Vegan Melty Cheddar Cheese Sauce

Melty, gooey, stretchy my Vegan Melty Cheddar Cheese Sauce is perfect for quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, pasta, and more! Nut-free, gluten-free, AND oil-free! The best part is it takes less than 10 minutes to prepare and keeps well in the fridge, too.

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Hey Internet, I thought it was about darn time that I gave you a new cheese recipe! My nut-free, oil-free, gluten-free cheeses are some of the most popular recipes on my site.

Check out the bottom of this blog post for more cheese recipes from me. I am creating new cheese recipes all the time, so to make sure you never miss one, sign up for our newsletter and get a free e-book with exclusive recipes that I make all the time.

But one trick is making vegan cheese nut-free. I don't have any nut allergies, but I started avoiding nuts in my recipes just to make things a little lower fat and cheaper.

Then I noticed how many of you were excited that I was making nut-free recipes, telling me it is hard to also have nut allergies as a vegan. So my first recipe with vegan cheese was my vegan mozzarella and I made it from tofu instead of cashews.

Just as delicious, no compromise on texture, and a heck of a lot healthier and cheaper. Oh, yes.

So now I am bringing you a melty, cheddar-y, gooey cheese that is much like my mozzarella, but cheddar flavored!

This cheese has been fun to experiment with--I've made quesadillas, pasta, grilled cheese, and more!

Want to learn how to make this super easy vegan cheese? Read on.

What Do I Need to Make the Vegan Melty Cheddar Cheese Sauce?

Well, you need tofu. We've already talked about that.

I use firm tofu for most of my cheese recipes. It has just the right texture when blended. Medium should work as well, just lightly press out some of the water.

Extra firm might be too much and soft or silken tofu might not hold. I haven't tested them. If you test them, let me know in the comments below!

To make it super cheesy, you'll need nutritional yeast, a substance that is a deactivated yeast from a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It's totally safe to eat and has a nice cheesy, nutty flavor.

If you've ever tried it by itself you may not like it. Give it a try in this recipe.

The other ingredients help mute any weirdness and just enable the nutritional yeast, or affectionately termed nooch by vegans, to work its cheesy magic.

To make the cheese stretchy, we're using a little substance called tapioca starch. Tapioca actually comes from the cassava root plant.

If you see tapioca flour, that's the same thing and both will work. However, if you see cassava flour, that may be a different product. Don't use that.

If you've never had a cassava, you should try one! Kind of like a potato!

How Should it Taste?

Cheese is not cheese without a little tang and a little salt. I used some fresh squeezed lemon (once you go fresh lemon, you never go back to bottled, hah) and a little pink Himalayan salt.

You can use any salt you like, I just like the flavor of that salt. It's not as salty as table salt… if that makes sense.

Also related to "tang," I used some apple cider vinegar. I like the two slightly different flavor profiles the mixture gives.

Lemon is more light, citrus-y and fresh, while apple cider vinegar is lightly sweet and has a bit of a bite. You don't have to use both, but I do recommend it.

Other spices that give this a cheddar-y flavor include smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and turmeric.

The turmeric is mostly for color, but I do think it adds something to the flavor that I really like. If you're not a fan of turmeric you can reduce or omit it.

Finally to get the right consistency, you'll need about 1 cup of water.

How to Make Vegan Cheddar Cheese Sauce

It's so easy it almost needs no explanation, but let's talk just a little bit about it anyway.

To start, you're going to want to drain all the excess water out of your tofu, but for firm tofu you do not need to press it. If you're using medium tofu, I'd use a clean kitchen towel (or a paper towel) to lightly press some of the water out of the block with just your hands for a few minutes.

Break it into a few chunks and add it to your blender or food processor. Unlike cashews, you do NOT need a high powered blender for this (depending on your blender, you may or may not need to stop and scrape down the sides partway through).

Add everything else to the blender: nutritional yeast, tapioca starch, lemon, vinegar, spices, and water. Blend until smooth--it will resemble a cake batter consistency.

Cooking the Sauce into Cheeze

At this point, please taste it and adjust the spices/acid if needed.

Now pour it into a small saucepan and heat it over medium high heat on your stove. As it begins to heat up, you'll want to stir it constantly.

The cheese will be a relatively thin sauce at first, then will start to curdle and clump–this is normal. After a few minutes it will come together as a gooey, stretchy, melty cheese that can be used in any way you like.

For me, the cooking process for the cheese has never taken more than 4 minutes (unless I'm using my crappy hot plate, lol).

And that's it! Add your cheese to whatever!

Use it to make a grilled cheese, throw it onto a pizza or some pasta, spread it on some crackers, whatever you like.

It can be further baked or broiled and the top will turn a lovely golden brown color and crisp up just like dairy cheese.

Finally, you can store it in the fridge and reheat it again a few days later and it will retain its texture. To reheat it, I recommend the stove for optimal consistency, but the microwave has worked for me, too. If needed, add a little nondairy milk to thin it out, but I haven't run into any issues.

Anything Else?

I promised some other cheese recipes, didn't I?

Well, here's my fave:
Vegan Mozzarella: It's basically the same deal as this, but with slightly different ingredients

There's also this:
Vegan Block Cheddar: This is the same flavor profile as this recipe, but instead of tapioca it uses agar powder to make a firmer cheese that can be shredded or sliced.

It is just as easy as this, but since it takes a few hours to set in the fridge, it requires a bit of advance preparation.

I am loving making vegan cheeses! I even made a whole list of my favorite nut-free vegan cheese recipes!

And if you're looking for more tofu dishes, check out this post I made with all my best tofu recipes.

I hope you love my Vegan Melty Cheddar Cheese Sauce!

Let me know in the comments below if you make it, tag me @Zardyplants on Instagram so I can see your beautiful recreations! If you tag me on IG, I will share your post in my stories :)

Also, one quick request: if you love how this recipe looks or tastes, please leave me a 5-star rating and a nice comment–ratings help more people find my recipes which helps me keep providing them! Thank you!

<3

Liz

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