Vegan Cheese and Onion Pasty

Like any business we have our top sellers.

We’re well known for our Champion Steak Pasty which, by the way, if we haven’t mentioned this before 😁, has won a consecutive 10 Great Taste Awards and several other awards including Champion Pasty at the British Pie Awards twice!

Our Vegan Chunki Roast Veg Pasty was a finalist in the Champion Vegan Product in 2020 Taste Of The West Awards (only to be pipped at the post by a vegan chocolate made by HollyChocs of Devizes - well done guys 👍🏼) 

Take Apple…(computers not fruit!) Their best sellers are iPhone, iPad and iMac. 
In a previous life we sold ice cream....vanilla, chocolate and strawberry were the top three.

For us at Chunk - pasties, the Steak Pasty is a best seller, but it’s closely followed by Chunki Roast Veg Pasty (vegan) and then our Cheddar and Onion. The pies - Steak and Ale, Chicken, Leek and Bacon, and then Steak and Kidney. All winners!

So with the outstanding success with our Chunki Roast Veg pasty and after we tweaked the recipe so this was suitable for Vegans. It opened up a whole new customer base for us, we had hoped this would be the case. Never too sure as our heritage is as a meat pie company and this may not go down well with all Vegans.

But we take incredibly strict procedures when it comes to making this and our other Vegan products. The team is really vigilant in clean downs, only making these first thing in the morning, to avoid any possible contamination. 
All the ingredients are approved as Vegan by the Vegetarian Society, which then allows us to use their vegan logo, so the vegan customer can be assured these are perfect for them to enjoy.

But back to the point! 

Our top three. We couldn't’ consider trying to make Vegan Steak pasty...no - a step too far!

But the cheese and onion..that seemed doable. The team, keen as always to try recipes, got on the case. We’re going back to 2018 now… so not just the other day! 

(These things can take time.)

How to follow up on the success of our Chunki Roast Veg pasty - could we make a great Vegan cheese and onion pasty.?

To Cheese….and Vegan cheese in particular. Well you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince...and the same goes for finding the right cheese - cheeze - to go in a Vegan pasty.

Boy! Did we try some cheeze! ...or what was named cheese/cheeze. Dairy and vegan do not go happily in the same sentence. It was a real trial of the taste buds.

Some tasted great when we first sampled them cold, but when heated up, well it was a bit of a Jekyll & Hyde moment! 

One sticks firmly in our minds ( and noses! 😵) ….a cheese powder that was so powerful you had to leave the room, plus it lingered, get it on your hands - you had to scrub them to get rid of the smell!

So it would be back to suppliers, to try again. 

We eventually found one and that did the job. 

Made by Violife, who are the official sponsors of Veganuary, this plant based alternative to cheese is fabulous. Not only does it taste good cold, but heated up and wrapped in our light vegan puff pastry - it is a sensation! 

We introduce our Cheatin’ Cheeze Pasty.

We really don’t think you’d know the difference, it delivers all the flavour but none of the dairy and with only 542 calories per pasty vs 679 for a full on dairy cheddar cheese and onion pasty - if you’re counting calories it's a winner!

Go on - take a Chunk!