Best Vegan Mac and Cheese in the entire world...seriously
1 1/2 pounds pasta, preferably macaroni "Cheese" Sauce:
1 1/2 cups unsweetened nondairy milk
1 1/2 cups nutritional yeast
1 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 cup water
1/3 cup tamari or soy sauce
1/4 (12 ounce) block firm (not silken) tofu
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon vegesal or in lack of fancy product, just use salt
1 dollop mustard, optional
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Boil water in a big pot and cook pasta according to package directions.
2. Add all of the "cheese" sauce ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Once pasta is cooked, drain and put it in the baking pan (about the size of a brownie pan). Pour the "cheese" sauce over the pasta.
3. Bake until the top of the pasta looks slightly browned and crispy, about 15 minutes.
This is very simple and tastes amazing! If you are cooking for yourself, it will last about 5 days if you eat it for all three meals of the day.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I thought it was great. I strayed from the recipe a little, but I usually do. I'm psyched for leftovers!
Was so excited to try this as the reviews were so good and ingredients intriguing. Cannot tell you how disappointed I was in this! While it is not a bad recipe on its own, it is in no way similar to mac and cheese. Had a very unusual taste (nutritional yeast maybe?) Followed it exactly. I do better without the block of tofu, yeast and tamari and use rice milk, Daiya. To thicken I make a roux with earth balance butter and organic flour. Tastes way better.
Amazing!!!! Made this with some very minor changes. Used 2 tsp Spike instead of Vegesal since that's what I had, and used silken tofu (can't imagine that this would make much if any difference)...cut the water down to 1/2 cup (based on some reviews stating that it was a bit too watery....and did use the mustard....probably about 2 tsp of that. Turned out great. I might use just a little less tamari next time...maybe just 1/4 cup. As is, you almost can't tell that it's in there and I think with a little less you'd still get the benefit of the flavor without being able to identify it.
This is delicious!
This recipe is so amazingly delicious! My husband who is not vegan loved it! I used only 1 lb of macaroni to make it even more creamy.
I thought this was pretty good. I just thought the sauce would've been thicker, so I was a bit disappointed about how thin it was. I also thought there was too little sauce for the amount of pasta (I halved the recipe).
I used leftover frozen tofu I had and Braggs soy sauce alternative. I didn't like the taste of the soy sauce alternative I used and would use less if I made it again and more tofu to make it thicker and to increase the amount of sauce.
Still the reigning champion of vegan mac and cheese recipes.
It definitely still has a "taste"...but I guess that's to be expected. And I think that the recipe calls for way too much garlic. I ended up adding more soymilk and a little sugar and that was taken care of, though. All in all, it's a good base to start with and experiment with to get the taste you're looking for. We added broccoli and some packaged vegan cheeses sprinkled on top. The sauce is a little watery, and seems like it could dry up a lot. We'll just have to eat the MASSIVE amount of leftovers tomorrow and find out...
This was very good. Super delicious. My wife and I both loved it.
Wow, there are 25 pages of reviews on this recipe. That has to be some kind of record.
Anyways, I made a double batch and put in too much tofu - like a whole block, instead of 1/2 block. I actually put in two blocks, then when I realized my mistake, I fished one of the blocks out with my hand, but part of the tofu block broke off and drifted deep into the blender. I was not about to root around and try to fish that part out.
OK, so I'm making a double batch and I have the blender out and I realized that all of these 'cheese sauce' ingredients will not fit into the blender. I pulled out another container and started filling that up with ingredients and then I pulled out yet another container and mostly filled that up.
The recipe calls for 1.5lbs. of pasta . . . has anyone realized that the author of this recipe, beep_i_am_a_robot, does not have a profile? I couldn't find a submission date, but I see that the first review was posted on April 05, 2006. Today is April 26, 2012, making this recipe at least 6 years old. After doing a search though VegWeb, I found that there is another 'beep_I_am_a_robot'. Could they be one and the same? The other recipe posted by the other 'beep_I_am_a_robot' has no reviews. What does this mean? Is it a message? A warning? Is this 'person' really a person, or are they really a robot?
Anyways, 1.5lbs. of pasta. I weigh my pasta and I have 3.25lbs. good enough, I throw it all in. Just after, I realize that this is a lot of pasta! It barely fit in my pot and it's not even cooked yet. I look back at the recipe and this recipe has generated over 360 reviews in about six years. Is it the most populated recipe on VegWeb? I suspect that, eventually, everyone on VegVeb makes it here. It's a VegWeb nexus.
It apprears that there are 21,452 members on VegWeb. Assuming 10% of those profiles were just accidents, that would leave 19,306. If only 20% of those were profiles that someone had forgotten about and started a new profile, that would be 16,445 profiles. If we used the Pareto principle, only 20% of those profiles are of active members. That would leave us with 3,089 active VegWeb profiles. Meaning, 8.5% of active VegWeb users have left a review on this recipe. And, the number is growing. What does it mean?
I don't know, but I can say that juggling all that 'cheese' sauce between three containers was a challenge, but I figured how to make sure everything was mixed well. I don't even want to know what 'vegesal' is, so I just used salt. I also forgot the mustard.
So all that crazy macaroni just about overflowed onto my stove, but I got it cooked and into two strainers. I pulled out our 8"X18" glass dish thing and filled it up with macaroni. But, it didn't all fit. I mean, not even close. I had about 10% of this macaroni sitting in the strainer still. 10%. More like 8.5%. What does it mean? I dunno, but maybe the author meant that we should use 1.5lbs. of cooked pasta, not uncooked. But, how would I know that?
Well, with the past in the pan, I poured the sauce onto the pasta and threw it into the oven for 20mins. I set the timer and guess what? It came out Right On Time. We have a great timer.
Also, the fact that it was posted by Anonymous is cool. Hactivists and chefs! Great!
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After making this a million times, we have some TIPS:
Do we measure cooked or uncooked pasta? Uncooked!
What the heck is 1 1/2 lbs. of uncooked pasta? We did a bit of mathematical wizardry and came up with 4 cups.
Use a whole block of tofu.
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This last time I wanted something sweeter, reminiscent of horrible, processed macaroni and cheese. So, I eliminated the:
1/3 cup tamari or soy sauce
1/4 (12 ounce) block firm (not silken) tofu
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon vegesal or in lack of fancy product, just use salt
1 dollop mustard.
I them added:
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp turmeric, hoping to add more color.
1 full block of tofu.
But, we also have a million, wonderific garden roma tomatoes, so I added them. As many as we could!
I forgot to reduce the liquid, because of the tomatoes, so it was more watery than I prefer, but it was insano delicious! Tonight, we will reduce the water.
I just made this and the only issue I had with it was that the sauce was pretty soup-like. The next time I make it I may omit the water. Edit - okay after it had a day to sit it wasn't as soupy so I won't be omitting the water.
Another thing I did differently was I diced up a small onion and added it to the hot drained pasta. I also added a tablespoon of onion powder to the sauce recipe.
This recipe was amazing. I can envision many other additions like, broccoli, tomatoes, tempeh, etc.
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