Since really committing to Real Food about 2 years ago, I haven’t really found too many processed foods I missed. And I was happy to discover that I could, with a little effort, replicate just about everything that I did have a hankering for reasonably well.
Until the pregnancy-induced craving for cheese popcorn hit.
I tried a variety of things to replace the day-glo orange snack I was wishing for. Parmesan sprinkled on buttered kernels was not the right flavor. Grated cheddar melted in the oven was okay, but quickly tasted soggy and stale. Taking a cue from Orville Redenbacher, I even tried to make a “pour-over” sauce with a roux and cheddar. That ended in a big clump of soggy, almost disintegrated kernels.
Real foodies suggested nutritional yeast. It does not taste “just like” cheese. I went back and forth over whether to just cheat with some Kraft cheese powder, and then I found a note from someone online that said you could microplane cheese, dry it in a dehydrator, patting it hourly to remove grease, and then powder it yourself. Since even the organic cheese powders had additives, I figured it was at least worth a try.
I don’t own a microplane, and I cannot stand by my dehydrator to hourly dab the contents with a paper towel, so I decided to start small. I thinly-sliced to the best of my ability a very few slices of white mild raw milk cheddar and tossed them in my Excalibur, with a paper towel between the cheese and the mesh rack, and let it do its thing on the lowest setting for 24 hours. Translucent little cheese chips emerged, and I popped them in my bullet blender until they were pulverized. I made a tiny batch of popcorn on the stove, tossed with melted butter and cheese powder, and voila! Cheese popcorn.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. Not quite cheesy enough, and a little more granular than the spray-dried, bright orange stuff you find for sale online.
My second batch of cheese powder was a yellow, sharp Tillamook cheddar. And I decided that thinly-slicing wasn’t worth the trouble, and instead just ran the cheese through my Kitchenaid rotary slicer’s shredder cone and spread the grated cheese as evenly as I could on the paper toweling.
This cheese powder was spot-on, flavor-wise. It retains its granular texture, which is a little distracting, but all in all, I’m pleased with it!
