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vegan | wfpb | gluten-free | cashew-free | oil-free | easy | veggie-packed | year-round

Since coming up with this particular cheese sauce, I’ve eaten a lot more greens. The sauce was created as part of my Cheesy Vegan Sheet-Pan Potatoes with Greens & Lentils recipe, which uses a whole bunch of kale or collards - which led me to realizing I liked this sauce with greens so much, I’ve been simply sautéeing dark leafies and stirring in the sauce. That’s right, just eating the greens and sauce - and it’s delicious! So I decided to break out the cheese sauce recipe separately from the sheet pan recipe so you can easily use it in a variety of ways.

The flavor of this sauce is rich with the macadamias and sweet potato, yet neutral enough to use…well, anywhere you’d use a cheese sauce: on burritos or nachos, stirred into pasta for comforting mac ‘n’ cheese, in a broccoli soup (or baked with broccoli), over fries, in a casserole - there are so many ways to enjoy this sauce. I haven’t tried grilled cheese with it yet - I think it would be great, though! Ooh, I will have to try that soon. I love that this recipe contains minimal nuts and still has all of that rich cheesiness. I don’t know about you, but I find it’s a relief to not always have go to cashews for vegan cheesy options. I prefer the flavor macadamia brings, and I love that not many of them are needed to make a big batch of this sauce. Organic macadamia nuts can be found at Thrive Market.

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EVERYDAY VEGAN CHEESE SAUCE

vegan | wfpb | gluten-free | cashew-free | oil-free | easy | veggie-packed | year-round

PRESOAK TIME: 2 hours + | PREP TIME: 10 minutes | COOK TIME: 15 minutes | TOTAL TIME: 25 minutes + presoak

 

ingredients

• 3 medium yellow potatoes, about 1 ½ cups

• 1 small sweet potato, about ½ cup

• ¼ cup soaked macadamia nuts

• 2 shallots

• 2 garlic cloves

• 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar

• ¼ teaspoon turmeric

• 1 cup plain plant-based milk (I like macadamia or coconut)

 

instructions

Soak the macadamia nuts for at least 2 hours prior.

1, Pour an inch or two of water into a pot and set it to boil. Chop the three red potatoes and sweet potato into one-inch pieces and place them into your steamer basket. When the pot comes to a boil, add the basket and lid and steam for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are very tender.

2. While the potatoes cook and steam, drain the macadamia nuts and put them into a high-speed blender. Coarsely chop the shallots and garlic and add them, too, plus the salt and nutritional yeast.

3. When the potatoes are done steaming, let them cool about 5 minutes, then add them to the blender along with the vinegar, turmeric, and milk. (If you don’t have a high speed blender, add more milk so that it won’t burn out your blender!) Blend on high speed for a good 30 seconds - one minute, until the sauce is nice and smooth.

4. Serve over anything you want a nice cheesy sauce on. I like it stirred into sautéed greens and mac ‘n’cheese or drizzled and baked over things like nachos, burritos, or Cheesy Vegan Sheet-Pan Potatoes with Greens & Lentils.

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