If we did a poll asking, “What is your ultimate comfort food?”, we’re pretty confident that a substantial number of you would eagerly and without hesitation declare, “Mac & Cheese, of course!”.  Many people, even those who have been vegan their whole adult lives, look back with longing on the crack mac and cheese of our youth…. or if we’re really lucky, look back on homemade sticky, crusty, gooey baked macaroni.  If your family fed you the latter as a child, this recipe might not feel all that familiar.  If you were a kid who craved kraft’s yellow yumminess, however (or if your vice was velveeta)… listen up!

There are a few recipes in circulation, most of which use a similar combination of ingredients, for vegan versions of that addictive cheese sauce we couldn’t live without as kids. Most recipes use nutritional yeast as the main component. If you haven’t discovered nutritional yeast yet, head out to a natural foods store and pick some up in the bulk section. It’s an easy way to add a buttery flavor without adding fat to your dish.  What we’re offering is a modified version of Susan V’s “Easy Macaroni and ‘Cheeze’” recipe.  Like her and her family, we very much enjoy Road’s End Organics Chreese sauces, so we wanted to try out her recipe, which she describes as similar to theirs.  But because we didn’t have all the ingredients on her list (and because we’d tried to make cheese sauces before and disliked certain components), we made a few changes.  What resulted was a bit simpler, fast and still super tasty.

We recommend this sauce for noodles of course (whole grain pasta for we McDougallers), but also for scalloped potatoes and other things like broccoli rice casseroles.  And we highly recommend a nice sprinkling of Tony Chachere’s Cajun Seasoning to top it off.  It adds the perfect punch of flavor that makes this sauce really sing, and your dish just won’t be nearly as good without it. (same goes for the Road’s End Organics Mac & Chreese, btw).

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups water                                                         1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 cup fat-free soy milk                                              1 teaspoon onion powder

3/4 cup nutritional yeast                                       1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

3 tablespoons cornstarch                                         1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1/8 teaspoon lemon juice                                         pinch of smoked paprika

1 1/2 teaspoons salt                                                    pinch of cayenne pepper

Whisk together all ingredients in a non-stick sauce pan on low/medium heat until sauce thickens to desired consistency. Add to cooked pasta and stir to coat evenly. Or for a scrumptious maximum weight loss version, stir into cooked brown rice!  The sauce is great over broccoli and baked potatoes and I plan to use it as a base to make a nacho cheese dip in the future.  Also, coming up, look for a post on Jasperfields’ delicious Scalloped Potatoes.

Enjoy!