The Best Dairy Free Mac and Cheese
Tried and mac and cheese you can serve to all your vegan or dairy free friends.
Ingredients
Cheese Sauce (yields about 3 cups)
- 1 1/2 cups gold potatoes baked (or boiled) and peeled
- 1 cup zucchini peeled, cut in chunks, raw is fine
- 1 1/2 cup unsweetened cashew milk
- 1 tbsp lemon juice fresh
- 2 tbsp chickpea miso paste
- 1/2 tsp tomato paste I use the tube
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1/2 tsp ground mustard
- 1/2 tsp garlic
- 1/2 tsp onion
- dash nutmeg
- dash chili powder to taste
- dash ground black pepper to taste
Pasta
- Cooked elbow pasta add salt to the pasta water and save a little of the water for the sauce
Instructions
Cheese Sauce (yields about 3 cups)
-
In the oven, bake your gold potatoes (no need to oil) until soft - I did 350 for an hour It took about 3 potatoes for me to fill 1 1/2 cups.
*you can boil your potatoes if you prefer
-
While baking, prep your blender with the PEELED zucchini and the rest of the ingredients/spices for the sauce.
-
Once the potatoes are done baking, add the warm potatoes to your blender, blend until completely creamy, no clumps. You can stop here if you want to just prep your sauce for later.
To prepare pasta
-
Make pasta according to the directions, salt your pasta water.
-
https://food52.com/blog/9991-how-to-properly-salt-your-pasta-water
-
Once pasta is cooked, strain, but leave about 2 tbsp-1/4 cup of pasta water (depending on how much pasta you made and how thin you like your sauce)
-
Add enough sauce from the blender to coat the pasta and save the rest of the sauce for later.
-
Taste test and decide what toppings you want to do, if you want to bake it, etc. Or eat it as it is for a simple meal.
Recipe Notes
I asked one of my friends to test this vegan macaroni and cheese recipe in the regular blender. Although she thought it made a "solid recipe for a vegan mac" she didn't think it was as creamy/cheesy as it should've been without the high speed blender. Therefore, I now think a high-speed blender is the best method for this recipe to achieve a more "cheesy" consistency. If you think it is still not "cheesy" you may want to consider adding salt a little at a time. My taste buds do not require a lot of salt.
I divided the sauce into 2 glass containers, one for now, one to freeze for later. Probably could divide into 3 if you want to just do a cup of sauce in each container, just mix with a little extra pasta water (with medium heat) to make it go further.
This dish is best served right away, not cold. However, if you have leftovers and are craving this randomly at 11:28 pm, try baking it in the oven with some pads of vegan butter on top and let me know how it goes…