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Vegan Black Pepper Mac and Cheese with a light potato carrot cheese sauce. Free of dairy, egg, corn, nuts. Can be made soy-free and gluten-free with gf pasta. 30 minute meal. Add cashews to make a thicker creamier sauce. Vegan Mac and Cheese Recipe.
More Mac n cheese! Cannot have enough mac recipes right.
Veggie cheese is all over the web recently. So I made some my way. No prep needed, no mashed potatoes needed. Cook the potatoes and veggies you want to use for 15-18 minutes. Blend, boil with pasta, done. Easy and simple.
And black pepper oh my. I don’t know why I haven’t added this much pepper to my mac before. It tastes amazing! more pepper= more fun.
This is a light sauce. For a creamier sauce, add sesame or pumpkin seeds or cashews. Use whole grain pasta or gf pasta to preference. Add more veggies in the cheese sauce or add with broccoli and use less pasta. Variations are endless. The veggie cheese sauce is one of those sauces that either one loves or doesn’t (as seen on the interweb on the many variations of the sauce) just like the butternut sauce mac :).
This missing scroll bar is annoying. Has anyone’s wordpress editor scroll bar disappeared with the WP 4.2 upgrade?
More Macs and Pasta recipes from the blog.
- Masala Mac and Cheese Vegan Recipe
- Cauliflower Alfredo, Spinach, artichoke Lasagna
- Pumpkin Sage Pasta with Pumpkin Cream Sauce and Crispy Sage
- Instant Mac and cheese mix in a jar
- Nacho Mac and cheese Casserole
Video:
Vegan Black Pepper Mac and Cheese with Potato Carrot Cheese Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups water
- 1 medium potato, about 1 cup or use 3/4 cup mashed potatoes
- 1/3 cup chopped carrots
- 4 garlic cloves , or 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tbsp chopped onion , or use 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 green chili, optional
- 1/2 medium tomato, chopped
- 1/2 to 1 tsp prepared mustard
- 2 tsp soy sauce , or liquid aminos
- 3 to 4 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 to 3 tsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, omit to make oil free
- 1/3 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp sriracha, optional
- 3/4 tsp or more salt
- 1/4 tsp white pepper
- 3/4 to 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, divided
- 6 to 8 oz elbows pasta, cooked to preference
- 1 cup broccoli chopped small
Instructions
- In a skillet, add water, potato, carrots, garlic, onion, chili and tomato. Cover and cook over medium-high heat for 17 to 19 minutes or until the potato is very tender and breaks easily. (add 2 Tbsp cashews for creamier sauce). Cool slightly.
- Meanwhile, cook the pasta to aldente. (in parallel with the above step if you like).
- Add the potato carrot mixture to a blender with the rest of the ingredients. Blend until smooth. taste and adjust salt and spice.
- Transfer to the pan over medium heat. Add salt, white pepper, 1/3 tsp black pepper. Mix in. Bring to a boil. Carefully taste and adjust salt, cheesiness (add more nutritional yeast if needed).
- Add the cooked pasta and broccoli or other veggies. Mix in. Cover and cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until the sauce comes to a good boil and thickens.
- Let it sit for 5 minutes. Mix in the rest of the freshly ground black pepper (1/2 to 2/3 tsp). Sprinkle more pepper if you wish and serve/
Video
Notes
If you like your broccoli and veggies a bit cooked, add them to the pasta pot, 5 minutes before the pasta will be taken off heat. Drain both and keep aside. Dont like carrots? Use zucchini Nutritional values based on one serving
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I will be making this for my family picnic, I’m planning on cooking the night before…. Any suggestions on how to keep it super creamy when heated the next day? (Sans nuts due to allergies). Thank you!!
without the nuts the sauce will not congeal too much anyway. keep extra sauce.
We substituted jalapeno pepper for chili pepper and not a good idea!!! It is so spicy that we had difficulty finishing our plate. The texture of the mac n cheese is not usual, it is more soup-like. Well i need to find another mac n cheese recipe!
Genevieve, Add some soaked cashews into the blender. They will thicken up the sauce to be cheese like.
Hey ! I am a new veggie/ on the way to vegan!
I would love to know how to add the cashews? and how many
Is it into the blender or do i put them in to cook so they get soft ?
Add 2 to 4 tbsp of cashews. you can soak them for 15 mins and then add them to the blender with the rest of the sauce ingredients.
I made a couple changes to this based on what I had lying around and it was delicious! I used sweet potato instead of white, added a bit of turmeric, used a shishito pepper because I had no green chile, doubled the amount of broccoli and added a frozen veggie medley just for extra variety and stuff. I didn’t have any white pepper either but I just used my rainbow peppercorns and man! The sauce was great. Thank you for the recipe 🙂
thats great!
I was going to wait and make when I had green chilis, but with this environment we just make do! I had some shishito peppers so I’m going to try. I made one with roasted poblanos once…a nacho sauce so I guess any pepper with some zing! Great idea!
This sauce looks really good! Easy enough for a week night meal. This is going to be made this week 🙂 thank you for sharing!
SUPER DUPER AWESOME! Sauce was so thick and gooey! Did not add mustard or any spice but added more Dr. Bragg’s and Nutritional Yeast. Also added vegan margarine. Love love love this recipe! It’s definitely my go-to Mac n Cheese. Bringing this to our office pot luck tomorrow. I added baby spinach and artichokes as a special treat 🙂 Top this off with Daiya Cheese and you’ll be in heaven. 😀
Awesome!!