Nut-free Vegan Mac and Cheese

This is an easy vegan mac and cheese sauce without cashews, soy, oil, and gluten as well. What’s more? It is an easy, creamy, veggie-packed sauce that is ready in 20 minutes. All you need is a handful of vegetables, sunflower seeds, and nutritional yeast to make a healthy macaroni and cheese.

Yes, another pasta sauce. You can’t have enough pasta sauce for sure. If you need a quick lunch or dinner, a pasta dish is always a good choice. You can use different pasta and different sauce every time to make things even more interesting. Our favorite pasta sauces are vegan spaghetti bolognese sauce, hidden vegetable sauce, and our popular vegan cashew alfredo sauce which is ready in 15 minutes! Or you can also visit our collection for even more vegan pasta sauce recipes.

What to expect from this recipe

There are 3 types of vegan mac and cheese recipes out there:

• veggie-based
• nut-based
• store-bought vegan cheese-based

What all the above versions have in common is that they will be an EXACT match for dairy mac and cheese. However, if you change your expectations, you might be surprised how delicious a non-dairy mac n cheese sauce can be. So how it will taste like?

• Potatoes and sweet potatoes will give an absolutely creamy texture.
• Sunflower seeds make them heavy and filling.
• If you have tasted nutritional yeast, you’ll know that it is much closer to dairy Parmesan cheese than dairy mozzarella. And this will be reflected in the final flavor. It will taste mature, nutty, rich, and a bit overpowering. If you don’t like its taste, I heard good things about white miso paste and chickpea miso as a substitute.
• Carrots and sweet potatoes give it an orange hue, which brings the color closer to a cheddar sauce.

Ingredients

This dairy-free mac and cheese sauce requires only 7 ingredients and a really good blender. You can have the best creaminess if you use a high-power blender like Vitamix. So what do you need to make this recipe?

• Sunflower seeds – You can try using other seeds as well, but sunflower seed has the most neutral and the least nutty taste among them all. Some readers had success with pumpkin seeds (aka pepitas) as well.
• Carrot
• Potato
• Sweet potato
• Onion – We used raw onion, but you can use onion powder. As far as I know, 1 cup of chopped onions equals to 1 tablespoon of onion powder.
• Garlic – We used raw garlic, but you can use garlic powder instead. As far as I know, a clove equals to ¼ teaspoon of garlic powder.
• Nutritional yeast
• Vegetable broth
• Salt and black pepper

No vegan butter, no oat milk, almond milk, or any fancy ingredient is needed. This nut-free recipe is easy and cheap. Since you only need a handful of things to make 6 servings, you can do a sort of leftover version. You can use up any potatoes or carrots you don’t need for your more intricate main dinner course. 🙂

🛒 You can find detailed measurements for all ingredients in the printable version of the recipe card at the bottom of this post.

Instructions

Preparing the ingredients

Since this recipe is a vegan mac and cheese without nuts, no soaking or overnight preparation is needed.

• Boil water and cook pasta as per instructions on the packaging. 
• Wash, peel, and dice potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots. The smaller you dice them, the shorter will be the cooking time.
• Peel and chop onion and garlic.

Cooking the vegetables

1. Take a large pot or stockpot and add all vegetables (diced potatoes, diced sweet potatoes, diced carrots, chopped onion, and garlic) at once.
2. Add vegetable broth and cook them over medium heat until all of them are soft. When they are fork-tender and ready, drain them, but reserve 1 cup of the cooking water.

Blending them to make a vegan cheese sauce

3. Transfer all cooked vegetables into a blender.
4. Add sunflower seeds (no need to soak them), nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, sweet paprika powder, and rice flour or corn starch.
5. Blend them until you have a creamy sauce. When pasta is ready, drain the water. Pour the sauce on the pasta and enjoy!

Top tips to make it perfectly

• Chop vegetables evenly and small – All root veggies are hard, so they need a long time to get tender. The smaller you cut the veggies, the shorter will be the cooking time.
• Vitamix vs regular blender – You can certainly use a hand blender (aka immersion blender), a food processor, or a regular blender. They all make a creamy sauce. However, if you need this sauce to be extra smooth without a single little piece to find, we recommend using a high-powered blender like Vitamix*. We took new photos for this recipe after buying a Vitamix and there was a huge difference.
• What if it is not thick enough? – There are 20 ways to thicken something. In this recipe, the easiest is to put it back in the pot and cook it down because the root veggies already have a starch content. Or you can add a bit of rice flour or corn/arrowroot/tapioca starch to make the sauce even gooier and thicker. It is really up to you.

Toppings

Now, you have a gooey, cheesy, and creamy vegan mac and cheese sauce, which is already great on its own. But how about some toppings:

• chives, spring onion
• parsley
• chili flakes, smoked paprika
• almond flakes
• wilted spinach or kale
• breadcrumbs or other substitutes
• crispy vegan bacon bits
• green peas, corn, or any other canned legume
• roasted asparagus and mushrooms
• pan-fried oyster mushrooms
• hot sauce, salsa, or jalapeno
• eggplant meatballs, chickpea meatballs, vegan meatballs, or IKEA veggie balls.

What is your favorite topping? Let us know in the comments.

FAQs and substitutions

Can you use other veggies?

Carrots and sweet potatoes are somewhat interchangeable in this recipe. If you have one or the other just skip the one you don’t have. Not to turn this into a butternut squash mac but if that is all you have substitute squash for one of the orange vegetables.

Not vegetable, but we also made a melted mozzarella sauce out of white beans for our vegan eggplant parmesan. It is delicious next to a pomodoro sauce, but we never tried it on its own with pasta. Let us know if you do.

What if I don’t like nutritional yeast?

You need something cheezy and nutritional yeast is the easiest ingredient to do so. I heard good things about white miso and chickpea miso.

How do you store it?

You can keep leftovers in the refrigerator for 2-3 days tops without any problem. However, if you store it after mixing it with the pasta, the noodles will absorb some of the moisture of the sauce and it might not be as juicy as it was. We recommend storing the sauce by itself and only pouring it on the paste before serving.

Can you freeze it?

I never had to freeze it as it is usually gone by day 2. If you try to freeze the sauce, let me know how it turns out.

Is sunflower seed healthy?

Raw, unsalted sunflower seeds are surprisingly packed with a lot of nutrients. Not to mention compared to cashews or almonds, they are on the cheap side.

According to Cronometer 1 cup of raw sunflower seeds contains an astonishing amount of good plant-based protein (approx. 30g) and healthy plant-based Omega-6 fat (approx. 33g). It is very rich in Vitamin E, B1, B3, B6 and folate and high in minerals like copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus and zinc.

Who knew? Read more about sunflower seeds in Healthline’s article about 6 healthy seeds.

Allergen info

This no cashew mac and cheese sauce recipe is meat-free, egg-free, and dairy-free.

• Vegan – All ingredients are supposed to be vegan.
• Nut-free – Yes it is. This recipe uses sunflower seeds. In any event, always check the labels for cross-contamination for whatever product you buy especially nutritional yeast.
• WFPB-friendly (whole foods plant-based) – It is compliant since all ingredients are whole foods and no oil or sugar is added.
• Gluten-free – You need to choose gluten-free pasta. For example this corn quinoa and rice fusilli or this protein-packed chickpea pasta or this gluten-free chia flour pasta. Other than that all other ingredients are supposed to be gluten-free, but always check the packaging for cross-contamination info.
• Soy-free – All ingredients are supposed to be soy-free.

More vegan pasta recipes

We have a collection of more than 30 easy and delicious vegan pasta recipes, or check out our quick vegan meals collection.

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UPDATED: This recipe was originally posted in Nov 2018, but was rewritten and republished with new photos, instructions, and tips in Sep 2022.