Dragonfly's Bulk, Dry Uncheese Mix
3 cups raw, organic cashew pieces
2 cups nutritional yeast (I like Red Star or Vegetarian Support)
3 tablespoons seasoning salt
3 tablespoons garlic powder (not garlic salt)
3 tablespoons onion powder (not onion salt)
8 tablespoons arrowroot powder (can use cornstarch, but it is not stringy like arrowroot)
1. Using a very dry blender, blend the nuts until they are very fine.
2. Add all ingredients, and blend in batches of about 1 cup.
3. Mix in a dry container.
4. To make sauce, add heaping 1/2 cup mix to 1 cup water, and stir over heat until thickened.
Use less water and add salsa for queso dip. Pour over hot veggies and/or pasta. Spread on vegan bread and toast for grilled uncheeses, or look up my enchilada recipe and use it that way.
You can keep this tightly covered in the fridge for about 6 weeks.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I must say, I was a doubter. I never liked cheese that much, and nutritional yeast still kinda scares me. But oh my, is this stuff good. I didn't grind the cashews too fine (had to use a small food processor and got impatient) but it turned out fine and is amazing. I'm eating it on potatoes right now and it's fantastic. It does have that cheesy flavor without being overly cheeselike, and the spices make it so tasty! I made a half batch this time, but I'll probably start making full batches from now on!
Last night I used a batch of this sauce (1/2 cup mix, 1 cup water) to make a spaghetti pie. I just mixed it into about 8-10 ounces of cooked spaghetti (I cooked the whole box of spaghetti, then used about 2/3 of it for this) and turned it into an olive-oiled pie plate, then cooked it at 400 degrees F. for roughly 40 minutes. Golden, toasty, crunchy in places, and perfect as a base to smother with leftover homemade pasta sauce!
Since the "spaghetti pie" I grew up with involves a ton of eggs, this was a resounding success-- it was so much nicer than the traditional thing, so crispy, chewy, and tasty.
i usually grind it in batches and it gets the major cashew clumps out.
I finally got my stuff together and made a trial batch of this-- even a half batch is a LOT of dry mix, hehe! I am eating the test batch on pretzels as I type (messy keyboard! aaaah!) and cannot seem to set down the bowl... luscious. My first taste (on a spoon) made me think "garlicky, oniony, Spike-y, yeasty" but I dipped it onto a pretzel to have a taste of it as a condiment, and ohhhh... so good.
I cannot wait to do creative things with it.
One question: it seems I did a sort of "meh" job of grinding the cashews (there are granular tidbits in the sauce, which I don't mind but I can foresee as spooking my non-vegan, meat-and-taters traditionalist mom)... how do I make them finer next time?
I finally tried this recipe! It took some time finding some of the ingredients (mainly arrowroot and nutritional yeast). I used it to make nacho cheese and drizzled it onto some restaurant chips. It was good. But what made it much, much better was mixing some (hot) taco seasoning powder into it! My husband (a non-vegan) liked it even better than I did! The seasoning gave it a nice kick. Next time I will add less water, so that it will be a little thicker, too. Next on my list is to try it with macaroni. It's great that I have a batch in the fridge that I can dip into at any time--what a time saver! Thanks Dragonfly!
Just another person chiming in to say how great this stuff is! And by reading all these other reviews it seems very flexible too. I didn't have cashews so I used 1/2 pine nuts and 1/2 sunflower seeds, and I also used cornstarch instead of arrowroot, but it still turned out delicious!
loved the recipe. spaced out when i was adding the cornstarch, so i may not have added enough. it didn't get too thick when i made it. still the freakin jam though! i had it over steamed broccoli, yum! i want to try the arrowroot next time though!
thanks so mcuh!
MAKE THIS!! It is sooo awesome! In fact, it is even better than I'd imagined. Definitely addictive. So I did change the recipe abit cause I only had one cup of cashews. So here goes: One cup each cashews, sunflower seeds, oats. Instead of the seasoning salt I used two tablespoons of celtic sea salt, two teaspoons paprika and one teaspoon of cayenne. Delicious. I made a batch and added some salsa. With salsa and without, this is my brand new healthy comfort food... YummMmm! ;)
i cannot say enough about this stuff. i used it on pizza with fake sausage, red and green bell pepper, onion and mushroom and my meat eating friend RAVED about it. more people need to try this recipe!
i cooked this up with a boullion cube and used it as gravy! HOLY DELICIOUSNESS!
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