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Looking for a substitute for melted cheese as a “glue”.


Aelfric

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I'm wanting to make stuffed mushrooms, and normally I would use melted cheese to hold the stuffing in place in the same way the melted cheese binds a pizza topping to the crust. The recipe is W30 compliant except for the cheese, and I’m racking my brains for a substitute “glue”. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

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1 hour ago, Aelfric said:

I'm wanting to make stuffed mushrooms, and normally I would use melted cheese to hold the stuffing in place in the same way the melted cheese binds a pizza topping to the crust. The recipe is W30 compliant except for the cheese, and I’m racking my brains for a substitute “glue”. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

You could add a little almond meal (flour) to the filling and that will have the ingredients stay bound together a bit more and stay in the mushroom. Now I want stuffed mushrooms! :)

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You could Google whole30 stuffed mushrooms and see what recipes are out there, so you can see what other people are using. I know I've seen some recipes before.

Off the top of my head, I would maybe try adding egg to the stuffing part to help hold it together. 

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Thanks for the suggestions.

@Terra Milliken: While almond meal will bind the ingredients, it doesn't have that melty, goey texture that melted cheese has.

@ShannonM816: Ditto for eggs.

@SchrodingersCat: I hadn't considered tahini, but it could work. I've used tahini as a pizza sauce (obviously not in a W30 context), so I don't think it will bind by itself.

Experiment: Tahini by itself seemed too runny, so I tried a beaten egg with an approximately equal volume of tahini. The taste was great, but the resulting texture was kind of cakey, more like a fritter batter than anything else once it was cooked. Maybe less egg would work, but I've always found it hard to open just a quarter of an egg—a bit difficult to close the packaging again :).

 

I did find this recipe for a Vegan Cheese Sauce—I'd just use tahini instead of the sesame seeds, substitute a nut milk for some of the water, nut butter for the nutritional yeast, and leave out the spice powders. The questions is, am I now getting into the real of SWYPO?

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I think by the fact that you started off looking for a binder and now are trying to figure out a cheesy texture, this might be something you leave off until after your Whole30. 

Nothing anyone suggests is going to that closely mimic the texture of cheese, which is what you're looking for.

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@Aelfric you could be getting into SWYPO territory, but that can be different for everyone. Even if you use compliant ingredients, it can be easy to create foods that become SWYPO and lead us to old habits or do no allow us to change our tastes. The key is to ask yourself what are your intentions with what you are looking to create.

This recipe is compliant, but could be SWYPO for certain Whole30'ers. My first Whole30 when I was a cheese addict, I would have stayed away from it. Now in my Food Freedom, I no longer eat cheese very often and can definitely leave it alone, this recipe would not trigger SWYPO for me. 

https://healthylittlepeach.com/2019/03/11/philly-not-so-cheesesteak-stuffed-peppers/

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Thanks for all the input.

On 2/13/2020 at 11:29 PM, laura_juggles said:

Nothing anyone suggests is going to that closely mimic the texture of cheese, which is what you're looking for.

I think that about sums it up, the only thing that's going to give the texture of melted cheese is melted cheese. I think I'll just file this in the "too hard" basket and enjoy stuffed mushrooms without the gooey bits.

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I'm agreeing with everything so far, but will also put out there that there are some recipes floating around the net that make "cheese" from veggies or coconut milk. Some of these are actually intended to be served warm, but I've never had the guts to try them... I have made a few different types of coconut milk "cheese", though, and was quite pleased with that.

You're basically going to want to search "vegan cheese potato" if you want the ones that melt well / are gooey when hot. There are a ton of options available out there without using any nuts or seeds. Just searching "vegan cheese" gives you a lot to search through so I've found that narrowing down the options a little bit helps me find things faster -- coconut milk, zucchini, and potato are the details that pertain to the recipes I've made or want to try at some point, so those are what stuck in my head.

That said -- I definitely agree that if it's that texture and feel you're looking for, probably best to wait until after Whole30 (I definitely didn't make any of this stuff during my rounds, I know better!). Testing things out afterwards, though, now that's fun :) And stuffed mushrooms are definitely still delicious without gooey bits, so I'm glad you enjoyed yours!

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