Vegan cheese is awful and never melts properly.
Short answer: The old starch-and-oil stuff, fairly criticised. But precision-fermented casein, the actual protein in cheese, now melts, stretches and browns like the real thing.
The same brewing trick that has made vegetarian rennet for decades now brews casein, the milk protein that does the actual cheese magic, without the cow.
GreenQueen / FoodNavigator (precision-fermented casein)
The objection
“Vegan cheese is rubbery, tasteless, and it just won’t melt. It’s not a real substitute.”
The answer
For a lot of supermarket vegan cheese, that’s a fair hit and we won’t defend it. The first generation was built from coconut oil and starch, and starch doesn’t behave like cheese. It’s why so much of it sat in a sad rubbery slab instead of stretching off a pizza. If that’s your only experience, your verdict is reasonable.
It’s also going out of date, because the science finally went after the right molecule: casein. Casein is the milk protein that does the actual cheese magic, the melt and the stretch, the bubble and the brown. Coconut oil never had it. Precision fermentation now brews casein that is molecularly identical to the cow’s version, without the cow, using the same brewing trick that’s made vegetarian rennet since 1990.
This is already off the lab bench. New Culture secured the first GRAS safety status in the US for precision-fermented casein and built it into a mozzarella designed to melt, stretch, bubble and brown like dairy. Standing Ovation and others are scaling animal-free casein for commercial launch. Cheesemakers using these proteins report the functional behaviour the old products could never reach.
Where things stand: the cheap stuff in the chiller today still varies wildly, so buy carefully, and try the cashew-and-cultured artisan ranges, which are already good. But “vegan cheese can’t melt” is a statement about 2018, not 2026. The protein problem is solved. What remains is getting it onto shelves at a price that works.