Easy Vegan Cheese Sauce Recipe | Ready In 3 Minutes! - Elavegan (2024)

FAQs

How do you make cheese sauce that doesn't split? ›

For Smooth, Stable Cheese Sauces, Cornstarch and Evaporated Milk Are Your Friends. How to make a stable emulsion of melted cheese using two basic pantry staples.

You can make a roux and add water to it, but what you'll get won't be bechamel. It will be pretty flavorless and it won't have a great texture. If you don't want to use dairy you can make a velouté instead. It's essentially the same process, but instead of using milk you use either chicken, veal, or fish stock.

Vegan cheese is usually made from soy, nuts, vegetable oils, and various other natural ingredients like peas or arrowroot. Vegan cheese is seen as a healthier alternative to cheese by some, and may reduce your risk of heart disease due to its lower content of fat.

My #1 tip for creating a non grainy, smooth cheese sauce is to not boil the milk. Keep the heat at a consistent medium during the entire cooking process, being ready to turn it down if the milk starts to boil. Cheese sauce becomes grainy when the cheese breaks down because the liquid was too hot.

Starch (such as all-purpose flour, cornstarch, or potato flour) will keep the cheese from curdling. If using all-purpose flour, add it to the mixture before the cheese; it needs to be cooked for a few minutes to remove the starchy taste.

1. Use Arrowroot Powder: Arrowroot is a natural thickening agent that doesn't have a strong taste. Mix a small amount of arrowroot powder with a bit of cold water to create a slurry, then gradually whisk it into the cheese sauce.

I always use oat milk, as it doesn't really have a flavour of its own which really accentuates the cheesiness! I can often taste soya milk in a sauce so tend to avoid it, but if it is your usual plant milk of choice you may find you like it.

The milk alternatives that work best (and which you choose will depend on your particular food intolerance need) are the almond milk, rice milk with sunflower seeds (or for a commercial equivalent – if it suited your diet Vitasoy Rice milk enriched with protein) and soy based milks.

Using stock in a roux

The white sauce and its derivatives are the most common ways of using a roux, but you can also use stock instead of milk for the base to a pie filling, or make a flavoured sauce called a velouté, which is normally enriched with cream.

As vegan blog Wag Free Food notes, coconut oil, coconut milk, and coconut cream are popular ingredients to make vegan cheese. The high-fat content of coconut makes it easier to create a creamy, decadent, cheese-like product.

Which cheese is most vegan? ›

Vegans can eat cheese that is comprised of plant-based ingredients like soybeans, peas, cashews, coconut, or almonds. The most common types of vegan cheeses are cheddar, gouda, parmesan, mozzarella, and cream cheese that can be found in non-dairy forms.

Real Vegan Cheese (RVC) is a grassroots, non-profit research project working to produce real cheese using cellular agriculture. We add the genes for cheese proteins to yeast and other microflora, and turn them into little protein factories, then make real cheese by adding plant-based fats and sugars.

The reduced water content of the milk helps keep it smoother and more emulsified. I usually pour all but 2 tablespoons of the milk into a pan, heat it up, whisk in the cheese until it's completely melted. I then add some starch to the saved milk and make a slurry to thicken the sauce (if needed).

Sauce temperature: If the cream sauce is too hot, it can cause the Parmesan cheese to melt and clump together, especially if it's added all at once.

Why won't my cheese melt? There are many reasons, but the biggest is the moisture content. The moisture content of the cheese has a great effect on the melting process. Cheese that contains higher amounts of fat will melt better than one that doesn't.

This happens when there's too much fat or liquid in the mixture. This can happen when there are not enough emulsifiers (which help keep your ingredients together). Sauces are usually made from multiple ingredients that include both oil and water. Oils and water will naturally separate.

It is most likely that it is the cheese in the sauces that is causing the sauces to curdle, or split. In particular some types of Cheddar cheese can let out a fair amount of oil during cooking at higher temperatures and this won't mix very well with the sauce in the dish.