22 juil. 2025

Plant-Based Alternatives to Raclette for Summer Grilling

Swapping raclette cheese for a plant-based cheese at the barbecue does not give you the lighter plate you might expect. According to the Swiss Food Composition Database published by the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office, a 200 g portion of coconut-oil-and-starch cheese alternative delivers 34.8 g of saturated fat and 3.8 g of salt, against 33.4 g and 3.6 g for 200 g of raclette cheese. It delivers 1 g of protein instead of 51.8 g, and 92 mg of calcium instead of 1340 mg.

Put plainly: on the two nutrients people usually want to cut, the most common plant product does slightly worse than cheese, and on the two nutrients cheese genuinely supplies, it does almost nothing. That is not a reason to give up on a dairy-free summer raclette. It is a reason to build the plate differently instead of substituting one block for another.

This page gives the Swiss figures for the products involved, compares four complete plates weighed to the gram, explains what Swiss food law allows on a label, and covers grilling with the available data on cooking contaminants.

What raclette cheese actually delivers

Swiss raclette cheese, listed in the Swiss Food Composition Database V7.1 under identifier 532, contains per 100 g: 355 kcal, 25.9 g of protein, 27.9 g of fat including 16.7 g of saturated fat, 1.8 g of salt, 670 mg of calcium, 3.9 mg of zinc and 1.55 µg of vitamin B12.

A raclette portion is not 100 g. Portions served at the table commonly run to 150 or 200 g of cheese per person. At 200 g that comes to 51.8 g of protein, 1340 mg of calcium (167 % of the 800 mg nutrient reference value set out in Annex 10 of the Federal Department of Home Affairs Ordinance on Food Information), 3.1 µg of B12, but also 33.4 g of saturated fat, or 167 % of the 20 g daily reference intake in the same annex, and 3.6 g of salt, or 60 % of the 6 g reference.

Those last two figures are raclette’s real nutritional weakness, and they do not vanish when you change cheese. The World Health Organization notes in its fact sheet on salt reduction that the global mean adult intake reached 4278 mg of sodium per day in 2021, equivalent to about 11 g of salt, more than double its recommendation of less than 5 g per day, and that an estimated 1.7 million deaths per year were associated with excess sodium intake in 2023.

What the plant-based alternatives contain, per the Swiss database

The Swiss Food Composition Database lists two categories of cheese alternative, and the gap between them matters more than the gap with cheese itself.

The coconut-oil-and-starch alternative (identifier 14151), which covers most of the melting slices and blocks sold in supermarkets, contains per 100 g: 272 kcal, under 0.5 g of protein, 20.1 g of fat including 17.4 g of saturated fat, 1.9 g of salt, 46 mg of calcium, 0.2 mg of iron and 0.1 mg of zinc.

The cashew-based alternative (identifier 14152), which covers fermented artisan products and homemade preparations, contains per 100 g: 442 kcal, 14.5 g of protein, 35.3 g of fat but only 5.8 g of saturated fat, 1.2 g of salt, 44 mg of calcium, 3.9 mg of iron, 3.6 mg of zinc and 12 µg of selenium.

The table below shows what 200 g of each delivers, which is the amount that actually ends up on a raclette plate.

Per 200 g	Raclette	Coconut/starch analogue	Cashew analogue
Energy	710 kcal	544 kcal	884 kcal
Protein	51.8 g	1.0 g	29.0 g
Saturated fat	33.4 g (167 % of reference)	34.8 g (174 %)	11.6 g (58 %)
Salt	3.6 g (60 %)	3.8 g (63 %)	2.4 g (40 %)
Calcium	1340 mg (168 % of NRV)	92 mg (12 %)	88 mg (11 %)
Iron	0.2 mg	0.4 mg	7.8 mg (56 % of NRV)
Zinc	7.8 mg	0.2 mg	7.2 mg
Vitamin B12	3.1 µg	0	0

Three readings follow. The coconut-oil product is not a lighter cheese: it does marginally worse than cheese on saturated fat and salt while supplying no protein, no calcium and no B12. The cashew product is nutritionally more interesting but is also the most energy-dense of the three and still does not solve calcium. And neither replaces cheese on calcium: you would need 2284 g of the cashew alternative, roughly 10,000 kcal, to match the calcium in 150 g of raclette.

Why coconut oil dominates these products

This is not a formulation accident. Work published in Current Research in Food Science in 2024 tested nine ratios of coconut oil to sunflower oil in plant-based cheeses, with rheological analysis during a temperature ramp from 20 to 95 °C. Hardness after 24 hours at 5 °C rose with coconut oil content, because solid fat content provides firmness. The cheese with no coconut oil showed the lowest tan delta at 95 °C, at 0.3, which indicates poor melting behaviour.

The interesting result from the same work is that 25 % coconut oil was already enough to push tan delta above 0.5, and that melt and stretch values stopped rising beyond that point. Additional saturation no longer serves the texture. So a product at 17.4 g of saturated fat per 100 g is not technically required to melt properly: it is a formulation choice.

Two market analyses confirm that the near-absence of protein is not inevitable either, though it remains the norm. A study published in Foods in 2025 chemically and sensorially analysed ten cheese substitutes sold on the Slovenian market and labelled ‘classic’ or ‘original’: compared with a semi-hard cheese, they contained on average sixty times less protein, eight times less calcium and 50 % more salt per 100 g, along with 50 % more saturated fatty acids. A second study, published in Foods the same year, compared sixteen products on the Irish market: plant-based analogues contained 0.1 to 1.7 g of protein per 100 g against 25 g for cheddar, and the authors note the absence of a continuous protein matrix, the structure being held together instead by solid fats, starch and hydrocolloids.

Work published in Food Chemistry in 2026 shows it can be done differently: by incorporating seed flour protein and adjusting the starch-to-water ratio and sodium alginate concentration, the authors produced a prototype with higher protein content than commercial products and a nutritional profile comparable to processed dairy cheese. Those formulations exist in the laboratory; they are not yet the norm in the chilled aisle.

Four plates weighed to the gram

Comparing cheeses in isolation says little about what you actually eat. The four plates below start from the same accompaniment, calculated on Swiss values: 300 g of oven-baked potatoes with no added fat, 100 g of courgette, 80 g of red pepper, 80 g of aubergine, 60 g of button mushrooms, 40 g of onion and 10 g of rapeseed oil for brushing. Only the melting component changes.

Complete plate	Raclette 150 g	Coconut analogue 150 g	Tofu 150 g + cashew 40 g	Tempeh 150 g + cashew 40 g
Energy	1013 kcal	888 kcal	879 kcal	892 kcal
Protein	51.8 g	13.7 g	40.8 g	45.2 g
Saturated fat	26.2 g (131 %)	27.3 g (136 %)	5.6 g (28 %)	4.4 g (22 %)
Salt	2.7 g (45 %)	2.9 g (48 %)	0.6 g (11 %)	0.6 g (11 %)
Fibre	14.3 g	17.8 g	16.1 g	24.7 g
Calcium	1084 mg (136 % NRV)	148 mg (19 %)	277 mg (35 %)	230 mg (29 %)
Iron	3.5 mg (25 %)	3.7 mg (26 %)	7.9 mg (57 %)	7.6 mg (54 %)
Vitamin B12	2.3 µg (93 % NRV)	0	0	0

The plate that swaps cheese for a coconut-oil analogue is the only one of the four that combines the drawbacks: it keeps the 27.3 g of saturated fat and 2.9 g of salt of the cheese plate, and loses the protein, the calcium and the B12. The plate built around tofu or tempeh, with a small amount of cashew alternative for flavour and melting texture, divides saturated fat by five and salt by four and a half, supplies twice the iron, and still lands close to the cheese plate on protein.

Calcium remains the weak point of every dairy-free plate. Firm tofu supplies 120 mg per 100 g, which helps without being sufficient. A 250 ml glass of calcium-fortified plant drink supplies 300 mg according to the Swiss values for the fortified version, against 6.8 mg for the unfortified one. Our page on calcium and magnesium without dairy covers the subject in detail.

What a label is allowed to say

The term ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ is not a free marketing claim in Switzerland. Article 40 of the Ordinance on Food Information defines it precisely: a food may carry the term ‘vegetarian’, ‘ovo-lacto-vegetarian’ or ‘ovo-lacto-vegan’ when it contains no ingredients and no processing aids of animal origin, with the exception of milk and milk components, eggs and egg components, bee products and lanolin from the wool of live sheep. The term ‘vegan’ requires the complete absence of ingredients and processing aids of animal origin. Paragraph 2 adds a nuance: a food obtained from ingredients produced using processing aids of animal origin may carry a term under letters a to c if it has been separated from them and purified.

That distinction matters because rennet is a processing aid rather than an ingredient, so it does not appear in a cheese’s ingredient list. This is why a supermarket raclette cheese cannot be judged vegetarian by reading the packaging alone, unless the producer has voluntarily applied the Article 40 term. Our page on reading a food label as a vegetarian explains the mechanism.

Nutrition claims follow numerical thresholds in Annex 13 of the same ordinance. A food is ‘low in salt’ if it contains no more than 0.12 g of sodium per 100 g, roughly 0.30 g of salt: raclette cheese at 1.8 g is six times over, the coconut-oil analogue at 1.9 g slightly more, and the cashew alternative at 1.2 g about four times over. A food is a ‘source of protein’ if protein supplies at least 12 % of its energy value, and ‘high in protein’ from 20 % upwards. Raclette cheese sits at 30 %, the cashew alternative at 13.5 %, the coconut-oil alternative at 0.8 %. Firm tofu reaches 40.5 % and tempeh 45.5 %.

A food is a ‘source of’ calcium if it contains 15 % of the nutrient reference value per 100 g, or 120 mg. Firm tofu just clears the bar; the two cheese alternatives in the Swiss database, at 44 and 46 mg, are nowhere near it.

An analysis published in BMC Nutrition in 2025 applied the Nordic Keyhole and Nutri-Score criteria to 222 plant-based dairy analogues on the Swedish market. Cheese analogues were eligible neither for the Keyhole nor for a Nutri-Score A or B, unlike 68 % of yoghurt analogues and 45 % of plant milks. This category scores worst across the whole plant-based aisle, which matches the Swiss figures exactly.

Building the plate: the three-roles principle

Raclette cheese performs three jobs at once: it supplies the protein, it supplies the melting fat that coats the vegetables, and it supplies the salty, savoury flavour. No plant product on the market does all three well. The answer is not to hunt for the perfect product but to split the three roles.

Protein comes from firm tofu, tempeh or seitan, the only plant bases that reach a comparable level. Firm tofu supplies 14.7 g of protein per 100 g and tempeh 17.6 g, with 0.1 g of salt in both cases. Our comparison of tofu, tempeh and seitan covers the uses of each.

The melting texture comes either from a small amount of cashew alternative or from a sauce made separately. Forty grams is enough to coat a plate; that is the amount used in the table above, and it avoids the 884 kcal of a 200 g portion.

Flavour comes from the marinade and the condiments, not from the melting product. This is where most of the pleasure is, and it is also where salt gets away from you fastest: two tablespoons of soy sauce, 30 g, supply 4.2 g of salt on their own, or 70 % of the daily reference intake. Spread across four portions that adds 1.05 g per person, which is still substantial. Our quick marinades for tofu and tempeh offer versions where acidity and aromatics carry the flavour.

The vegetables: what the grill does to them

Vegetables are not neutral on a barbecue. A study published in Food Science & Nutrition in 2025 measured polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon formation in charcoal-grilled vegetables, with and without prior marination. The four regulated PAHs dropped markedly in marinated vegetables: red grape vinegar showed the strongest average inhibitory effect at 75 %, followed by apple cider vinegar at 68 %, lemon juice at 52 %, garlic powder at 34 % and black pepper at 30 %.

That result gives a technical reason to marinate, quite apart from taste: an acidic marinade applied before charcoal grilling substantially reduces the formation of these compounds. It also gives a useful ranking. A vinegar beats a lemon juice, which beats a dry spice.

The other settings that matter are mechanical. Potatoes are better par-cooked in water or in the oven before they hit the grate, which limits the time spent directly over the flame. Aubergines absorb a lot of oil: 10 g of rapeseed oil for all the vegetables on a plate is enough if you brush rather than pour. Button mushrooms, at 3.7 g of protein per 100 g and 58.8 % of their energy as protein, are the most satisfying vegetable of the lot for an energy cost of 25 kcal per 100 g.

If you use an electric appliance rather than charcoal, the PAH question does not arise in the same terms, since most of these compounds come from combustion and from fat dripping onto the coals. Our page on choosing an electric barbecue for grilling vegetables covers the equipment criteria.

Making your own melting cheese at home

A homemade cashew preparation lets you control two parameters that industry fixes for you: how much salt goes in, and how much coconut oil. Proportions that work start from 150 g of cashews soaked for at least four hours, blended with 120 ml of water, 15 g of nutritional yeast, 10 ml of lemon juice, 15 g of tapioca starch and 3 g of salt, then heated in a pan with constant stirring until it thickens and forms a thread.

This base yields about 300 g of product at 1 g of salt per 100 g, a third less than the commercial coconut-oil analogue, and a protein content close to the cashew alternative in the Swiss database, since cashews supply 21.5 g per 100 g. Tapioca starch is what produces the stretch; pushing beyond 20 g per 300 g makes the preparation gluey rather than melting.

Fermentation changes the outcome. A review published in Foods in 2026 on fermented cream cheese alternatives notes that lactic fermentation develops precisely the aroma compounds that unfermented products lack most. In practice, letting the blended cashew base ferment for twelve to twenty-four hours at room temperature with a tablespoon of plant yoghurt before heating it changes the flavour profile noticeably. Our page on homemade plant-based cheeses covers the soy and almond variants.

Safety: allergens, storage, cooking

Cashew is not a harmless ingredient. An update published in Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Research in 2025 on tree nut and seed allergies notes that these allergies are often severe, typically develop in childhood and frequently persist for life, and that the strongest clinical overlap is observed between cashew and pistachio. The authors note that treating an anaphylactic reaction relies first and foremost on intramuscular epinephrine.

For a shared meal that imposes one simple rule: if you are serving a cashew preparation, say so explicitly and keep the preparations on separate dishes. Someone with a tree nut allergy cannot tell a cashew-based plant cheese from a coconut-oil one by looking at it. Our guide to cooking without gluten, nuts or soy gives the corresponding substitutions.

On storage, a homemade cashew preparation contains a lot of water, little salt and no preservative. Keep it refrigerated and eat it within two to three days. Industrial products carry a use-by period once opened that is generally shorter than the best-before date printed on the pack.

On cooking, starch-based and homemade preparations do not behave like cheese: they do not brown, they dry out. In a raclette pan they cope poorly with prolonged heat. Taking them off as soon as they have melted, rather than waiting for the colour a cheese would take on, avoids the most common rubbery result.

Salt: the parameter people forget

A well-built summer raclette plate can supply very little salt or a great deal, and the difference almost never comes from the salt shaker.

The four sources that matter, in order: the melting product, at 1.2 to 1.9 g of salt per 100 g depending on type; the marinade, up to 4.2 g for two tablespoons of soy sauce; the accompanying bread, at 1.6 g per 100 g on the Swiss average; and the pickled condiments. A cheese or coconut-analogue plate reaches 2.7 to 2.9 g of salt, close to half the daily reference intake, before anyone has touched the condiments.

The three effective levers are to reduce the quantity of melting product rather than replace it, to acidify the marinade instead of salting it, and to count the bread in the total. Going from 200 g to 150 g of melting product removes 0.6 to 0.95 g of salt on its own, depending on the product.

Common mistakes

Treating the coconut-oil product as a light option. This is the most expensive mistake nutritionally: 17.4 g of saturated fat per 100 g against 16.7 g for raclette cheese, and 0.5 g of protein against 25.9 g.

Serving 200 g of melting product per person. The quantity inherited from winter raclette has no justification in summer, when grilled vegetables already fill the plate. At 150 g you remove roughly 125 kcal and 0.3 g of salt without anyone noticing.

Counting on plant cheese for calcium. Neither alternative in the Swiss database reaches the 120 mg per 100 g threshold that would allow it to be called a source of calcium. Calcium in a dairy-free meal comes from tofu, fortified plant drinks, green vegetables and calcium-rich mineral water, not from the melting product.

Salting the marinade with soy sauce without counting. Two tablespoons supply 70 % of the daily reference intake for salt across the whole preparation.

Grilling vegetables unmarinated over charcoal. An acidic marinade cuts PAH4 formation by 52 to 75 % depending on the acidifier, which makes it a technical step and not just a flavour one.

Failing to flag the presence of cashew. A shared dish is the textbook setting for accidental exposure, and cashew is among the tree nuts most often involved in severe reactions.

Depending on your situation

You eat dairy and mainly want to lighten the plate. Do not replace the cheese, reduce it. Going from 200 to 120 g of raclette while increasing the share of vegetables and tofu removes about 14 g of saturated fat without losing the calcium and B12 that make cheese worth eating.

You are vegan and worried about calcium. Build the plate around firm tofu, add a fortified plant drink to the meal, and treat the melting product as a condiment. The tofu plate in the table reaches 277 mg of calcium; the glass of fortified drink adds 300 mg.

You are watching your blood pressure or salt intake. The tofu or tempeh plate at 0.6 g of salt is the only one of the four scenarios compatible with a controlled daily intake. The melting product and the soy sauce are the two items to revisit first.

You are hosting guests with mixed requirements. Keep the preparations physically separate and label them, especially the cashew one. Offering marinated tofu alongside the melting product lets everyone assemble a plate without negotiating.

You want the best flavour-to-nutrition ratio. A homemade cashew base fermented for twelve hours, served in small quantities over vinegar-marinated vegetables, gives a far better profile than any commercial melting product, for about twenty minutes of active preparation.

What this page cannot tell you

The values used here are average values from the Swiss Food Composition Database. The two ‘cheese alternative’ entries cover product categories rather than specific brands: an individual product can deviate appreciably from these averages, and the label on the product you buy always takes precedence over an average value.

The market studies cited cover the Slovenian, Irish and Swedish markets, not the Swiss one. They give the direction and order of magnitude of the gaps, not figures directly transposable to products sold in Switzerland.

The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon data come from an experiment on a charcoal grill under controlled conditions. The size of the reduction depends on cooking time, distance from the coals and the type of vegetable, and the percentages quoted are mean inhibition figures rather than guarantees.

Finally, the plates compared are calculations from table values, not measurements on actually cooked dishes. Cooking changes water content and therefore the per-100 g values; the per-plate totals remain valid, since the quantity of a nutrient does not change with evaporation.

Frequently asked questions

Does plant cheese melt like cheese? No, and for a physical reason. Dairy cheeses show dual-phase melting transitions, whereas most plant analogues show a single peak around 20 °C, according to the differential scanning calorimetry on the sixteen Irish-market products. In practice the plant product goes from solid to liquid more abruptly and does not stretch the same way.

Is Swiss raclette cheese vegetarian? It depends on the rennet used, and rennet is a processing aid that does not appear in the ingredient list. Only the Article 40 term, applied voluntarily by the producer, settles the question on the packaging. Our page on plant-based alternatives to Swiss cheese covers this.

Is coconut oil better than other fats? A systematic review and meta-analysis published in Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome in 2025, covering fourteen randomised trials and 1049 participants, measured a fall in triglycerides of 12.12 mg/dl (95 % CI -23.14 to -1.09) and a rise in HDL of 7.91 mg/dl (95 % CI 4.41 to 11.40) with virgin coconut oil, with no significant effect on other lipid markers, fasting blood sugar, anthropometric measures, blood pressure or CRP. That does not make coconut oil a food to seek out: the analogue’s 17.4 g of saturated fat per 100 g still represents 87 % of the daily reference intake.

How much protein should a plant-based raclette plate aim for? There is no per-meal target. The tofu plate in the table supplies 40.8 g of protein, or 82 % of the 50 g daily reference intake in Annex 10, which is ample for one meal. Our complete guide to plant proteins covers daily requirements.

Do you need a raclette appliance for a summer version? No. The little pans sit on a plancha or an electric barbecue, and a non-stick frying pan on the hob works for melting a homemade preparation. The real constraint is gentle heat: starch-based preparations dry out over too hot a source.

Do plant-based alternatives supply vitamin B12? Both Swiss database entries are at zero. Unlike some plant drinks, cheese alternatives are rarely fortified. B12 in a vegan meal comes from fortified foods or a supplement, a subject covered on our page about vitamin B12.

Can you freeze a homemade cashew preparation? The texture suffers noticeably on thawing, as the starch releases its water. Better to make the quantity you need, since the base takes about fifteen minutes once the nuts have soaked.

Which grilled vegetable is most filling for the fewest calories? The button mushroom, at 25 kcal and 3.7 g of protein per 100 g, with 58.8 % of its energy as protein. Aubergine follows with 2.7 g of fibre for 21 kcal, provided you do not soak it in oil.