Rich, creamy and velvety vegan mac and cheese without cashews, made using only real whole foods. Your family will love this dairy-free, unprocessed alternative to velveeta macaroni and cheese. This recipe is 100% plant based, vegan and oil-free.
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You don't need cashews or nuts of any kind to make a rich, creamy dairy-free vegan mac and cheese. You also don't need flour or vegan butter.
Potatoes, carrots with a few spices produce an incredible and easy to make hidden vegetable pasta sauce that your kids will devour. Just start with my silky, rich fauxveeta vegan cheese sauce.
🎙 What people say about this recipe
"This is my favorite mac and cheese recipe I have tried since becoming vegan. I eat this once a week! Great recipe 🙂"
- Nicole
🧄 Very useful ingredient notes
- Macaroni pasta - Macaroni or small/medium shell pasta is classic!
- Potatoes - The starch in the potatoes make this sauce rich, silky and creamy without the need for nuts or seeds.
- Carrots - The carrots give the sauce a hint of sweetness and add to the color and nutritional value.
- Plant-based milk - The almond milk adds to the creaminess and is needed to thin the mixture in the blender. I use almond milk, but to make this completely nut-free, use soy milk or oat milk. Be sure it's plain, unsweetened, unflavored milk.
- Nutritional yeast - The nutritional yeast gives it the cheesy, umami flavor. Use more to amp up the cheesiness! Some people prefer the flavor of unfortified nutritional yeast (aka nooch), but we like the taste of the fortified nooch just fine. Find nutritional yeast at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Amazon or in the bulk bin of your local health food or well-stocked grocery store.
- Ground turmeric - the ground turmeric helps us achieve that familiar bright orange faux-velveeta color of this sauce, but in a natural way, without food coloring.
Here's some info on the optional, but highly recommended, flavor boosters that can take the sauce to the next level.
Only use ONE to start out with when you're blending up your cheese sauce. Taste and then adjust or add another option.
- Smoked paprika - adds smokiness and depth of flavor, but don't overdo it.
- Lemon juice - adds brightness
- Apple cider vinegar - adds brightness and a hint of tang
- Miso paste - adds umami saltiness, but again, don't overdo it. Start with less and see if you like it.
🔪 Instructions
Here's step by step instructions and photos for how to make this vegan macaroni and cheese without using cashews, flour, vegan butter or other nuts and seeds to make the sauce.
Step 1: In a medium-large stock pot, add cut potatoes, carrots and onion. (For a mild garlic flavor, add it now.) Cover with water.
Step 2: Then, boil potatoes, carrot, onion until fork tender, then drain.
Step 3: Use a high-speed blender to blend this sauce completely smooth. I use Blendtec.
Step 4: Blend it up with spices and almond milk. Add cooked veggies to blender with garlic, nutritional yeast, turmeric, salt, almond milk and optional (but recommended!) flavor boosters, if using. (Adding the raw garlic now will give you a stronger garlic flavor). You may need to do this in more than one batch, depending on your blender size.
Step 5: Blend until completely smooth (I use a Blendtec and press the soup button). If it will not blend, you may need to add a bit more almond milk.
Step 6: Use as you would use any cheese sauce!
Step 7: Cook pasta according to package directions, then drain. Warm sauce in a small saucepan over medium low heat until bubbly.
Step 8: Pour over cooked macaroni or small pasta of your choice and enjoy!
Flavor Adventure: If you've never tried a drizzle of ketchup on top of your macaroni and cheese, you've got to give it a go. It's amazing. My husband, who's from Michigan, taught us to do this and there's no going back.
❓ FAQ
For a smooth sauce, peel your potatoes.
If you don't mind a speckled sauce and are using Yukon gold potatoes, which have a thin skin, you can leave the skins on (but be sure to thoroughly scrub them when washing).
If you're using potatoes with a thicker skin (like russets), they should definitely be peeled before cooking.
This vegan cheese sauce will last up to 5 days in a sealed container in the refrigerator. It will last up to 3 months in the freezer.
Yes! I've tested freezing the cheese sauce alone and mac and cheese already prepared and both ways they freeze well. They will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.
I recommend freezing it in single serving containers, so it's faster to thaw and reheat. Or, you can freeze a baking dish of mac and cheese and reheat, covered in the oven for an easy weeknight meal.
To reheat a frozen single serving container of vegan mac and cheese, let it thaw in the refrigerator overnight, if you can. Then, place it in the microwave for 1-4 minutes, depending on how big your single serving is.
To reheat a frozen baking dish of macaroni and cheese, cover well with parchment paper and then aluminum foil. Bake at 325 F until hot in the center.
If it's too dry, add more cheese sauce (if you have it) or a splash of plant-based milk and stir.
Love this recipe?
Please rate it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a comment below, so I know which recipes you like the best. This helps me know what to make more of!
📖 Recipe
Vegan Mac and Cheese (without cashews)
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 cups potato 530 grams potato, about 5 medium yukon gold or russet potatoes, peeled and cut into large squares
- 1 ½ cups carrot 210 grams carrot, about 5 medium carrots, peeled and cut into large pieces the same size at the potatoes
- 1 onion 175 grams, quartered
- 5 cloves garlic 20 grams garlic, chopped
- 3 tablespoon nutritional yeast optional, but recommended
- ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 1 cup almond milk or other unsweetened, unflavored plant-based milk
- 16 ounces macaroni pasta
Instructions
- Boil potatoes, carrot and onion in water until fork tender, then drain.3 cups potato, 1 ½ cups carrot, 1 onion
- Cook the macaroni pasta in a separate pot of well-salted water, cook according to package instructions, then drain and return to pot.16 ounces macaroni pasta
- Add cooked potato, carrot and onion to high speed blender with garlic, nutritional yeast, turmeric, salt, almond milk and any optional flavor boosters (see Notes). You may need to do this in more than one batch, depending on your blender size.5 cloves garlic, 3 tablespoon nutritional yeast, ½ teaspoon ground turmeric, ½ teaspoon sea salt, 1 cup almond milk
- Blend until completely smooth (I use a Blendtec and press the smoothie or soup button). If it will not blend, you may need to add a bit more almond milk.
- Taste the sauce and adjust salt, as needed.
- Pour sauce over drained macaroni pasta, stir and warm up on the stove, if needed.
- Serve with generous freshly cracked black pepper on top.
Video
Notes
Optional (but recommended!) Flavor Boosters (add to cheese sauce when blending)
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon miso paste
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
Nicole says
This is my favorite mac and cheese recipe I have tried since becoming vegan. I eat this once a week! Great recipe 🙂
Abi Cowell says
Nicole, I can't even tell you how much I appreciate you commenting to let me know this! Seriously made my day. 🤩 Thank you so much and I'm so glad you love this recipe as much as our family does. 💜
- Abi
Christina says
Pretty good! Was a bit bland and definitely needed the flavor boosters. The ketchuo was a good idea. As was the lemon juice. Needed a bit if sweetness and tange. I also added a squirt of dijon mustard. I'd seen that in another vegan recipe it's good. I imagine the miso would be good too. Umami flavor but didn't have it on hand. I also swapped the almond milk for canned coconut milk to make it even more lush. And 2 tablespoons of ghee as were plant based not vegan. But definitely some vegan butter would be good here too. The garlic was a bit too apicey and sharp as it's added to the blender raw. But I cooked the sauce on low with the added ghee for a few minutes and that helped. I'd do that again or cut down the amount of garlic next time. But the sauce was so dreamy and creamy. I was in heaven. Thx for sharing!
Diane says
I make it every other week and freeze some for when I’m short on time, so good and easy to make!! It’s truly a winner 😊
Kim says
I don’t have carrots or potatoes on hand at the moment, but could I use potato starch with the flavor boosters and almond milk? Or does it really need the blended potatoes and carrots?
Abi Cowell says
Hi Kim, I have never tested using just potato starch in this sauce. It would be interesting to see how it turns out. Please let me know what happened, if you tried it. For pantry ingredients, you could use instant potato flakes (Bob's red mill makes a good one), but you'd have to play with the ratios and it would have to be heated up to cook the potato flakes (or the starch, for that matter). Sorry I don't have any solid info I could give you on that!
- Abi
Kim says
I ended up finding carrots in the freezer and remembered some plain, mashed sweet potatoes my sister sent home with me from leftover family dinner so I used those. I think the sweet potatoes made the overall dish way too sweet because I kept adding more flavor boosters, trying to even out the sweet to salty ratio. It was edible, but not great. I’ll have to try it again when I have all the correct ingredients on hand. Oh, but I did use Anthony’s Organic potato starch and that worked fine as a thickener. I just sprinkled 1 tablespoon at a time on the sauce towards the end of cooking while stirring until it looked “right” (as my mom or grandma would say: ‘Just stir until it looks right.’😆).