So, would you believe me if I presented you with the above cheese dips/spreads and told you they were totally VEGAN and allergen friendly? How shocked would you be? Well, gasp away, friend. Or not, because you obviously already read the post title.
....but you can wow your friends and your family now! I mean, look at this stuff. Looook at it.
...and the great part is, I'm not going to just give you a recipe, I am going to give you a base and a method, so that you can impart your own custom flavours and textures! Oh yes!
I've been twiddling through pinterest for weeks cooking dairy free cheese recipes and kind of came up with a way of making ones that actually taste like cheese. My husband, who still EATS cheese, has agreed to give up dairy because of these two guys pictured above, so I am pretty happy for all the work.
I will be completely honest and say that there was a recipe who most inspired me in the cooking and that was Chef Chloe's Mac-N-Cheese sauce which I felt was most cheesy of vegan cheese sauces. It was a bit sweeter than I thought cheese should be though, I suppose, and not thick enough for my own liking, and there were various other things I wanted to do differently so it became something quite different, and then I liked the method so much that I made more of them, and you can make them into hard cheeses too!
Alright so enough yammering.
So, roight, what you should do like, is:
* Have a liter of nondairy milk that is NOT sweetened. I like almond milk in this application, it gives it a creamy texture without tasting almond-y. (Gluten-frees, be careful as many DF milks have maltodextrin or cross contamination or other unsavoury issues. In any case.)
*Have some nondairy spread, it needs to be a buttery one I'm afraid although I am sure you could use avocado oil or olive oil (though I haven't tried that and don't blame me if it tastes weird. *shrug*) Pure Spread is what I used, it is a sunflower spread that is free of allergens.
*You also need some flour, up to a cup's worth depending on how thck you want the sauce, I just used my all purpose gluten-free flour mix that I make in my kitchen. You could use plain old amaranth or buckwheat or any high-starch protein flour here, though.
*Have some nutritional yeast,
*sea salt,
*ACV and
*garlic powder at the ready.
Noow, you'll also need a whisk and a strong arm. I like my electric whisk, it gets the job done. A big saucepan/pot, too. Okie dokie, so you want to put about half a cup or so of the spread in the pan/pot and roughly 2/3rdsish cups of flour, so you can make yourself a roux. If you want a thicker cheese then the one I've pictured above, i.e. to make something you could spread like butter on your toast, you could either make more roux (I think I used about double this amount of roux, and the cheese in the picture is rather thick, but it is still liquidic enough that I was able to toss meat and vegetables in it later). Another idea to t thicken is that you can add less dairy milk...or you could try cooking it for longer to boil out more of the liquid. These will all effect the flavour to some degree but this is so nice tasting I can't see it mattering that much. One thing I did try was adding milled chia to one "batch" which thickened it very well. A bit of arrowroot or so could also help. In any case...
Pour the DF milk and other things into your sauce and whisk. As to how much of the other things to put in....start with about 2/3 cup of nutritional yeast, 2 tsp of garlic powder, 2 tsp ACV and 4 tsp of sea salt and thoroughly incorporate them and see how you like this (just the flavour, not the texture as it will be quite liquidic still.) Adjust anything to taste-if you want it "cheesier", add more nutritional yeast.
My orange sauce has a "bolder" taste, and what I did was add about 4 tablespoons of double concentrated tomato paste, black pepper and more smoked salt.
The white salt has a tangier, garlicky taste. I added about a teaspoon of mustard, extra ACV and some chopped garlic...and quite a bit more nutritional yeast.
But your flavour options are limitless, really.
OK, so now, you boil the sauce. for just a couple of minutes and you want to whisk or stir it continuously. Now turn the heat down and cook it until it is the consistency that you want it to be, still stirring...and just take it off the heat, from there!
If you want a hard cheese, I have seen a lot of recipes do this thing where you simply boil up the sauce you want and whisk it into some gelatine, or whisk gelatine into it and then let it set in a lined pan in the fridge. Or you could do that with carageenan or agar agar I'd imagine too for a vegan option. I'm not really fussed to make it hard, to be honest, I liked cheese gooey anyway so this is perfect.
I hope you enjoy this-leave me a comment and let me know what flavour combos you come up with!
BTW, the containers in the photos are about 1/4 batches. This recipe makes a LOT and I mean a LOT of cheese sauce so be prepared with a big bowl or tupperware! :) This is a very, very satisfying way to dress up your vegetables, might I add.
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