Cauliflower is a magical vegetable. It’s tasty on its own, but it can transform into oil-free creamy sauces and even replace meat. In this recipe, it’s the base for my favorite creamy, cheesy queso sauce. This is great on chips but even better on top of burritos and enchiladas. Best of all, you can get the pickiest of eaters to eat their veggies this way.
Recipe information
Yield
Makes 4 cups
Ingredients
Instant Pot ingredients:
Blender ingredients:
Mix-in ingredients:
Special Equipment
Preparation
Step 1
For the Instant Pot, add the cauliflower, water, carrots and cashews to your Instant Pot and cook on high pressure for 5 minutes, then carefully do a quick pressure release by moving the valve to release the pressure.
Step 2
Pour the cooked mixture into a strainer over the sink and drain the extra water.
Step 3
For the blender, put the drained mixture along with the nutritional yeast, liquid drained from the canned tomatoes, smoked paprika, salt, chili powder, jalapeño powder (if using) and mustard powder into your blender. Blend until smooth.
Step 4
For the mix-ins, scrape out the blender contents into a mixing bowl and stir in the tomatoes and green chiles, bell pepper (if using), minced onion (if using) and cilantro.
Step 5
You can serve this at room temperature or keep it warm on the lowest slow cooker setting.
Nutrition Per Serving
How would you rate Instant-Pot Vegan Cauliflower Queso?
Leave a Review
Reviews (6)
Back to TopHave made this according to recipe a few times and it's delicious. So the 4 forks really are for recipe as written. But then, of course, then I started riffing. Double the cashews (or just toss in a big spoonful of cashew butter as you're blending), double or triple the mustard powder, go heavy on the smoked paprika, put half the Ro-Tel solids in the blender and only mix in half. And today, I got wilder and subbed rutabaga for cauliflower in an attempt to recreate the cheese dip at Vedge in Philadelphia. The rutabaga gives it a super silky texture but there's an edge to the taste. Next time (and there will be a next time!) I'll do equal weights rutabaga and carrot or maybe 1/3 each rutabaga, cauliflower, and carrot. Thanks for this excellent recipe and blueprint!
rstaffel
Seattle
6/20/2019
A lot of work for not a lot of flavor.bi even used a vegetable broth to stream the veggies. If you want a vegan dip, avocado is a much better creamy base. This was a waste of time and ingredients.
Yummy2Cookie
Phoenix, AZ
4/12/2018
One of the better vegan cheese recipes, thank you. And I will be making this again soon. The proportions were spot on, much appreciated, especially the weight alternatives. I used a conventional stovetop pressure cooker, which worked well. I did use frozen cauliflower, because of the nature of the recipe -- not going for crispness but to cook it to mush! Last, I always want to know in these recipes why cashew butter (a good organic low-salt one of course) would not work just as well and be more convenient. Frankly, it's what I used, successfully.
Longhand
Fayetteville, AR
3/3/2018
3 thumbs up on the color, texture and appearance. The taste however, not so much. I wish I could get that 1/2 head of cauliflower back...
islandprin
Seattle
2/2/2018
It's honestly crazy how well this comes out and cheese-like it seems. We were really blown away!
erincurious
Boston, MA
1/6/2018
This was AWESOME. I can't believe how creamy and delicious it came out! Even my super picky 6 year old loved it, even though he won't eat cauliflower (when he can see it!). I made for the first time a week or two ago and already yesterday my husband requested it again. Best of all, cooking it in the instant pot was so easy. I never would have thought of pressure cooking cashews. Genius! I can't say enough good things about this recipe. YUM.
aubade1
9/18/2017
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