Choosing a Lactose-Free Cheese: Which One is Right for You?

Why Lactose-Free Cheese?

As you already know by this point (or just reading the title of our blog), we have to cook gluten-free because Isabelle has Celiac/Coeliac disease. On top of that, she has a number of food intolerances, allergies, or sensitivities (see more about these here). Peter has also started having his own issues with sorghum flour, and on top of that, we both seem to be having issues with dairy.

Dairy allergies and lactose intolerance are very common, particularly if you have Celiac disease (it’s actually one of the early signs in a lot of cases). But even if you’re not Celiac, you can develop issues with dairy or lactose at any point.

While we’re still working out the kinks of what Peter’s dairy issues involve, we’ve already been making recipes that accommodate for Isabelle’s dairy issues. Because so much of what we make involves cheese, we’ve had to eat specific kinds of dairy (which we will get into in a moment), vegan dairy (with some exceptions), and other lactose-free cheeses. Isabelle cannot eat lactose-free cheese unless it is also goat or sheep milk, but these options do exist.

Now that we’ve experimented with so many different varieties of dairy-free or lactose-free cheese, we’ve got a pretty good handle on what we find works best for different recipes.

Option #1: Lactose-Free Cheese (Cow’s Milk)

These options include naturally lactose-free cheeses, as well as cheeses where the lactose has been removed. These are not typically the cheeses that we go for because of Isabelle’s dairy issues, but they are a great option if you want a lactose-free cheese that will be easy to find and work well with a number of recipes.

If you’re looking for naturally lactose-free cheese options, you’ll probably find that it’s not always labeled on the packaging. One tip that can help you work around this is reading the nutritional information on the back of the cheese. If the sugars are listed as “0 grams,” then the cheese is lactose-free. This is because lactose is actually a sugar.

Otherwise, like lactose-free milk, there are more and more lactose-free cheese options in stores nowadays.

In either case, you’ll probably find that cow’s milk cheeses (i.e. most cheeses you find in stores) that are lactose-free will be easier to find, come in more varieties, and work like regular cheese. If you’re making the switch to lactose-free and you have no other dairy-related issues, then this is a good way to go.

Option #2: Goat, Sheep, and Buffalo’s Milk Cheeses

The option that we go for the most is goat or sheep’s milk cheeses. Not only do these work within Isabelle’s dietary restrictions, but we personally like them a lot. Our personal favorite is Manchego, an aged sheep’s milk cheese from Spain that melts pretty well and goes well in a lot of recipes.

The biggest downside with these particular lactose-free cheeses is that they often cost more than their cow’s milk equivalents. They also don’t all melt equally well because goat and sheep’s milk tend to have lower fat content. While that’s great if you’re looking for low-fat cheese, it can be frustrating if you want to try certain recipes.

One kind of cheese that is a little harder to find, but is really, really good, is water buffalo milk cheese. Buffalo milk mozzarella is actually the top tier kind of mozzarella you can get, and you can also find buffalo milk ricotta that is amazing. These are naturally lactose-free cheeses, and they are more top tier gourmet. We’ve managed to find BUF varieties at Whole Foods.

We’ve also found that sometimes our options are limited. For example, a grocery store might get in a new cheese that we wind up loving, but a week later they no longer carry it because it wasn’t popular. However, when you find a good goat or sheep’s milk cheese, it can open up the possibilities for a lot of recipes – especially if you can find a store that stocks them regularly. One great spot for this is Trader Joe’s, but we tend to buy most of our lactose-free cheese in bulk at warehouse stores.

Option #3: Vegan Cheese

Whether or not you’re vegan, there are many more lactose-free cheese options in stores now than there used to be. We have to be a bit careful with these particular lactose-free cheeses because of Isabelle’s soy allergy, but we’ve had great luck with Daiya, Kite Hill, and Miyoko’s.

For the most part, vegan cheeses tend to melt more easily than any other lactose-free cheese that we’ve found. We recently made queso from a mix of vegan cheeses and we got a smooth sauce that looked exactly like nacho cheese.

However, we don’t often go for vegan cheese for a couple of reasons. The first is our personal taste; as much as our queso looked and melted like queso, we weren’t too fond of the vegan cheese taste. When it’s in other recipes (like vegan cream cheese in mashed potatoes), it’s a lot less noticeable, but the vegan cheese taste can be strong if it’s the star of the show.

The other thing that holds us back from picking this as our go-to lactose-free cheese is the cost. These cheeses tend to be more expensive than the goat or sheep’s milk cheeses we go for (especially because we buy them at a lower cost), so that’s also a big drawback.

Other Advice About Lactose-Free Cheese

Our best advice with choosing a lactose-free cheese is to figure out what kinds of dairy you are able to have, figure out what you want to use the cheese for, and try different varieties.

In our case, we make many of our cheese-buying decisions based on what cheeses we like best, what works within our budget, and what we’re making. For example, if we want a hearty, Southern baked mac ‘n’ cheese, then we always go for the goat and sheep’s milk option. But if we want to eat a whole bowl of it, then the vegan cheese makes a really great sauce that isn’t so heavy.

Cooking with Lactose-Free Cheese

One of our biggest takeaways from experimenting with lactose-free cheese is that when you’re cooking with it, you really have to stick with either dairy or non-dairy.

For example, if we’re making a cheese sauce, we know that we need to pick a milk and a cheese that go together, otherwise the sauce won’t actually come together. If we’re going the vegan cheese route, then that means using rice or almond milk with the vegan cheese. And if we’re going the dairy route, then that means using either a lactose-free milk (like lactaid, if you can have it) or goat’s milk (like Meyenberg) in your recipe.

There’s more leeway with this if you’re mixing the lactose-free cheese in with something (like mashed potatoes) but in terms of sauces (like for mac ‘n’ cheese, queso, or alfredo), we’ve found that it’s necessary to mix like with like.