Get ready for a creamy vegan macaroni and cheese that is low in fat and quick and easy to make!
It’s a funny thing, but the recipe I’m asked for most often is the one I’m most reluctant to give out. Every time I mention that macaroni and “cheese” is one of E’s favorite dishes, parents wanting to wean their kids off the dairy stuff and onto something more healthy ask me for the recipe. For a long time, I had to tell them the hard, cold truth: The “cheese” that E loved above all others came from a package, and though I tried recipe after recipe, she wouldn’t eat any other mac and cheeze.
And then one day I decided I’d had enough. I was having to mail-order Road’s End Cheddar Style Chreese in bulk once every couple of months to keep E supplied with her quickest comfort food. (Her other favorite comfort food, lasagna, doesn’t fit into the make-it-on-the-fly category.) Each time I made it, I would look at the short list of ingredients and think that there had to be a way to recreate it at home and I just hadn’t hit the right formula yet.
So in the interest of eating more local and fewer packaged foods, I started experimenting. I took the sauce from the one cheezy recipe that she had liked, Scalloped Potatoes, and tried that on macaroni. No dice. What worked on potatoes didn’t work for her on pasta. So I tinkered with it and then tinkered some more. Finally, sometime last spring I hit on a formula that worked, and we’ve been Chreese-free ever since.
But I was still reluctant to share the recipe because vegans are notoriously picky about their mac and cheese. Look at any vegan bulletin board and you’ll see someone praising a m&c recipe and someone else declaring that the same recipe tastes like $#!+. What works for my family won’t necessarily work for everyone else, and I would hate for anyone to spend the time to make this recipe and then be disappointed. Plus I’m just sensitive enough not to want to read online that my recipe tastes like someone’s backside.
But enough people want this recipe that I’m issuing it with a disclaimer: If you are used to nutritional yeast sauces AND you like Road’s End Chreese, then this might be the recipe for you.
Notice that it’s not baked in a casserole dish with bread crumbs or anything fancy (if you want that, check out this recipe). It’s macaroni and sauce, period, though sometimes we do add frozen green peas to make it Macaroni and Peas. But it’s quick to throw together on a week night, and I have to admit that our whole family finds it addictive.
Easy Vegan Macaroni and Cheese
Ingredients
- 1 pound pasta regular or gluten-free, cooked according to package directions
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 1 cup plain fat-free soymilk may use other non-dairy milk
- 3/4 cup nutritional yeast
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch or potato starch
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon salt or more to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- pinch cayenne pepper
- 2 tablespoons tahini or raw cashews optional, but lends creaminess and flavor
- 1 teaspoon mellow white miso or additional salt
- black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Put the pasta on to boil, according to package directions. While it’s cooking, blend water and all remaining ingredients together in a blender. When the pasta is al dente, drain it, reserving about 1/2 cup of the cooking water, and return the pasta to pan. Add the sauce mixture and cook, stirring, until mixture boils and thickens. Add a little of the pasta water if more moistness is needed.
- If the sauce is not as flavorful as you’d like, add a little more mustard and onion powder.
Notes
Nutritional info is approximate.
Serving Suggestions: We like to have this with a bean dish, such as barbecued beans, and with steamed vegetables, most often a blend of broccoli and cauliflower.
Additional Uses: Heat the sauce alone until it thickens and use it to pour over baked potatoes or top pizzas. Or stir in some salsa and it makes a yummy dip for tortilla chips.
If you don’t love this recipe, maybe one of these will tingle your tastebuds:New Farm Mac and Cheese adapted by Jess of Get Sconed!
Tofu Mom gives us Vegan Cheese Sauce
Re-Vamped Mac N Cheese by Sarchan
Lauren’s Vegan Mac and Cheese by Lindyloo
Please pin and share!
Karen
I love this! Just made it today using extra onion flakes and a bit of extra garlic powder 🙂 We also added a couple tofu dogs cut up and my 4 year old just loves it, with a little ketchup on top. Thank you for all your wonderful recipes!
Stace
Thank you. That was amazing. I did add earth balance per your comment below and added a bit more corn starch while it cooked with the pasta. I cooked some broccoli, cauliflower and that other cool looking light green cauliflower cousin in some braggs with water salt and garlic powder and onion powder…..mixed it all together and it was heaven! My boyfriend is picky and it’s the first vegan mac n cheese he has actually liked! Thanks for sharing this! 🙂
Laura
I’ve been enthralled with your website ever since I was fortunate enough to come across it! Just wanted to let you know how grateful I am that it exists. Your recipes rock and will become a permanent part of my cooking/eating repertoire. Now that I have that out of the way, I was wondering if it was possible to get the nutritional information for this sauce without the pasta. Many thanks in advance.
Kelly L
I made this recipe today for the first time. I am trying to incorporate vegan meals into my menu plan for health reasons. I followed the recipe exactly (except for the miso – I had none). There was no real taste in the end, but it was bitter. Is this normal? Not sure if it was the Tahini that caused this. I am going to reheat some of it tonight and add extra onion powder as well as broccoli—hope this will help. What do you think? Thanks!
Susan Voisin
The one thing that springs to mind is: did you use nutritional yeast or brewer’s yeast? I find brewer’s yeast very bitter and would never use it in a sauce. Tahini does have a distinctive flavor, so if that’s the problem, using cashew butter would be better. And if you didn’t have miso, I recommend adding extra salt, unless you’re on a salt-free diet. Without enough salt, even the best-seasoned sauces can be bland to those who are used to salt.
Stacey
This was really good. I have tried a few vegan mac and cheese recipes and haven’t liked any of them, but I keep trying since it is one of the few items I miss since going vegan in January.
It doesn’t have too strong of a nutritional yeast flavor, something I can’t get past in other recipes.
Thank you for your wonderful blog. I have made quite a few of your recipes so far, and everything has turned out great. Even my husband asks me to make them again, and he is fighting the whole vegan thing tooth and nail. Thank you again!
Lyndsey
I think i’m going to try this! I’m very very new at this but when you have a 16 month old who is allergic to eggs, nuts, milk, beef and pork you don’t have much of a choice. My husband and I are very open minded about the changes we are making I just hope my almost 8 year old is up for it. I’ve been looking for easy to eat foods that my toddler can eat. Shes loves fruit but wont touch any veggies. Im hoping we all like this. Thank you!!
anonymous
Hi! Excited to try this. For the nutritional yeast in this recipe. Is it the flakes or the powder? I am assuming its the flakes…but I don’t want to assume since I read elsewhere on this blog that if using the powder it requires about half as much. Thank you!
Susan Voisin
Good question! I only use the flakes, so for this any any other recipes on this blog, the measurement is for flakes.
anonymous
Thank you for the quick reply. Just got home with all the ingedients and realized my almond milk is vanilla! I was going to use almond milk since I use that instead of soy milk. But forgot it was unsweetened vanilla.
Should I run back out and get plain? I don’t want to ruin the whole thing. Not sure if you received this question before or have used vanilla 🙂
Susan Voisin
I hate to make you run back to the store, but please don’t use vanilla! It will definitely give it an unwanted flavor. Better to go back for unsweetened, plain almond milk than to wind up with something you can’t eat!
anonymous
Thank you again for the quick reply. I already headed out, because I didn’t want to ruin it all. Thank you again! I look forward to trying out more of your recipes. Take care!
Odin
I am on a mission to make vegan cheese sauces, so was making your cheesy cauliflower sauce and failed to realize I had no Corn starch, the hazards of the husband cooking and not letting me know we are out of a staple, so I substituted with xanthan gum and it fabulously for that recipe. However, for this recipe it was a clumpy gooey disaster. Oh well, the risk of substituting ingredients in a tested recipe, but I wanted to pass on the information for any other person that finds they have no corn or potato starch in their pantry.
caren j
I was amazed.. I use brown rice pasta, less harsh on the body. Anyhoo, delish!
I served it to non vegans and, the vote was good but, the sauce was rich..perhaps lees N.yeast? The non vegans liked a bit of parm. cheese. mixed in. That’s ok.. they went back for seconds..a great sauce..I added Broccolli on top.yum..
Stephanie
Amazing!
Mickey
A: You’ve just made me soooo happy and I can’t wait to try it. B: I’ve never seen fat free soy milk. Is it powdered or something?
Susan Voisin
It’s in one of those aseptic boxes, the kind that don’t have to be refrigerated until opened. But of course, you can use any non-dairy milk you like. I hope you love it as much as we do!
Mel
The best vegan macaroni and cheese I’ve made! I’ve been attempting a low-fat raw vegan diet for about a month; the kids “needed” macaroni and cheese and it was nice to have something that was at least low fat. Thank you!
Leigh Lambert
This is a great recipe. It turned out exactly like the picture. I used quinoa/corn pasta because that’s what they had in elbow form in the bulk aisle, making the recipe gluten-free as well (and high protein). YUM!
sally316
Made this last night and am currently eating the leftovers for lunch. So, so good! The first time I made it, I did not have tahini or miso. Last night, I had all the ingredients and wow, it is unreal. I somehow left out the soy milk, but it tastes great anyway. My omni husband raved about it and warned me I better save him some for lunch today. He affirmed that he did not miss the real cheese one bit! 🙂
Nicole
Hello! I’ve been using your recipes for a while now and I LOVE them!!! And tonight, I tried this mac n cheeze for the first time—- BEST mac n cheeze recipe I have EVER tried!!!!!!! I made a few substitution though that turned out great:) Instead of using noodles, I boiled cauliflower,kale, and frozen peas (I delicious combo) and I wanted a little extra protein so I added a can of cannellini beans into my Vitamix- and wow, SO delectably delicious I had to let you know. So thanks again for another home run of a recipe!!!!!
Sandy
Hi hon,
is the starch absolutely necessary? If so, is there anything I can sub it for? Thanks!
Susan Voisin
Yes, without it the sauce will be thin and watery, hardly a sauce at all.
Lynn
in this recipe is the nutritional yeast flake or powder? I clicked on nutritional yeast and went to the website and there it stated to use 1/2 the amount of yeast if using powder vs flake…so in this recipe are you using flake or powder
Susan Voisin
In this recipe (and all of my recipes) I use flakes.
Elizabeth Cassidy
This should win an award! It tastes so good that I want to take off all my clothes and go swimming in it! I tried another recipe on engine2’s site that was expensive and gross , this is cheap to make an tastes amazing!!!!
Michelle DG
I made this for the first time today for lunch and it was DELISH!!! I have NEVER made a bad recipe from you site. Thank you so much! You are making it possible for me to stay vegan!
Camille Chapman
This sauce sounds great except for tahini. Because I have heart disease, I’ve been following Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s regime and he says NO FAT! Their is fat in tahini, avocado, nuts, peanut butter and oil, so I can’t include them on my diet. Can you recommend a replacement for tahini?
Susan Voisin
You can just leave it out.
Nickie
I’m a fan of the roads end chreese and I decided to test this out. It’s great! Except, there’s a certain bitterness to it that might’ve been from the tahini. Has this ever happened to you? I never used to use tahini before so I’m wondering if I just bought the wrong kind.
Karen
This cheese sauce was fablous. I poured it over my roasted cauliflower. The sacue was a little runny but it worked. What should I do to thicken it?
Susan Voisin
Did you cook the sauce? It needs to be cooked before it’ll thicken up.
Karen
No, I did not. I guess I thought baking it would do the same. This is why I read your blog and don’t write one. Thanks. Still very nummy. I will be making this again and again. Next time I will cook it though. 😉
Anne
This is by far my favorite vegan mac & cheese recipe! I have easily tried 50 different recipes, mixes etc.. and I always come back to this. You have made my comfort food dreams come true!
Danica
OH MY GOD. This is incredible! And this is coming from someone who NEVER follows a recipe and tend to make things up as I go (which usually turn out very good) but this is fantastic! Most recipes dissappoint me quite a bit but this was so great. I subbed the pasta for mung-bean fettucine and the tahini for cashew butter and halved the lemon juice but other than that I stuck to it. So great! x
Jolene
Thank you so much for this recipe, I love it! It is my favourite healthier version of mac and cheese and I have made it quite a few times now so I figured you should know how thankful I am that you shared it! My husband loves it as well, he’s not a big fan of the baked kinds with breadcrumbs. And I also love how simple it is to make (I just need to remind myself of that when I’m craving Annie’s White Cheddar Shells!)
Evelyn
Will this recipe freeze well?
Susan Voisin
Yes, it should freeze just fine.
Brittney
Really good, easy recipe to follow.
Diane
Omg just made this tonight and it was so good! Nice and creamy and full of flavor. My boyfriend and I ate the whole thing and I see you said it was 8 servings LOL ! I eat a high carb low fat vegan diet so I eat a lot 🙂 can’t wait to try another recipes of yours, thank you so much 🙂
Jennifer Manriquez
I just made this recipe. It is AMAZING!
vegebet
I love this recipe! Just made it and used whole wheat pasta. What a great flavor!
Annette
Just found your website, was looking for a mac and cheese without using vegan butter and flour (wanted a lowfat or no fat mac and cheese). Was wondering if I could use arrow root instead of cornstarch (I do not have any non gmo cornstarch)? And if so how much do you think I would use? Thanks
Susan Voisin
I haven’t used arrowroot in this recipe, but it should work.
Hailey
I just made this and it was amazing. Only thing I changed was to add a bit of leek. I sauteed that, the garlic and the spices in some homemade mushroom stock before adding to the blender. I topped with a ‘parmesan’ of chopped almonds, hulled hemp seeds, and nutritional yeast which made it a bit more fatty but, which I wouldn’t have done on an ordinary night – but I was having people over so I went a bit wild!
Joyous
I usually love everything vegan but this was my first attempt at mac & cheese, as it’s my son’s favorite thing and finding a dairy free version is difficult.
I hate to say it, but I hated it. This is not tasty at all 🙁
Is it the nutritional yeast…. or what… ? Such a weird flavor. Nothing like I was hoping. Open to any suggestions if anyone’s still reading this post.
Thanks.
Sara
I have got to say – This. Was. Delicious. Thank you sooo much for sharing! As an indicator of how much I loved this mac, please know that I never leave comments. Anywhere. Ever. I always mean to but I never get around to it. I do quite a bit of cooking and have been experimenting with many different mac and cheeze recipes and though others have been yummy, they were also super time consuming. Not only is this recipe great, but it was super easy and quick as well. So thank you thank you thank you! I did change one thing. I thought the sauce needed a little more acidity so I added a few tablespoons of an arrabiata tomato sauce I made a few nights ago as well as an extra 1/2 tsp of miso. Did the trick and now I am in love! I licked the bowl clean!
Laura
I’m not actually vegan but just trying out healthy recipes, and I loved this! If anything I found the sauce a bit too flavoursome (but that was probably my fault as I was trying to convert between US and UK units and reduce the yield to 1!) I’m now looking forward to using this sauce for other recipes and trying some variations! Thanks!
Michelle (Leo Sigh)
Thanks so much for this. I’m just in the process of trying to find nutritional yeast in Thailand where I live, which is how I just found your site via a Google search 🙂 Not sure if it’s available here, but will definitely be giving this a try if it is, as cheese is just about the only thing I miss from my former non-plant based diet 🙂
Fabulous website, btw. Now have you bookmarked as I’ve only recently started the Starch Solution, vegan diet, and am always looking for good recipes.
Chelsea
Hi Susan,
We met for the second time at VVC last weekend. I was hoping I could reprint this recipe in our newsletter. You can email me directly at chelsea@nwveg.org. Thanks Susan!
Erika
I read all the positive comments on this post and thought that maybe this recipe would be good… that was an understatement though… it was SPECTACULAR. Susan, thank you SO MUCH for sharing this recipe. Seriously… this recipe has changed my life. I’m not vegan, but I am lactose-intolerant and I have IBS, so the list of things I can eat without messing my stomach up is very small. I had pretty much everything already in the fridge or pantry, so I didn’t have to go out and buy a lot of expensive ingredients like you would usually have to do for mac and cheese, vegan or not! The flavor and texture was AMAZING. I added some sauteed portabello mushrooms mixed in with the pasta and topped it with some breadcrumbs and fresh parsley and cooked it in the oven for 15 minutes. I was worried the pasta would dry out so I made a 1/2 batch of more sauce. Turns out the pasta was not dry at all… so I was left with more sauce… which I put on EVERYTHING… broccoli, eggs, tortillas, you name it. I really appreciate how this recipe isn’t really calorie heavy like the cashew cheese recipes I have tried and doesn’t have a lot of processed ingredients. I will definitely be printing this recipe out and putting it on my fridge to make on a weekly basis. I truly cannot express my gratitude to you for posting this recipe… thank you SO much!!!
Lindsay Hoppe
I’ve been making this recipe for years, ever since you posted it, and I find it amazing. Going to make this again soon! Thanks for your hard work Susan. I still love your blog, even after all this time!
Virve
The recipe looks good and something I’m going to try out since I’m trying to switch back to totally vegan diet once again. I love to use nutritional yeast as replacement for cheesy flavor and I use it in my kitchen a lot. Add it for smashed avocado with pinch of salt and you get really good spread for your sandwich. I would not count any cooked food very good source for B-12 though with the fact that B-12 is heat sensitive. Because it means that when you cook it you lose at least 89% from it. From what I’m reading in here I understood that you have to bring the sauce up to a boil in this recipe what means that it will destroy most of the B-12 if you use refined nutritional yeast flakes.