When I think about Super Bowl food, meat and cheese come to mind. Do me a favor, keep vegans in your hearts for Super Bowl! Vegans need to eat too and my Vegan Nacho Not Cheese Sauce will help curb their appetite!
I’ve mentioned I don’t eat vegan all the time, but I do enjoy it! Our good friend’s Tim and Danyel are vegans and they make mouthwatering vegan food anytime we hang out and cook dinner together. OMG, once Danyel made this fried stuffed potato-y thing which was so delicious I tried making the recipe myself the following week. Unfortunately, my potatoes weren’t anything to brag about. I mean, my version was decent but nowhere near delicious as Danyel’s, she’s an amazing cook.
Super Bowl spreads tend to have an overwhelming amount of meat and cheese. Not that I’m complaining, but I wanted to be considerate and make a recipe vegans can enjoy too.
I love how versatile the Vegan Nacho Not Cheese Sauce can be. You can use it as a dipping sauce, for nachos, and even vegan mac and cheese! Shit, I’d smear some over a sandwich too!!
I used 1 jalapeño and 1 tablespoon of chili powder for an extra kick, but I didn’t think the sauce was spicy. However, there may be a reason for that…
Wanna hear a funny story? One of my favorite shows on YouTube is called Hot Ones produced by First We Feast. The show’s host interviews celebrities while they eat 10 hot wings in order from mild to hot. By the end of the interview, the celebrities can barely talk because some of the wings are that hot! The hottest wing they eat is laced with Blair’s After Death Sauce with Liquid Rage, clocking in with a Scoville rating of 550.000. It’s fun to see which celebrity is a good sport and who can’t hang. A few celebrities sissed out after 3 wings, others almost make it to the end, but the majority of the guests power through like a boss.
After watching 10 episodes back to back I was craving hot wings like a mofo. I thought, if Rachel Ray can make it to the end, then surely I can. That evening Kieran and I walked over to the bar across the street from our house. When the bartender, Conner, asked what he could get us I loudly proclaimed, get me the hottest wings you have! After triple checking to ensure I was serious, Conner went back to the kitchen and told the cook I wanted a challenge. The cook laughed and proceeded to go off menu and make me the hottest possible wings he could come up with.
The second Conner put the full plate of hot wings in front of me the aroma stung my nose. I slowly blinked at the wings, weighing my options, then calmly asked Conner for some milk…
I took one bite and I thought my face was going to melt off. My lips have never been in that much pain in my Entire. Life. Then it hit, the hot wings high. Eating hot wings is often accompanied with a weird euphoria. Although flames were shooting out every pore of my face, I felt alive. I polished off 5 wings and 5 glasses of milk.
I thought I was a hot wings superhero until I remembered what happens to people’s bodies the day after they eat hot chicken wings. Let’s just say I won’t be eating hot chicken wings for a looooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
So, I’m fairly certain I leveled up my tastebuds after that experience, nothing seems spicy to me anymore!! I used to think jalapeño were spicy but now I can practically eat them whole.
The moral of my story is adjust the spiciness level of the Vegan Nacho Not Cheese Sauce to your liking, I’m not a good judge anymore!
OK, let’s get back to the Vegan Nacho Not Cheese Sauce. I adore this recipe for nacho’s, but I’m not kidding when I say it’s magnificent dumped over some macaroni. I know, I’ve tried it! It’s amazing how velvety and cheesy this “not cheese” sauce tastes. Which is great because it will please vegans and meat-eaters at your next gathering.
I subscribe to vegan food blogs and noticed vegans use nutritional yeast in almost everything. According to Google, it has a strong, savory, umami-like flavor that’s cheesy and nutty. If you’re vegan and you have yeast on hand, sprinkle some in! I don’t have any yeast in my pantry so I did without and the sauce still came out amazing. However, after reading up on the nutritional value of this yeast, it’s packed with protein, I’ll probably buy some soon!
So, to wrap up this post, please don’t forget about vegetarians and vegans for your Super Bowl parties. The Nacho Not Cheese Sauce is a cinch to make and sure to have your guests saying, wow, this is vegan?
Plus, the Nacho Not Cheese Sauce is jam-packed with protein from the nuts and has additional nutritional values from the potato starch! Check out my last post if you’re curious why potato starch is good for you!
Alright friends, be safe with the drinking and driving this Sunday, chow down on some great food, and have a blast! Go New England Patriots!!!!
Thanks for stopping by,
Christina
- ½ white onion, diced
- 3 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1 jalapeño, deseeded, deveined, and chopped
- 2 cups cashews - either soaked in water overnight or soaked in water for 6 hours
- 2 cups vegetable stock
- 4 oz can of green chilies
- 1½ tablespoons of potato starch
- ½ teaspoon of cumin
- 1 tablespoon of chili powder
- ½ -1 tablespoons of smoked paprika
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Heat a splash of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, and jalapeño, seasoning them with a pinch of salt and pepper, and sweat the veggies until they are soft, approx 5-7 minutes.
- While the vegetables are cooking, put the stock, cashews, chili's, starch, seasonings, and some salt and pepper in a blender. Once the vegetables are soft, add them too. Blend all the ingredients until smooth and velvety.
- Get out the tortilla chips you plan on serving with the sauce. Dip a chip into the sauce and eat it so you can check the saltiness level. Tortilla chips are usually pretty salty (some brands saltier than others), so tasting the sauce with a chip is a good way to ensure you're not over salting the recipe!
- Adjust any seasonings as needed then pour the sauce into the same pan you used to sweat the vegetables. Warm the sauce, stirring occasionally, allowing the starch to thicken it a little. Once the sauce is nice and hot, it's ready to eat!
- Serve it with your tortilla chips!
Recipe adapted from Minimalist Baker
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