Nutrition
Calories: 217kcal | Carbohydrates: 12.2g | Protein: 5.5g | Fat: 15.3g | Fiber: 2.6g
I'm obsessed with how gooey and cheesy this vegan cheese sauce is! It's perfect for fries, sandwiches, or just to make vegetables a little less healthy!
Servings
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 tbsp Vegan Butter
- 3/4 tbsp Flour
- 2/3 cup Soy Milk
- 1 1/2 tbsp Nutritional Yeast
- 3 slices Vegan Cheese I used Violife Mature Cheddar
- 1/2 tbsp Freeze-dried Pineapple Powder
- 1/2 tsp Salt
Instructions
- In a small pot on low-medium heat, melt the butter.
- Once butter is melted, add the flour and whisk until it turns into a paste.
- Slowly add the milk while whisking; this avoids you getting flour chunks.
- Once everything is well-mixed, add in nutritional yeast, pineapple powder, salt and the vegan cheese slices. Keep whisking; the cheese slices will be the last things to melt.
- Once everything is melted and mixed well, get it to the desired thickness and you're good to go! I like to target a consistency similar to what you what get if you ordered cheese fries. If it gets too thick, slowly add more milk until you get the right consistency.
Equipment
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Notes
Soy-free option:
- Instead of using Soy Milk, use Oat Milk or Cashew Milk – you want a thick, creamy non-dairy milk for this recipe.
Did you make this recipe?Mention @proteindeficient.vegan
Have you ever ordered fries from a restaurant and then made your own cheese sauce so that you can feel like you actually got cheese fries like a normal person who has fast food options? Yea… Me neither… Anyways, totally unrelated, this vegan cheese sauce is the thing junk food vegan dreams are made out of, and it only takes 5 minutes to make. I really like to just dip plain fries in it and pretend I’m at a Vegan Seitan ‘N Shake. You can also make amazing loaded fries with this cheese sauce, some ranch and vegan bacon bits. I also like putting it on vegetables to make them a little less healthy 🙂 But, seriously, I’m not sure if anyone else’s parents made broccoli and cheese sauce when they were little, but it’s kind of like that. I went vegetarian when I was 12 years old, so broccoli and cheese sauce was like my most favorite thing ever that my parents made and I would even ask for it on my birthday! This would also be perfect to use as a sauce for sandwiches! Let me know in the comments if you think of any other creative uses for this!
Ingredients
- Vegan Butter – my favorite is Miyoko’s but any vegan butter will work!
- Flour – I used all-purpose flour but I definitely think you could use a gluten-free flour here as well.
- Soy Milk – this is my go to non-dairy milk, and I think you should really use it for this recipe. Oat Milk or Cashew Milk could also work potentially well, but you definitely want a thicker milk for this cheese sauce (I don’t think almond milk would work very well here).
- Vegan Cheese Slices – I used Violife Mature Cheddar slices as those are my favorite of the vegan cheese slices. If you have a different favorite, feel free to use that instead! I would stick with a cheddar or American flavored cheese though, just to keep that expected cheese sauce flavor! If you don’t want to use cheese slices, you could probably just add more Nutritional Yeast to add more cheesy flavor to make up for the omission.
- Nutritional Yeast – where there is vegan cheese sauce, there is Nooch! If you haven’t cooked with Nutritional Yeast before, it’s amazing! It can add a delicious cheesy flavor to anything and is great to use in sauces! This is a shelf-stable ingredient that you can find in most stores. You can also buy it online. Some of the brands I use regularly are Bragg’s, Frontier, and Bob’s Red Mill.
- Freeze-dried Pineapple Powder – ok… so this is a weird ingredient, but trust me on this! I’ve recently started using pineapple powder in some of my cheesy recipes because it adds a sharpness and faint sweetness that most vegan cheeses and nutritional yeast don’t have, but dairy cheeses do. I’ve only been able to find it online but I’ve found so many things to use it in, including a high protein ranch dressing you should check out if you like ranch! If you don’t have this ingredient and are not interested in getting it, I would probably swap it out with a bit of white wine vinegar (or some other subtle vinegar) to bring out that sharpness and sweetness. It really does keep your cheese sauce from feeling one-note, which can be boring to eat and feels like it’s always so close to tasting like real cheese but is still missing something – that something is the sharpness!
- Salt – adjust to your tastes.
Instructions
- In a small pot/sauce pan (preferably non-stick), on low-medium heat, melt the butter. Stir so it doesn’t burn.
- Once the butter is melted, add the flour and whisk until it turns into a paste.
- Slowly add the milk to this paste, while whisking. You want to add the milk pretty slowly so you don’t end up with chunks of flour in your milk. You want basically a thickened milk instead.
- Once everything is well mixed, add in the nutritional yeast, pineapple powder, salt and the vegan cheese slices. Keep whisking, pretty much constantly, to keep from burning your sauce.
- The cheese slices will be the last thing to melt. You can shorten how long this takes by tearing the slices into pieces before adding them but it will still take a couple of minutes for them to completely melt.
- I try to target a thickness/consistency similar to that of a cheese sauce that would come with fries. You might want something different than that, so target whatever thickness you want! If you need it to be thicker, cook longer. If you want it to be thinner, slowly add small amounts of milk until you get to the consistency you want!
- Eat on whatever your heart desires. It is worth noting that, like real cheese sauce, it will start to thicken up at room temperature, so I wouldn’t make it until you’re ready to eat it!
Silly Little Haiku
Gooey Vegan Cheese
Nutritional Yeast is King
Put it on some fries
Author
Protein Deficient Vegan
