Vegan Cheese Sauce is life-changing!
Our favorite delicious vegan cheese sauce has enriched our vegan menus and we can’t wait to share it with you!
Cheese is that comfort food in mainstream cooking that is hard to replicate and hard to relinquish. We feel your pain. Starting on a journey that doesn’t include any form of cheese is tough.
Just look at how many foods have cheese in them. It’s mind-boggling! Seriously, we’ve seen cheese listed in the ingredients in the most unnecessary places. Potato chips, guacamole, spaghetti sauce, crackers, soups, and boxed rice mixes all have it. I swear, it feels like almost every frozen dinner has some form of cheese in it too. Sheesh! Cheese has become an invasive species.
Competing in the cheese food group for a vegan was like David going up against Goliath without his trusty slingshot. Come on!
Until we whipped out our magic weapon! Now we have some ammunition people! Vegalicious vegan cheese sauce to the rescue.
Changing to a vegan lifestyle
It is a decision we finally made permanent in 2013. We thought that being vegetarians was enough. We believed we were distancing ourselves from the suffering and death of animals. We ate no animals or seafood of any kind. We ate “cage-free” eggs, imagining they came from chickens living a peaceful life on farms. Chickens with access to green pastures, fresh air, and room to roam. But it’s not so. We drank cow’s milk labeled organic and hormone-free, believing these cows were treated more humanely. Also, not so. Those foods were easy to let go of, compared to cheese.
If all vegans were surveyed, we’d wager that about 85% would say cheese is the hardest food to give up. It’s like a very addicting drug that has a stranglehold on our stomachs and minds. We must have it on pizza, pasta, tacos, and enchiladas. It is essential on almost every conceivable sandwich, veggies, and bagels. The list goes on and on.
Going “cold turkey” so to speak, is one way to let go of the cheese addiction. But it will make you ch-angry! Cheese-angry: like hangry- but for cheese.
Having a cheese substitute is much easier, though.
Finding a good cheese substitute
There are so many cheese alternatives on the market now. The problem is finding one that tastes good. We tried a lot of faux cheeses on our vegan journey and honestly, not many were keepers. But good news! Vegan cheese has improved.
We recommend Chao cheese, as one good choice. Chao’s American or spicy version is good in a grilled cheese sandwich! Miyokos spreadable cheeses are also a great choice. (Miyoko Schinner has written an excellent cookbook with cheese recipes entitled, The Homemade Vegan Pantry.) Also, try the Follow Your Heart brand (probably our family’s favorite). They make wonderful smoked Gouda cheese and have an extensive line of various other flavors of cheese. Another brand to try is Treeline. But wait, we can’t leave out Daiya. You can buy the popular Daiya brand at many grocery stores. Their mozzarella is often used in restaurants.
New cheese alternatives enter the market regularly now (yay!). If you haven’t enjoyed any of those yet, keep trying and sampling. They’re just getting better and better all the time! So don’t give up! Making homemade vegan cheese sauce is always a good idea, too.
The magic of making vegan cheese sauce
When looking at the ingredients for this vegan cheese-like sauce, I couldn’t believe it would remotely taste like cheese. If something doesn’t taste how I expect, I prefer to go without it. If it doesn’t taste good I’d rather go without it than eat it.
After suffering through many cheesy imitations, I decided to forget about it. Fuhgeddaboudit for all you Brooklynites.
Then, I tried again despite my stubborn decision to give up before for lack of an acceptable substitute. That’s when the magic happened. I found this version of our favorite vegan cheese sauce on the PETA website. I want to give them credit for this spectacular recipe. Everyone loves this cheese sauce.
My advice is to keep sampling. Keep on, keeping on with the quest. And by all means, try this recipe.
XOXO
P.S. One of my favorite ways to enjoy this delicious vegan cheese yumminess is in my Quicky Quality Queso Sauce. You have to try it when the craving for nachos strikes! It’s our spicier version of cheese sauce.
It would make a nice topping on Glorious Grilled Veggie Sandwiches
or “Extra Sloppy For Ya’s” Sloppy Joes, too!
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Vegalicious Vegan Cheese Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup peeled and diced potato
- 1/3 cup diced onion
- 1/4 cup chopped carrot
- 2 tablespoons chopped shallot if you don't have a shallot use more onions
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup vegan margarine/butter or vegetable oil like Earth Balance margarine
- 1/4 cup raw cashews (soaked if not using high speed blender)
- 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast optional
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon mustard
Instructions
- Place chopped vegetables (potato, onion, carrot, and shallot) in a saucepan with 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, and cover the pan with a lid. Cook for 15 minutes. (Set your timer!)
- While vegetables are simmering, place the rest of the ingredients in a high-speed blender (like Vitamix). When the vegetables have cooked, add everything from the saucepan, including the cooking water, into the blender with the rest of the ingredients already in the blender. Blend everything on high speed for a couple of minutes until thoroughly blended. It can be stored in the fridge for about 2 weeks.
