Butternut Squash Mac And Cheese Vegan

If you are after an easy healthy vegan dinner, like my Creamy Butter Beans, Red Lentil Pasta Recipe, or Hidden Veg Pasta Sauce, then this butternut Mac-n’-Cheese is for you. It’s packed with fresh butternut, cashews, and vitamin B12-fortified nutritional yeast for a dairy-free cheesy flavor. I guarantee that this vegan cheese pasta sauce has nothing to envy to classic mac and cheese sauce. It’s thick, creamy cheesy and kids love it. So it’s a great way to add vegetables to your plate and use your winter squash this fall. Let me show you how to make this easy vegan pasta recipe.

Ingredients and Substitutions

Butternut Squash – A medium size squash for this recipe. The best is to peel, deseed, cube, and measure the vegetables you have. This recipe calls for 4 cups of fresh butternut squash cubes. Don’t add too much to the recipe or then the balance of spices and flavors will be off. Cashews – Unsalted and unroasted. Cooked Macaroni Pasta also called elbow pasta. Vegetable Stock – You can swap for just water if you don’t have stock. Almond Milk – You can also use oat milk or any non-dairy milk you love. I found unsweetened almond milk the best match because it doesn’t add a sweet taste to the sauce. Onion Powder – for flavor. Dijon Mustard – or American mustard. You’ll get more flavor from Dijon mustard. Paprika, Ground Pepper, Garlic Clove – for perfect flavors. Nutritional Yeast – Pick a B12-fortified version!

The Secret Of The Butternut Squash Sauce

Many recipes call for roasting the butternut squash in the oven, and while this is a great idea, adding flavor to the dish, I found that baked butternut squash becomes too sweet. Plus, it adds oil, increases the cleaning needed, and makes the recipe a bit longer to make. My secret to making quick and easy butternut squash mac and cheese is to boil the butternut and cashew together.

How To Make Butternut Squash Mac And Cheese

All you need to make this creamy butternut sauce are a few simple ingredients and a blender to pulse all the ingredients together into a sauce.

Serving Vegan Mac And Cheese

Serve the butternut mac n cheese plain or with some of the vegan toppings below:

Vegan Parmesan Cheese Chopped Parsley Extra Nutritional Yeast Drizzle Olive Oil Drizzle of store-bought cashew cream or soy cream Black Pepper Some bread like my 2-Ingredient Bread or Sweet Potato Bread Rolls

Storage Instructions

This macaroni and cheese pasta can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. It’s the perfect vegan dinner to meal prep and to serve days of healthy comforting dinners. You can also freeze the leftover and keep them in the freezer for up t o1 month. Thaw the dish the day before in the fridge and rewarm in a microwave-safe plate or in a non-stick saucepan over medium heat. The sauce dries out a bit when you rewarm the pasta, and you may like to thin out the sauce with water or almond milk.

Allergy Swaps

Nut-Free – If you have some nut allergies you can replace the cashews with raw sunflower seeds. They are a bit more bitter and flavorsome, but they thicken the sauce pretty well while adding similar nutrients to cashew. Next, swap the almond milk for low-flavor plant-based milk like hemp milk. Gluten-Free – This butternut squash pasta sauce is naturally gluten-free. Make sure you use a gluten-free pasta variety made out of rice, buckwheat, or quinoa to avoid adding gluten to the dish.

Below are the answers to your most frequent questions about this recipe.