I love featuring other fellow vegan recipe creators on my blog every once and awhile, so today’s new Vegan Mac + Cheeze recipe is brought to you by my friend Lexi from Educating Earthlings! Enjoy 🙂
Hey there new people! I’m so excited to be here in a new corner of the internet sharing some vegan recipes and knowledge with you all! Today I’ll be talking about my NEW Vegan Mac & Cheese recipe!
Before I get into the recipe, I want to introduce myself! I’m the vegan blogger behind Educating Earthlings. I love everything about food and fitness!
I create vegan recipes for busy earthlings that are always well balanced in their macros (because fitness goals). I also help others who are looking to start their own plant-based (vegan) lifestyle and need guidance along the way.
Vegan Mac & Cheese
I’ve dabbled with sauce recipes a lot over the past year+ being vegan and I’ve finally come up with the perfect blend for some extra creamy cheese sauce! I’ve tried so many different style and ingredient blends until one day I amazed myself (and my hubby).
First I started out with a low-fat recipe that included just potatoes, carrots & onions. The flavor was okay, but the texture wasn’t there. My husband was definitely turned off by the starchy texture and stuck to his fav Daiya brand.
Side note about Daiya mac & cheese: It’s AMAZING that companies are offering a vegan alternative to classic American staples – like box mac & cheese – but it’s still overly processed and not health food. I prefer to stick to a small ingredient list coming from whole foods!
Finally, I found balance in eating more healthy fats and experimented with adding cashews in the cheeze sauce. It turned out perfectly! There are a lot of variations that are delicious, but the one I’m sharing today is by far my favorite. With that said, experiment on your own with different ratios to figure out what you prefer!
Benefits of eating healthy fats
When I first started eating a vegan diet, I was really into the high-carb-low-fat (#hclf) style. This is healthy for humans since we really only need about 10% of our calories coming from protein and 10% from fats.
After learning more about a well-balanced plant-based diet, I discovered that it’s okay to hit 20-25% protein and 20% fats! Especially since I am trying to gain a little muscle 😉
Eating between 15-20% healthy fats every day will help your body build muscle, strong bones, healthy skin and beautiful hair! Plus it’s more sustainable than limiting yourself to less than 10% fat daily!
Which fats are healthy?
So now that you know it’s okay to eat more fats (compared to the standard HCLF vegan diet trends), now you need to know where to get those healthy fats from.
The majority of your fats should be coming from avocados, nut, seeds and some from organic soy products like tofu and tempeh. Stay away from processed oils and only use them when you need to for baking in very small amounts.
In this mac and cheeze recipe, the healthy fats are coming from cashews. Which tend to have a creamy texture when prepared correctly.
How to Prep the Sauce!
Stary by soaking 2 cups Organic Raw Cashews in boiling water for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, peel and chop one medium sized sweet potato, one medium sized white onion and 2-3 large carrots. Boil these root veggies until they are soft.
Combine the soaked cashews, soft root veggies and 1/4 cup Organic Nutritional Yeast in a high speed blender (blendtec or vitamixrecommended) and pulse until smooth. Add Organic Almond Milk as needed to thin. Feel free to add some extra spices like garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper or a little salt!
Cook your Banza High Protein Pasta according to the package and smother in your cheezy sauce! Top with some homemade parmesan cheese (find the full recipe in this post) and serve warm!
NOTE: You will have leftover sauce. You can freeze this in portioned containers until you are ready to use again to make for a quick and easy dinner.
That’s all folks! Make sure to go check out Educating Earthlings for recipes, workouts, freebies, e-books & MORE!
If you need any guidance on starting a plant based diet or vegan lifestyle, go check out my eBook: The Plant Based Difference! It’s a vegan starter guide and healthy living handbook created to get you started on a new path or to give you new inspiration for the future!
Vegan Mac & Cheese
Ingredients
- 1 box Lentil Pasta
- 2 cups Raw Cashews
- 1 medium-sized Sweet Potato
- 1 medium-sized White Onion
- 2-3 large Carrots
- ¼ cup Nutritional Yeast
- Plant-Based Milk for thinning the cheese
Instructions
- Soak the cashews in boiling water for about 5 minutes, drain and rinse.
- Wash, peel and chop the sweet potatoes and carrots into large cubes. Boil until soft when poked with a fork.
- Combine the cashews, veggies, nutritional yeast and spices in a high speed blender (blendtec or vitamin recommended) and blend until smooth – adding almond milk as needed to thin.
- Cook the pasta according to the package.
- Mix together the pasta and cheese sauce (you will have leftovers – freeze for later use)
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