture.

For the two Honestly Tasty cheeses that I did try – Shamembert and Bree, I was most impressed with their texture. The Bree especially, as it had a very soft, creamy interior – just the way I like it. (I feel that a reference to the Monty Python cheese sketch is required at this point.) The Shamembert is a little firmer than the Bree, but I liked it a little more overall because the flavor was more subtle and harmonious. Yes, having had years of bland vegan cheeses we now have a few that are almost too strong.

Let’s take a look at how these cheeses are so different to most other plant-based cheeses that you can find in a supermarket.

How to make a good plant-based cheese

I actually just wrote a post on my other blog, Ethical Bargains, on a vegan Havarti-style cheese from Daiya, outlining the factors that I think are important for generating a tasty plant-based cheese. Here they are again:

1. Ingredients beyond starch and oil that help create a better texture.
2. Ingredients that add flavor! Heat, acidity, sweetness, umami, etc.
3. Fermentation (e.g., by lactic acid bacteria) and/or ripening (e.g., by a surface mold).

I felt that Daiya’s vegan Havarti did fairly well on two of the above elements above – texture and flavor, thanks for ingredients like oat milk and jalapeño. The Honestly Tasty cheeses include all three elements. The ingredients are much more diverse compared to the vegan cheeses that we know all too well. Yes, they do still contain a lot of starch and oil, but there’s also plant protein and flavorful ingredients like miso and yeast (see ingredients, below). This ingredient profile results in a more balanced nutritional content, with significant amounts of fiber and protein, usually absent from plant-based cheeses. The miso and yeast add umami flavor but there is also flavor and texture added by the third element – fermentation and ripening. (It should be a 4-item list really, as these are two different things).

That some fermentation is part of the Honestly Tasty process is indicated by the presence of lactic acid in the ingredient list for both cheeses. The cheeses also undergo mold ripening as the final stage to create the rind on the Shamembert and Bree and the blue veins in the Blue. I think that Honestly Tasty has made good progress on improving plant-based cheese and bringing it to a fairly wide market. Some refinement of the flavor is probably forthcoming but I think the texture is impressive. I reviewed a plant-based Camembert from Nurishh (a brand owned by French cheesemaker Bel) earlier this year, which I also liked – not as much as the Honestly Tasty Camembert, but is also cost less (€4).

Honestly Tasty cheese ingredients

The ingredients below are as listed on Ocado. The Honestly Tasty site actually lists slightly different ingredients, reflecting that the recipe is still a work in progress. This is fairly common in plant-based foods, these days, with new versions brought out by from time to time by companies like Beyond Meat and Simulate.

Honestly Tasty Shamembert Ingredients:  Water, Rice Bran Oil, Shea Butter, Starch (Tapioca, Potato), Almonds, Miso (Soy), Nutritional Yeast, Salt, Seaweed Extract (Carrageenan), Faba Bean Protein, Lactic Acid, Olive Oil with Truffle Flavour, Carrot Concentrate, Natural Flavourings, Cultures

Honestly Tasty Bree Ingredients:  Water, Rice Bran Oil, Shea Butter, Starch (Tapioca, Potato), Almonds, Miso (Soy), Seaweed Extract (Carrageenan), Nutritional Yeast, Salt, Faba Bean Protein, Lactic Acid, Olive Oil with Truffle Flavour, Mustard Powder, Onion Powder, Carrot Concentrate, Natural Flavourings, Cultures

Ethical rating for Honestly Tasty

I’ll figure out a Green Stars score for social and environmental impact a little later since this post is already a little long. But based on what I’ve seen so far I think it’ll be around 4 or 4.5 Green Stars. I’m most interested in finding out about sourcing of shea butter as it’s one of those ingredients that can have a very positive social and environmental impact when done well. Interestingly, my favorite vegan butter in Europe (Naturli’ Organic Vegan Block) is also made from shea butter.

Shea trees are an important, but increasingly threatened species in the African savanna and a key source of income for many women in countries such as Ghana. Harvesting and processing shea nuts is not an easy way to make a living, so it’s good to support mission-driven companies such as Alaffia soap that purchase fair trade shea butter from women’s cooperatives. – Ethical Bargains post on Naturli’ Organic Vegan Block.

For anyone interested in finding vegan cheeses that more closely mimic dairy-based cheese, I recommend checking out Honestly Tasty.