Nutritional Yeast

Until fairly recently, nutritional yeast was something I’d never had in my house - or cooked with. Now I use it tons! Learn about this amazing flaky, umami tasting substance and how you can use it.

All about the nooch

The word “yeast” might scare you a bit - it did for me - but don’t confuse nutritional yeast, or nooch, with active yeast that you put in bread to make it rise. If it was the same, I don’t think my gut would enjoy me sprinkling it over my avocado on toast! Nutritional yeast is deactive yeast, it can’t make bread rise and won’t swell in your stomach.

Nooch is very well known to anyone on a vegan diet, as it can resemble parmesan, and give a kind of cheesy quality to sauces for example. It’s quite common to make vegan alfredo sauce or vegan pesto with nooch.

But back to the yeast itself and what it contains! When I first bought a batch of this, curious as to what it was and how I could use it, I was super sceptical! It tasted too good - I thought “this must contain lots of salt”. I checked the package; which listed 1 ingredient only. Nutritional yeast. It honestly has such a rich taste and in my opinion can completely replace salt as a spice or flavour enhancer on your dinner if you are trying to cut down on your salt intake.

Even more good news, nutritional yeast is - you might have guessed it from the name - very… nutritious! It is rich in Vitamin B, and some nutritional yeast brands are even fortified with components like folic acid and B12 (great for vegans, who don’t get this through their diet at all). It is very high in protein - it is a complete protein (meaning it contains all the amino acids that we can’t produce ourselves), contains powerful antioxidants and can help boost our immune system.

So you see where this yeast gets its name. Now - how do you use it? Well, you can basically just start googling, the internet is full of amazing recipes and uses for nooch. You can toss it with some popcorn for a really lovely flavoured snack, you can replace parmesan with it for vegan versions of my pesto, parmesan roasted courgettes or cauliflower, you can use it in vegan versions of mac ‘n’ cheese or Pasta Alfredo - or you can just start using it as a lovely flavour addition to anything that comes to mind. As I say, I drizzle it over my avocado on toast, I put it in my soups (highly recommended!) and experiment with new ways of using it every day. Try it, and let me know what you think!

Have you used nutritional yeast already? What do you make with it, and do you think you’ll try something new? Message me on Instagram @TheFromScratchBody!