Vegan Cheese Sauce
No dairy, no soy, no nuts, no nutritional yeast, no gluten, no sugar and ready in five minutes. Our Kabocha Squash Vegan cheese sauce helps get those vegetables into your diet. Use it for macaroni and cheese, nachos or a fun layer in lasagna.
This recipe is based on the kabocha squash. Don’t be dismayed if you have never heard of it or can’t find it. Vegan cheese sauce will work with other winter squash! Use what you can find. The closest squash to Kabocha is buttercup, then sweet pumpkin, butternut, but also be brave, use a squash you’ve never tried before and see how it tastes.
Vegan cheese sauce is super simple, once your squash is baked. I’ve got a post on that here. The sauce whips up in 5 minutes and lasts well in the fridge of freezer.
If you plan to use this sauce for nachos or a Mexican themed meal, I would add some hot sauce, (easy on the vinegar based ones) or more chili flakes to the recipe and thin it out a bit with some neutral plant milk, so it flows, unless you are using it as a dip – its a perfect dip. The sauce part of the recipe is made with hemp cream. I make this from pureed hemp hearts and make several other amazing sauces and creations with hemp cream. It has a distinct earthy flavour that can bring some beauty to a cheese flavoured sauce. You can also add nutritional yeast to make it taste cheesy. I can’t have this as yeasts aren’t great for my stomach, so its omitted.
Other recipes with hemp cream? Lemon Vegan Cream Pasta Sauce, Soy-free, Egg-free Breakfast Scramble, Vegan Cream of Leek and Turnip Soup, Roasted Broccoli & Cheddar Soup, df, nf, to name a few.
Kabocha squash can also make a fun vegan creme brulee…see that recipe here.
Kabocha Squash 'cheese' sauce
Equipment
- cookie sheet
- measuring spoons
- blender
- knife
Ingredients
- ½ cup hemp hearts, soaked in
- ½ cup water
- 1 ½ cup kabocha squash, cooked
- 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- ¼ tsp thyme
- ¼ tsp chili flakes
- ½ tsp coriander
- ¼ tsp lemon pepper
- 1 ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp pepper
- 2-4 tbsp pasta water (if using it as a pasta sauce)
Instructions
Cooking Kabocha Squash
- Preheat oven to 350 ° F
- Quarter your squash, carefully with a sharp knife. Remove stem
- Place on baking sheet. Bake for 1 hour
- When cooled, peel off squash skin.
Making sauce
- Soak hemp hearts in water for about 10-30 minutes in the blender you are using. I took this moment to peel the skin off the squash.
- Add squash, then spices and liquids last.
- Blend. That's it. If you are using for macaroni and cheese....cook macaroni.
- Pour over and mix well with 2-4 tbsp of pasta water.
