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This plant-based vegan cheese sauce is nut-free, oil-free and totally packed with nutritious ingredients like squash, potatoes, and nutritional yeast. It's so flavorful, creamy, and makes perfect vegan mac & cheese. Also - cheese fries, anyone?!
Healthy Vegan Cheese Sauce (Oil-Free, Nut-Free)
Finding a vegan cheese that actually tastes good is quite the feat. It took me a while to get accustomed to any vegan cheese - store-bought or homemade. Fortunately, the longer I stayed away from the dairy cheese, the more I forgot the taste. Now I can find a way to love pretty much any vegan cheese.
If you haven't found a vegan cheese you like yet, I'd definitely recommend trying to make your own so you can adjust the flavors to your preference. Just remember that pretty much nothing is going to taste exactly like dairy cheese. I've learned to love vegan food for just being good food - and not worrying about replicating any kind of substitute perfectly.
That being said, this recipe is DEFINITELY good food. Good for you, and just good. This vegan cheese sauce is made with potatoes, squash, onions, nutritional yeast, garlic, and other seasonings. No carrots until my nacho cheese recipe.
There are absolutely no nuts (not even non-dairy milk) and no oil in this recipe.
Sauteing the squash and onions create an "oily effect" in the sauce which makes it really creamy. The potatoes help thicken it up. I prefer using red potatoes in this recipe because I think they are the creamiest potato out there.
To add a depth of flavor, and what some say is a "cheesy flavor", I add nutritional yeast, too. Nutritional yeast is fortified with B vitamins including B12 - this just adds to the health factor of this sauce!
I love to drizzle this sauce over roasted vegetables, fries, mashed potatoes, mashed cauliflower...seriously anything I can. It's low-fat and low-calorie, so why not?!
Make a batch on Sunday and you'll have it all set to go as a flavorful addition to your food throughout the week. I'd love to see how you use this healthy vegan cheese sauce - snap a photo and tag me on Instagram!
Like this recipe? Leave me a comment and a review below!
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Vegan Cheese Sauce made with Squash and Potatoes
Ingredients
- 1 medium potato
- 1 yellow squash
- 1 yellow onion - peeled and ends chopped off
- 4 cloves garlic - peeled
- 2 cups veggie stock
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast
- ¼ tsp paprika
- ⅛ tsp mustard powder - optional
- pepper to taste
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Peel and cube potato. Boil until fork tender. Drain.
- While the potato is cooking, thinly slice the squash and onion, and chop the garlic.
- Saute the squash and onion in vegetable stock on medium heat until very soft and tender (add in ¼ cup of veggie stock at a time - add more as needed. I typically use 1 cup total.) Add the garlic and saute for an additional 3 minutes.
- Add the cooked potato, squash, and onion to a blender, as well as ½ cup of vegetable stock, nutritional yeast, paprika, mustard powder, pepper and salt. Blend until super smooth. You may need to add more vegetable stock to get the consistency you want.
Victoria says
Looks great can’t wait to give it a try,
Q: Can you use different varieties of squash, like butternut, or does yellow squash have particular quality or texture.?
Kristin says
wow! i love this idea! i've seen sauces made with butternut squash but not yellow squash (which is so much easier to find and cut up!). i'll be giving this a try.