Oozy, creamy, cheesy pasta deliciousness – and it’s all vegan and packs a mean hidden veggie punch!
I’m not the biggest fan of cashew based creamy pasta sauces, I find the texture slightly grainy no matter how much I blend them and I think they can be a bit sickly after a few mouthfuls. I do however LOVE a creamy pasta dish and since going vegan this butternut squash macaroni ‘cheese’ has to be my favourite yet (and I’ve tried A LOT of recipes!)
I developed the cheese sauce recipe by just adapting my staple non-vegan cheese sauce recipe to use all vegan ingredients, the cheesey flavour comes from the nutritional yeast and the bouillon powder gives it a salty flavour that makes it feel super indulgent.
I roasted a whole butternut squash for this recipe when I made my butternut squash soup recipe posted earlier this week, I then saved half of the roasted chunks for the next day to make this dish.
I topped mine with some sesame seed parmesan – recipe coming soon!
My kids LOVED this, check out the (rare!) clean plate here.
Butternut Squash Macaroni ‘Cheese’
Ingredients:
- Half a butternut squash
- 1 heaped tablespoon vegan butter / spread (I used Suma soya spread)
- 1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
- 400ml of almond milk
- 1 teaspoon vegetable bouillon powder (or a crumbled stock cube)
- 6 tablespoons nutritional yeast ( or more / less to taste)
- Pasta of choice – we used rigatoni, and 200g was plenty for 2 adults and 2 kids
Directions:
- To roast the squash, preheat oven to 200*C. Prepare the butternut squash by chopping in half, deseeding, peeling and chopping off the top and bottom.
- Chop the squash into chunks, pop into a tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cook in the oven for around 45 minutes.
- To make the cheese sauce, add the vegan butter to a saucepan and place over a low heat until fully melted. Remove from the heat and stir in the flour to make a paste.
- Add the almond milk and place back over a medium heat. Stir the sauce constantly over the heat until a smooth sauce is formed.
- Add the bouillon powder and nutritional yeast and stir into the sauce.
- Add the roasted squash and the cheese sauce to a blender (or blend with a hand blender) and whizz until a smooth sauce is formed. You might need to add some more almond milk to reach your preferred thickness. Season to taste.
- Cook your pasta according to packet instructions, drain and add the sauce.
- Enjoy, we served our with broccoli in pesto dressing!
