Cheese-less Cheese Sauce

This cheese-less sauce is great for dipping veggies into, making nachos, or topping a baked potato. Also, it is vegan, cholesterol free and full of fiber and protein. If you cannot find an 8 ounce jar of roasted red peppers just use a larger jar and weigh out 6 ounces of drained peppers.

Makes: 2 1/2 cups

Preparation time: 10m
Cooking time: 10m
Total time: 10m

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice (preferably freshly squeezed)
  • 3/4 cup almonds or cashews
  • 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
  • 1 tablespoon dried minced onion (or 1 teaspoon onion powder)
  • 1 teaspoon coarse salt (e.g. kosher salt)
  • 1 cup water
  • 8 ounce jar roasted red peppers (drained, this is 6 ounces of peppers)

Equipment: blender

Instructions:

  1. Put all of the ingredients into the blender and blend on high for 5-6 minutes until the sauce is smooth and starts to thicken. This recipe works best with a high-powered blender like a Vitamix, but if you have a less powerful blender you can still make it. It will not be as smooth though, and you'll need to reduce the amound of water slightly.
  2. If you find the sauce too thin just add more almonds and nutritional yeast until you reach the desired thickness. If you find it too thick just add more water.
  3. Use as you would any regular cheese sauce.

There are several similar cheese-less sauce recipes out there. This one was adapted from two others, the "Not-so cheese sauce" from the Vitamix cookbook and the "Macaroni and Not Cheese" recipe from the Engine 2 diet: http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2010/10/engine-2s-macaroni-not-cheese/

I found both of these recipes lacking in flavor and too many unnecessary steps so I came up with a simplified recipe with different ingredient ratios.