It wasn’t until I started teaching at River Cottage that I started properly experimenting with sunflower seed cheeses. Cashews were always my go-to choice of cheese-base ingredient and, seeing as we buy them by the literal tonne for my cheese business, they’re never in short supply.
However River Cottage abide by a SLOW food ethos: Seasonal, Local, Organic, Wild, and cashews don’t exactly fit into that. They can be organic, yes but are definitely not local to the UK, ours are usually from Tanzania or Vietnam. After submitting my proposed recipes for the new vegan cheese class I was contacted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall himself. Did I think it possible to use a more locally sourced ingredient than cashews? Organic sunflower seeds would be better and also cost effective, perhaps? Not one to say no to a cheese-based challenge, I said “leave it with me.”
A lot of soaking, blending and, it turns out boiling later - I had a new set of recipes to submit. The five cheeses I now teach on my dairy free cheesemaking class are all completely nut free and I’ve learnt a lot about making cheese with sunflower seeds along the way.
Rosemary focaccia cream cheese sandwich. The lettuce and cucumber make this a health food in my book.
Sunflower seed cheeses are excellent for anyone who avoids dairy but also can’t have nuts and/or soy as these ingredients seem to exist in pretty much all other vegan cheeses. We get an awful lot of requests for nut and soy free cheeses at Kinda Co. But seeing as we handle a whole lot of nuts in our cheese factory it seems slightly pointless to create a product that will have such a high risk of cross contamination. It wouldn’t really be any use to someone unless they’re mildly intolerant rather than full out allergic. Nut allergies are not to be messed with!
Although sunflower seeds do make tasty cheese, I’ve learnt you can’t simply swap them for an equal weight in a cashew cheese recipe. They have a few interesting quirks (see below) and therefore need a tiny bit of thought.
Like vegan cheese? Fancy more recipes? Subscribe below and receive new recipes straight to your inbox!
My Top Tips for making Sunflower Seed Cheese
With lots of cheese recipes you often need to soak your seeds to soften before using. But beware soaking and then storing the drained seeds in the fridge as they will begin to sprout within a day or two. Sprouted seeds will give you a different texture, higher in water and not as pleasant, so try to use them as soon as you can after soaking.
If you do end up with sprouts probably best to just lean into it and put them on your windowsill to grow as micro greens instead.
Colour
One of the main things to consider when using sunflower seeds is their colour. Sunflower seed cheeses tend to have a distinct grey tinge. This doesn’t affect the flavour, but we eat with our eyes first and vegan cheese already has a bad enough rep without it also looking drab and unappealing before anyone’s even tasted it.
But I have the solution..
Boil your seeds! This removes the grey colour and gives you a far more aesthetically appealing cheese. Boiling also saves you the job of soaking, and gives you lovely pale white cheese to boot. See below recipe for the before and after pic of boiled seeds and my method for boiling.
Of course if grey cheese doesn’t phase you, or you prefer to eat your seeds raw, then you can soak your seeds in cold water overnight.
Boil your seeds. No seriously..
Blending
Sunflower seeds require more water than cashews to blend to a smooth consistency. If you’re attempting to swap sunflower seeds for cashews in a recipe I would increase the water by 50ml at a time until you’re able to get the mixture in the blender moving.
Texture
For some reason the texture of a sunflower seed cheese never looks totally smooth, even when you taste it and confirm it most definitely is so, see my above pic of the bagel. I suspect this is due to the higher proportion of fibre in sunflower seeds. They contain 9g of fibre per 100g compared to only 3.3g in cashews. There are also the hulls (the husky skins) of the seeds, which add another layer of texture. Some of these you can skim off as you’re boiling but many will end up being blended unless you have the patience to remove them all (I do not). I don’t worry about the slight appearance of texture - as long as it tastes totally smooth and creamy to eat, that’s the most important thing.
The finished article, super thick and creamy
The below recipe is very quick and easy, uses only a few ingredients and is also versatile. I smear it onto bagels, spread thick in sandwiches and use it as a dip with crackers and crudités but you could also use it in cooking. It would work really well as the creamy base layer in a puff pastry tart with vegetables on top, or stirred into a risotto to make it extra creamy.
You can also switch around the flavourings, using different herbs and spices to create a totally different cheese. You can’t go wrong with Spring Onion and Garlic though so if you like those then give the below a try first.
Spring Onion & Garlic Cream Cheese
Makes: 400g
Prep time: 25 mins
Cook time: 5 mins
Difficulty rating: 1 - Easy
Check out the recipe notes below for extra tips!
Ingredients:
150g sunflower seeds (approx 230g boiled weight)
130ml water
45g unflavoured coconut oil
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon white wine or apple cider vinegar
4 spring onions
1 clove of garlic
Method:
Prep your seeds
Weigh out the sunflower seeds and add to a medium saucepan. Fill the saucepan with water so that the seeds are well submerged but don’t add so much that it will boil over once it’s bubbling.
Place on a high heat and bring to the boil.
Turn down the heat so it’s bubbling at a brisk simmer for about 20 minutes. If you notice some grey foam and skins starting to form on the top you can skim this off and discard it.
The seeds are ready once they look a pale yellow colour, see pic below for reference. You can boil them for longer if needed, if you also forget about them for a bit it won’t do them any harm to bubble away, I speak from experience. Once ready, drain and rinse with cold water.
Raw vs boiled seeds - note the colour difference
Make the cream cheese
Add your boiled seeds, 130ml water, 45g of unflavoured coconut oil, 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt and 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar to a high speed blender.
Blend until completely smooth, it will be quite thick. Depending on your blender you might need to stop a few times to scrape the cheese down towards the blades. Keep going until smooth and creamy, a grainy cream cheese just isn’t nice.
Wash and finely chop the 4 spring onions and peel and finely chop or grate the garlic clove. Add to the cream cheese mixture, you can either stir it through or pulse quickly in the blender to combine. Have a taste and see if you need to adjust the seasoning at all.
Pour the cream cheese into a sealable container and place in the fridge to chill overnight or for around 8 hours until set.
Cream cheese will keep for 3-4 days covered in the fridge.
Notes:
If you don’t mind having a cheese with a slightly grey tint then you can skip the boiling stage and simply leave the seeds to soak in water overnight to soften instead.
I state the weight of coconut oil, rather than the ml measure as I find it much more precise.
I use a nutribullet and find it easiest to put the blender cup onto the scales and measure all the ingredients directly into the cup.
What you do think, have I convinced you to give sunflower seeds a chance? Would you like to see cheese recipes using another ingredient? Leave me a comment below and let’s discuss! I’m up for the challenge.
I'm up for that! Hope it will work with my Braun stick blender. And a combo of garlic chives and 3-cornered garlic from my garden 😀