All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I used to be a strict vegan, and the one animal-based product I missed the most was cheese. During my time as a Greenpeace activist in college, I was introduced to Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, and the conversations and experiences I had convinced me to give up animal products for ethical environmental reasons. Like many vegans, I felt strongly about the cause—but still sorely missed cheese.
The soft burst of creamy burrata on salads, the tang of a sharp cheddar, and the briny freshness of feta—nothing I found in the dairy-free cheese section during those years could truly compare to the richness of cheese made from dairy. Lasagnas were never quite as melty as I wanted them to be, and vegan ricotta always felt chalky on my palate. I eventually accepted that this was the price I had to pay as a vegan.
When I enrolled in culinary school and began cooking professionally, it became extremely difficult to remain vegan. These days, I’m more of a flexitarian who maintains a predominantly plant-based diet—but I’ve never given up the search for that elusive vegan cheese that actually satisfies my cravings. While I haven’t solved the lasagna problem just yet, I decided to dedicate my early months at Epicurious to searching for the best vegan mac and cheese recipe: a formula for vegan macaroni and cheese that’d be creamy, comforting, and satisfying. I wanted something that’d be good enough to serve at Thanksgiving.
I started the process by isolating common ingredients in the most popular vegan mac and cheese recipes in cookbooks. To emulate the creaminess of bechamel—a roux-based white sauce made by cooking butter, flour, and milk—and other cheese sauces, many of the recipes I found relied on starchy ingredients, such as white beans, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, or cauliflower. If the sauces weren’t bean- or vegetable-based, they usually called for store-bought vegan shredded cheese or a cashew sauce. Regardless of what the base was, nearly all of the recipes involved nutritional yeast, a vegan and gluten-free ingredient that’s umami-rich and lends a cheesy flavor to any dish.
Before I get into the nitty gritty, I have to warn you: If you’re looking for a perfect vegan replica of macaroni and cheese that’s melty, stretchy, and tastes like the intense powdered-cheddar flavor of your favorite boxed macaroni, you aren’t going to find it here. Even the very best vegan mac and cheese recipe isn’t going to do that, simply because vegan macaroni and cheese isn’t made with cheese. Please don’t be mad at me. It’s the cold, hard truth. Plenty of vegan cheeses boast meltability and stretchability, but their textures when melted are not as elastic as dairy-based cheese. Most have a slightly brittle texture that’s a bit rubbery when cooked.
But if you’re looking for a vegan mac and cheese that’s creamy, comforting, and delicious, keep on reading.
The first mac and cheese recipes I tested were made with vegetable or bean purées. I cooked one with carrots and potatoes, a second one with butternut squash, and a third version with cauliflower and white beans. In each of those recipes, vegetables and/or beans were puréed with nutritional yeast to make a starchy, cheesy-tasting base to replicate the thick, luscious bechamel that typically underpins classic stovetop mac and cheese. While each recipe was tasty, none of them offered exactly what I was looking for. The high starch content of these puréed vegetables created silky and thick sauces, but they lacked the fatty richness and umami proteins of a dairy-based cheese sauce. Ultimately, they didn’t mimic the taste or texture of macaroni and cheese. Rather, they tasted exactly like what they were: Pasta cooked and coated in a puréed sauce of vegetables or beans.
Lisa Le, a vegan blogger, told me she generally avoided this method unless she wanted baked cheesy vegetable pasta. “Would I eat it? Sure. But give me ooey, gooey, and creamy sauce with vegan cheeses over those vegetable purée pastas,” she says. “A roux-based cheese sauce made with vegan shredded cheese products formulated to melt is always better in my books.” I purchased Le’s preferred brand of vegan shredded cheddar and got to work.
That vegan cheese is coconut-oil based, with additional vegan cheddar flavoring. It looks almost indistinguishable from regular shredded cheddar and even melts like cheese, but I found it a little too sharp—almost like it was overcompensating for its lack of dairy by being even tangier than a regular cheddar. Nevertheless, I stirred it into a saucepan of simmering nut milk, then tossed the sauce with macaroni. Despite having whisked and simmered for 15 minutes, some of the vegan shreds never melted, and those that did melt were not particularly stretchy. It was definitely closer to what I was looking for, but not as creamy as I would have liked.
I had just one more method to try: cashew sauce.
In his book On Food and Cooking, food scientist Harold McGee hailed nuts as “the richest foods that we eat” after pure fats and oils. According to McGee, “Cashews are unusual among oily nuts in containing a significant amount of starch (around 12% of their weight), which makes them more effective than most nuts at thickening water-based dishes.” Vegans often rely on cashews precisely because of this high starch and fat content when making creamy vegan cheeses and sauce. For the same reason, cashews are popular in several South Asian curries, such as Navratan korma.
I decided to try the cashew-based Cheeze Sauce featured in Rachel Ama’s new book One Pot: Three Ways. To make the sauce, I blitzed together raw, unsoaked whole cashews, nutritional yeast, white miso, vegan Dijon mustard (traditional Dijon is made with verjus that’s filtered with a milk protein, casein, or egg whites, so look carefully at the jar before you buy!), ground turmeric, granulated garlic, and water.
Finally, I had a hit. I was surprised by how luxuriously creamy and rich the sauce was: The white miso provided an earthy and deeply savory flavor with just the right amount of tang, while the nutritional yeast contributed exactly the amount of cheesiness I wanted without being overwhelming.
Upon our first bite, my weary dinner companion and I declared Ama’s Cheeze Sauce the winner, for several reasons. Of all the recipes I made, this recipe was the only one which, including pasta cooking time, took me less than 20 minutes from start to finish. While it wasn’t stretchy like mac and cheese made with vegan cheese shreds might be, it had a balanced flavor and a creamy quality the others didn’t have. Come Thanksgiving, I plan on baking it in a casserole dish and topping it with garlic bread breadcrumbs. My former vegan self would be very happy with it, and I’m confident just about anyone else would, too.
