Vegan Cheese Sauce

 

  In my quest to live a healthy lifestyle, I am trying to eat less dairy. I am fine without drinking milk as I love the taste of cashew milk in my coffee, but my weakness is cheese. I just love the taste of cheese. I could eat cheese all day. My favorite way to eat cheese is melted over beans and rice or melted in a tortilla. I want to eliminate cheese from my diet as it is high in fat, cholesterol, and fat. In order for me to eliminate cheese from my diet, I need to find a substitute that tastes good and looks like cheese.

  I think I have finally discovered a meatless, dairy-free, vegan cheese sauce. I actually discover two different recipes for vegan cheese sauce and they both looked so delicious. I had a hard time deciding which one to make, so I decided to make both just to see which one tasted the best. Both recipes used potatoes and carrots, along with spices. The only difference one recipe used nutritional yeast flakes. I have used nutritional yeast flakes in other recipes like my cashew pate and it gives great flavor so I wanted to see if the yeast flakes made a difference in taste. I made both recipes and will include both at the bottom of this post with notes about the taste of each. I love that these creamy vegan cheese sauces can be used just like regular cheese sauce. I can see myself using these cheese sauces over baked potatoes, veggies, tortilla chips, and in Mexican dishes like beans and rice. They might even be good in a pizza like a breakfast pizza that is made with scrambled eggs. My kids would love for me to make mac and cheese with these. So here are the two recipes that I discovered and I love that they use carrots for the orange color. Both of these cheese sauces can be stored in the fridge for a week.

                                   Vegan Cheese Sauce #One

                          Ingredients
                              2 cups peeled and cubed potatoes
                              1 large carrot, chopped
                              4 tablespoons olive oil
                              ½ cup unsweetened cashew or almond milk
                              1 tablespoon lemon juice
                              ½ teaspoon garlic powder
                              ½ teaspoon onion powder
                              ½ teaspoon salt
                              ½ teaspoon paprika
                               4 teaspoons mustard
                               1 teaspoon soy sauce
Instructions
Combine the potato and carrot in a medium saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until fork-tender. Drain and transfer to a food processor.
Add all the other ingredients to the food processor and process for about 2 minutes, or until totally smooth. Makes about 3 cups.

Notes: I liked that this one uses ingredients that most have around the house. This sauce had a mild flavor but had too much of a mustard taste so next time I would reduce the mustard to 2 teaspoons.

                           Vegan Cheese Sauce #Two

                                  Ingredients
                                      2 cups peeled and cubed potatoes
                                      1 cup carrots, chopped
                                      1/2 cup water
                                      1/3 cup olive oil
                                      2 teaspoon salt
                                      1 tablespoon lemon juice
                                      1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
                                      1/4 teaspoon. onion powder
                                      1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

            Instructions
        Boil the potatoes and carrots until soft. Then place the cooked carrots and potatoes along with the other ingredients in a food processor and blend until very smooth. Makes about 3 cups.
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Notes: The nutritional yeast flakes add some extra nutrition like protein, iron, and b-vitamins. This sauce had a sharper taste like sharp cheddar flavor. The nutritional yeast gave this sauce more of a brown color.


I really had high hopes for these cheese sauces but they fell short of my expectations. While they tasted good, they did not have a cheese flavor or texture to them. They would make great dips but I could not pass them off as a cheese sauce. These sauces would be great with veggies, crackers, potatoes, and over beans and rice, but not on a pizza. I have seen vegan cheese sauces recipes that use cashews instead of potatoes so I will try making that one next to see how that one tastes.