Smoky, creamy, and rich – you’re gonna want to load up your plates with this smoky mac and cheese dish.
The trick to this creamy recipe? Cashews. In fact, Cashews make for the perfect vegan cheese base with its smokiness, nuttiness, and rich flavors.
With a good solid cashew foundation, you can whip up just about any kind of cheese-based dish with a little bit of this-and-that. For this recipe, I utilized what was in my pantry.
Mac & Cheese Key Ingredients
All of the ingredients listed in the recipe all work together to bring a creamy, umami, flavor-packed mac and cheese. However, some play a bigger part than others.
Nutritional Yeast helps bring forth an umami punch to the macaroni and cheese. It also brings on a “cheesy” or nutty flavor to the dish. Its flavor is intense, so no need to add more than what’s listed.
Raw cashews are boiled for about 10 minutes and then blended into a creamy white sauce. On its own, it’s quite bland with smoky notes, but the added ingredients add color and flavor.
Tomato paste will add both color and depth to the mac and cheese recipe. When we think of traditional mac and cheese, we think of savory, a dash of tang, and sharpness – tomato paste will help bring that forward.
Smoked paprika will support the smoky bite from the raw cashews. If you’re into smoked flavors, this will be a must-have ingredient.
More Vegan Cheese Sauce Recipes:
What Kind Of Pasta Should I Use?
Elbow pasta is known for its appearance in mac and cheese recipes – and for good reason. Elbow pasta is great for thick-sauced dishes like macaroni and cheese.
Other pasta types you can consider for mac and cheese include bowtie, shells, rotini, and cavatappi. Choose what you have or prefer. I love using elbow pasta, but I’ll switch that out depending on what I currently have in my pantry.
Kitchen Tools I Use And Love
One kitchen tool I really want to highlight here is the silicone spatula set. It’s one of my standard, everyday kitchen tool that makes flipping and stirring seamless. It is also gentle on non-stick cookware and useful for scrapping sauces, batter, or liquids from a bowl.
For more quick and easy plant-based dinner recipes, check out 30-Minute Plant-Based Dinner Ideas.
Smoky Mac and Cheese Recipe [Vegan]
Ingredients
- 1 cup cashews raw, unsalted
- 4 cups water for boiling
- 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
- 2 teaspooon smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- Salt
- 1 1/2 cups reserved cashew water
- 2 cups macaroni pasta uncooked
Instructions
- Set a pot of water over high heat. Once at a boil, add cashews and boil for 10 minutes. Next, separate cashews from the water and keep leftover cashew water.
- In a blender, add cashews, nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, tomato paste, garlic powder, fresh lemon juice, salt, and 1.5 cups of the leftover cashew water. Then, blend until smooth.
- Prepare the pasta according to the package’s instructions. Stir together cheese sauce to the pasta.
Notes
- Use raw and unsalted cashew. This is a MUST. Toasted, seasoned cashews won’t get the right flavor and texture for the cheese sauce.
- Save the water you used from boiling the cashews.
- Lastly, if you don’t set aside enough water from the cashew, just add regular water.
- If you want it extra creamy and less healthy, add vegan butter. My vegan butter of choice is Melt.
Did you try out this Smoky Mac and Cheese Recipe?
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Now that’s a creamy Vegan Mac + Cheese! This looks so good!
And it tastes even better than it looks! 🙂
Alright now! This looks delicious! Thank you for all of the helpful notes
It’s one of my favorite vegan things to make! It’s soooo good!
OMG how creamy is this!!!!!!! I never tried vegan Mac+Cheese but this looks so amazing – I need to try it!
I can’t get over how creamy the sauce looks!
This looks like some game-changing vegan Mac n’cheese! I can’t wait to make this!!! Mmmmm!!
I’ve made this three times now. I’ve tweaked the sauce recipe to be cashews and water, nooch, garlic powder, ¼ tsp veggie bouillon, 1½ tsp smoked paprika, ½ tsp ancho chili powder, 1 tbsp ketchup, 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar, and a generous shredding of cheeze. So so good!
Niiiiice!!! Sounds delicious. I will have to try out ancho chili powder for my next batch of vegan mac and cheese.
I am concerned that almost all the comments are about how the dish looks. Most say they are going to try it. One person who did try it radically changed the recipe. I want to switch to a plant based diet. This was not helpful or encouraging.
I am glad you’re interested in eating more green! That’s awesome. I’d say it’s definitely worth giving this recipe a go. I make this dish often and it’s one of my favorites. I am sure you’ll love it.