Have you been trying to get summer ready with your health and fitness goals? Then the weekend rolls over, you make a batch of mac and cheese for the kids and can’t help but take a bite or two, then it graduates to a whole bowl that you wolf down. You find that left over potato mash, and gosh, that tastes damn good too !
Its movie night at home, you make a tub of delicious cheesy popcorn for the family and pretend you aren’t affected by that smell, but actually dying a slow death inside.

It all boils down to that one ingredient your body and soul craves for- cheese ! And what if you could make all of these carb heavy delicacies with the cheesy flavour by omitting the cheese? Enter rescue master and super food –Nutritional Yeast or nooch.

What is Nutritional Yeast ?

It’s basically deactivated yeast , a strain from the single celled organism – saccharomyces cerevisiae . Sounds complicated ? Yeast is cultured in a nutrient medium like either sugarcane or beet molasses . When the yeast is ready, it is deactivated or killed with heat and then washed, dried and packaged.
Since it is inactive, it doesn’t bubble or froth or grow like normal baking yeast. It has no animal traces in it and is perfectly suitable for those on a vegetarian, vegan or a paleo diet alike.
It comes in a flaky or powder form, has a cheesy nutty taste and can be used for a whole variety of recipes to add flavour or give you that umami touch to dishes.

Nutritional Content

As the name suggests, this yeast is packed with so much of goodness, you can forgive it for its rather boring appearance and dull colour . Hence it is lovingly called “Nooch” by the insiders.

2 tbs of nooch provides you with –
60 calories
5 gms of carbohydrates ( of which 4 gms are fibre )
9 gms of protein ( a rare complete protein with all 9 amino acids )

Nutritional Yeast is a storehouse of B vitamins, including thiamine, folate, B-6 and niacin. Even using half a tablespoon of some brands gives you enough B vitamins for an entire day. Food with high vitamin B content help you in production of red blood cells by making optimum utilisation of energy from food.
Vitamin B 12 is often lacking in the diet of vegetarians and this is where good old nooch can come to the rescue, fortified brands give you a good dose so you never have a deficiency.

How to use

Nooch is best added to any dish for a cheesy tangy flavour, it almost replicates the taste of Parmesan cheese. The flakes dissolve rather easily in hot foods, so you could add it to anything ranging from soups and bakes to sprinkling it on toast.
Also a small reference –
A quarter cup of Parmesan cheese = 110 calories
A quarter cup of nooch = 45 calories

Here are just a few of the ways you could add it as a seasoning to enhance the flavour of your dishes-

1. Transform the nooch into a delicacy by blitzing together in equal parts with walnuts and a bit of salt. Add this nutty delicious powder on your food and enjoy .

2. Make a paste with nooch, roasted garlic and olive oil. Add this to mashed potatos and you wouldn’t even mind missing the sour cream on it.

3. Make a creamy cheesy sauce for pasta- Blend nooch with onion powder, mustard powder, cashew butter and vegetable stock. The consistency will be exactly that of a béchamel sauce . Use this as a topping for pasta, mac and cheese, toast and cheese or even make it an awesome fondue sauce.
If you feel cashew butter is too indulgent you can swap it for cauliflower puree and make an absolutely delicious Alfredo sauce . Check out this recipe – HERE

4. Add a dash of nooch to make cheesy scrambled eggs and up the protein content of your breakfast.

5. And my favourite way- mix cayenne pepper powder and nutritional yeast powder, sprinkle this generously over air popped corn and voila ! you have your own healthy guilt free chilli cheese popcorn ready in a jiffy.

Check out these link which give you plenty of ideas on how to incorporate it in recipes – HERE

To make amazing dishes for your children minus the cheese – HERE 

Where to buy it from ?

Nutritional Yeast isn’t readily available in health food stores or supermarkets in India, however can be easily ordered online.
DO NOT CONFUSE IT WITH DRY YEAST, WET YEAST OR BREWERS YEAST.

The Indian brand Urban Platter makes it in both the flakes and powder version, and I can vouch for its quality ! ( Actually there isn’t anything they don’t make, just go through their exhaustive product range )

Buy yeast flakes – HERE

Buy yeast powder – HERE 

I personally love these two brands below but I suggest you either pick it up when you are travelling overseas or ask someone to get it for you since its almost double the price online, however if you have no choice buy it here –

Braggs Nutritional Yeast – HERE

Bobs Red Mill Nutritional Yeast – HERE