The Mother Mix: Your new plant-based pantry staple

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The Mother Mix is your shortcut to dairy-free, plant-based comfort food. This quick DIY is an all-natural, vegan, and gluten-free dry mix that stores in your pantry. The Mix itself takes less than 5 minutes to make. In another few minutes, you can turn it into a simple sauce for drizzling over veggies or pasta. Or use it as the base to jumpstart over 15 delicious comfort food recipes from Hot Spinach Dip and Easy Broccoli Cheese Soup to Sauced-Up Roasted Cauliflower and Zucchini Fritters. Think of it as meal prep, for really busy people!

The Ingredients

The Mother Mix is made from just four ingredients: almond flour, tapioca starch, nutritional yeast, and salt.

Each of these contribute to recipes in different ways.

1. Almond Flour

If you’ve made a vegan cream or cheese sauce, you’ve probably encountered recipes that use soaked and blended cashews as the base. They’re typically used to replace dairy or cheese, providing substance to the dish, and providing necessary fat and protein for the chemistry of cooking. We wanted to save time and make cheesy or creamy sauces without waiting around for cashews to soak. Finely ground cashews, (cashew flour), would save us time, but cashew flour is not readily available. Enter almond flour, which makes an excellent stand-in. We use superfine almond flour, also known as blanched almond meal. It’s just skinned, finely ground almonds. You can find almond flour in the baking section of your grocery, in bulk food bins, and stores like Costco.

2. Tapioca Starch, aka Tapioca Flour

Tapioca starch, also known as tapioca flour, is a gluten-free flour made from the cassava plant. Tapioca flour serves as a thickening agent, allowing you to make creamy sauces, without the gluten found in traditional wheat flour. Tapioca starch also makes sauces stretchy and cheese-like, which is just want we want with our cheesy comfort food recipes. You can find tapioca starch in the baking section of your grocery. Sometimes, we also see it in the “ethnic” food section, where it’s usually cheaper and just as good.

3. Nutritional Yeast, aka “Nooch”

Nutritional yeast is a non-active yeast that gives our Mother Mix a savoury, umami flavour. A little bit nutty, a little bit cheesy, nutritional yeast is a common ingredient in many dairy-free or vegan dishes. In some recipes that use the Mother Mix, the recipe calls for additional nutritional yeast, to boost the cheesy flavour.

4. Salt

There’s a small amount of table salt in the Mother Mix. Since salting food is such a personal preference, we’ve kept with a minimum quantity. Some recipes that use the Mother Mix call for additional salt, as well as other seasonings.

Making The Mother Mix

Making the Mother Mix is super simple: combine the dry ingredients in a big bowl and you’re done!

Once combined, we store ours in a well-sealed container, at room temperature. If you think you’ll only use it occasionally, you can store it in the fridge or even freezer. The Mother Mix is awesome to have on hand if you have guests or family that are vegan, plant-based, gluten-free or dairy-free.

Making A Simple Vegan Cream Sauce From the Mother Mix

To make a simple vegan cream sauce:

1. Combine the Mother Mix with water in a blender, and blend for a minute.
2. Transfer it to a saucepan and heat and stir for a few minutes until the sauce is thickened. The sauce will go through a stage where it looks like it’s curdling. Don’t panic, this won’t last. Just keep stirring and it will be fine.
3. Full instructions are in the Printable Recipe Card below. As we’ve noted, this will be a mildly flavoured sauce — feel free to add more nutritional yeast, or spices such as onion or garlic powder to your sauce.

Alphabetical List of Mother Mix Recipes

The Mother Mix is your shortcut to making a wide variety of creamy or cheesy plant-based recipes. Use it on its own to make a simple dairy-free or vegan cream sauce or as a base for a dip. The Mother Mix is an all-natural, gluten-free dry mix that you can make in minutes and then store in your pantry so it’s ready when you are to make some delicious comfort food.

Making a Mother Mix Recipe without the Mix

If you want to try a recipe, but don’t want to make the mix, all of the recipes on the website include the equivalent quantities of ingredients needed.

Cooking for Mixed Groups (Vegans with Vegetarians or Omnivores)

If you’re cooking for people with mixed diets, such as vegans with vegetarians, or vegans with omnivores, then this section is for you! Often, we provide recipe variations to use the Mother Mix along with your choice of plant-based or dairy cheeses or milks. For example, with the Broccoli Cheese Soup recipe, the foundation is the vegan Mother Mix sauce, but you garnish the soup with a handful of cheese of your choice. We’ve tested this with both plant-based and dairy-based cheese, and it goes well with either. See also our Mexican Stuffed Peppers (Vegan, Vegetarian, and Meat versions), Mexican Corn Chip Casserole (Vegan with jackfruit, or with Chicken), and Green Pasta Sauce (Vegan with vegetarian and meat-eater toppings.)

Why We Named It the Mother Mix

1. The Mother Mix is the base from which many not not nutritious recipes have been born.
2. Mothers are often associated with comfort, and the Mother Mix is the perfect starting point for comfort food – like our creamy Scalloped Potatoes or Chipotle Cheese Stuffed Peppers.
3. You heard of a kombucha mother? The Mother Mix is a bit like that in that once you’ve got your starter, you can make a bunch of different batches. But where it diverges, is that you can use it to make a bunch of different recipes — not just batches of the same recipe. The Mother Mix is also a dry mix – no maintenance required.
4. We’re riffing on the culinary concept of the mother sauces — these are the 5 French sauces that are the base of many recipes. While we’re not claiming that the Mother Mix can replace the French classics, having some on hand will help you easily create delicious food!
5. While we’re steadfastly apolitical and diet neutral here at not not nutritious, we’re pretty sure a lot of plant-based peeps eat this way to help keep our collective mother, Mother Earth, happily nourished. We hope the Mother Mix happily nourishes you.

Printable Recipe Card

The Mother Mix

This dairy-free plant-based pantry staple is made of 4 all-natural ingredients. Just add water, blend, and cook for a few minutes to make a simple vegan cream sauce in just a few minutes. The Mother Mix is the foundation of many comfort food recipes on not not nutritious too, everything from Broccoli Cheese Soup to Hot Spinach Dip and Mexican Corn Chip Casserole.

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Cuisine: North American

Keyword: all purpose vegan sauce, dairy-free cheese sauce, dairy-free comfort food, dairy-free cream sauce, dairy-free pantry staple, gluten-free pantry staple, make ahead, mother mix, pantry staple, vegan cheese sauce mix, vegan comfort food, vegan cream sauce, vegan pantry staple, vegan sauce starter

Prep Time: 3 minutes

Cook Time: 0 minutes

Total Time: 3 minutes

Servings: 13 1/2 cup servings

Calories: 267kcal

Author: Sylvia Eastman

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 cups almond flour {also called almond meal, or superfine almond flour, or blanched skinless ground almond}
• 1 1/4 cups tapioca starch {also called tapioca flour}
• 3/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 1/2 tablespoons salt

Instructions

To make the dry mix

• Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and stir well, then transfer to a tightly-sealed container. You can keep this in your pantry, or store it in the fridge if you don't think you will use it up within a few months. 

To make the basic Mother Mix simple cream sauce

• To make about 1/2 cup of sauce, combine 1/3rds cup of dry mix and 1/2 cup of water in a blender. Blend on high for about 1 minute. Transfer to a small saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat for about 3 minutes until the sauce is thickened and stretchy. It may go through a brief stage where it looks like it is curdling. Just keep stirring and this will disappear. Note that larger quantities of sauce will take longer to cook.

Notes

Storing the Mother Mix

Store the Mother Mix in a tightly-sealed container at room temperature. If you think that you will be using it irregularly, you could store the dry mix in your fridge or even freezer.  

Storing Cooked  Sauce

Store any cooked sauce in your fridge in a sealed container. It will keep for 3-4 days. Reheat it over low heat, stirring to remove any lumps, as needed. 

Add-Ins and Timing  

If you want to use the Mother Mix to make your own recipes, you might want to add more nutritional yeast to up the cheesy factor, and/or you might want to add herbs and spices, such as garlic powder, chili powder, or some nutmeg if you want it to taste more like a Bechamel sauce. Add these into the blender. You can also add other flavourings such as chopped fresh basil, minced jalapeños, sun-dried tomatoes. Add these during the cooking stage.

Other Recipes that Use the Mother Mix

Please see all the Mother Mix recipes listed in this post.

About Almond Flour 

Depending on where you live, almond flour might also be called ground almond meal or blanched, skinless ground almonds. We use super fine almond flour, but it is not always labelled that way. It’s usually in the baking section of the grocery store. In my store, buying it as almond flour was the cheapest way to go.

 

Nutrition

Calories: 267kcal | Carbohydrates: 19g | Protein: 9g | Fat: 19g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 805mg | Potassium: 51mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 1g | Calcium: 81mg | Iron: 2mg

Need Help Making Your Favourite Comfort Food Recipe?

We want to make your life easier! Drop a comment below or on our Facebook page and tell us what you’d like to make with the Mother Mix! We’ll do some recipe testing for you!

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