4-minute Cheeze Sauce Mix: Your new plant-based pantry staple

This vegan cheese sauce mix is the ultimate plant-based pantry staple. It consists of 4 simple, all-natural ingredients: almond flour, tapioca starch, nutritional yeast, and salt. Store it in your pantry and when you want some cheese sauce, you just add water, blend for one minute, and then cook for about 3 minutes. That’s it! Unlike so many of the other vegan cheeze sauce recipes out there, this requires no soaking of nuts, or boiling of vegetables, or any other major preparation time.

Making 4-Minute Cheeze Sauce Mix

This is a very basic recipe, as it I wanted it to be versatile enough to work with lots of foods and different flavours.

Now just transfer it to a resealable container and it’s ready when you are.

I store my 4-minute cheeze sauce mix in my pantry. It will keep well for at least a month if not longer. If you don’t think you will use it that frequently, you can store it in the fridge or even the freezer.

Making Cheeze Sauce From the Mix

Once you have your cheese sauce mix made it’s super simple to make the sauce. You combine the mix with water in a blender, and blend for a minute. Then you transfer it to a saucepan and heat and stir for a few minutes. The sauce will go through a stage where it looks a bit like it’s curdling. Don’t panic, this won’t last. Just keep stirring and it will be fine.

Using 4-Minute Cheeze Sauce Mix

You can enjoy this plant-based cheese sauce exactly as is, say, drizzled over veggies. Think asparagus, steamed broccoli, roasted cauliflower, pan-fried green beans, oven-roasted potatoes, grilled tomatoes, roasted peppers, zucchini.

Or, try one of my growing list of recipes that uses it, like Easy Cheezy Broccoli Soup. It’s literally just cheese sauce blended with steamed broccoli! How simple is that? Also check out the recipes for Quicky Spinach Basil Pasta,  Corn Chip Casserole: Two Ways,  Cheezy Roasted Cauliflower with Smoked Almonds and Dates, hot chili grilled cheeze, this awesome dairy-free spinach dip, and Stovetop Green Bean Casserole. And there’s many more to come!

Eating Together Made Easy

If you’ve been to not not nutritious before, you may have noticed my tagline: Eating Together Made Easy.” By “eating together,” I’m talking about vegans/plant-based peeps, vegetarians, and omnivores, and I try to make recipes so that no matter what your diet, you can follow my easy variations and therefore still eat meals together. And save plan and prep time in the process!

So for example, Quicky Spinach Basil Pasta starts out with a recipe based on 4-minute cheeze sauce and then gets topped with parmesan for the vegetarians, and some quick-fried prosciutto for the carnivores.

With Corn Chip Casserole: Two Ways, you can make a version with jackfruit if you’re vegan or plant-based, or a version with chicken if you’re not. They both use 4 minute cheeze sauce, but the omnivore version also includes some dairy-based cheese. Yes, this means you are eating both vegan cheeze sauce and dairy cheese together. It’s good! I promise.

Let’s Get this Cheeze-y Pantry Staple Made!

4 minute cheeze sauce mix

This plant-based pantry staple is made of 4 all-natural ingredients. Just add water, blend, and cook for a few minutes to make vegan cheese sauce in just a few minutes. Super versatile, 4 minute cheeze sauce is great as a topper on veggies, or the perfect base for something creamy and delicious. It’s the foundation of many other recipes on not not nutritious too, everything from Broccoli Cheese Soup to Green Bean Casserole. 

Print Pin Rate

Cuisine: North American

Keyword: vegan cheese sauce mix, vegan cheeze sauce mix

Prep Time: 3 minutes

Cook Time: 3 minutes

Total Time: 6 minutes

Servings: 20 1/2 cup servings

Calories: 173kcal

Author: Sylvia Eastman

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 cups almond flour {also called almond meal, or superfine almond flour, or blanched ground almonds. If you buy Bob’s Red Mill brand of superfine almond flour this is the whole bag. This is not a sponsored post!}
• 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. I use my 4 minute cheeze sauce mix frequently so I store it along with my other dry goods. You could store this in the fridge if you don’t think you will use it up within a few months. 
  

To make cheeze sauce

• To make about 1/2 cup of cheeze 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 sauce is thickened and stretchy. It may go through a quick stage where it looks like it is curdling. Just keep stirring and this will disappear. Note that larger quantities of sauce will take longer. 

  See the video clip for the finished consistency. 

Notes

Storing 4 Minute Cheeze Sauce Mix

I store my dry mix in a tightly-sealed container in my pantry. I have kept mine for several months without any issues. If you think that you will be using it irregularly, you could store the dry mix in your fridge or even freezer.  

Storing Cooked Cheeze Sauce

Store any cooked cheeze 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 

Depending on what you are serving it with, when you make your sauce you might want to add more nutritional yeast to up the cheezy 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.

About Almond Flour 

Depending on where you live, almond flour might also be called ground almond meal or blanched ground almonds. 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: 173kcal | Carbohydrates: 12g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 12g | Sodium: 523mg | Potassium: 33mg | Fiber: 3g | Calcium: 5.3% | Iron: 6.3%

PIN It! Vegan 4 Minute Cheese Sauce Mix – Your new pantry staple!

Recipes That Use 4 Minute Cheeze Sauce

• Quicky Spinach Basil Pasta
• Corn Chip Casserole: Two Ways
• Cheezy Roasted Cauliflower with Smoked Almonds and Dates
• Hot Chili Hot Chili Grilled Cheeze,
• dairy-free Spinach Dip
• Vegan Broccoli Cheese Soup
• Stovetop Green Bean Casserole

And many more to come! And speaking of that….

Send Me Your Recipe Requests!

I’d love to know what you’d like to make with 4 minute cheese sauce. Post a pic of your creation on Instagram, #notnotnutritious or drop me a comment below or on the not not Facebook page.
And let me know if I can help you use this sauce to simplify making your favourite cheeze/cheese based recipe.