THE Best Vegan Queso

Que-so Watch ah Want???

oooh, little reachy child fingers!!

This is a long-awaited moment. This may be the beginning of the rest of your life. Take a deep breath. One. Two. Three. Good.

Relax. Your universe is about to change. I know it seems impossible and highly improbable that I am about to give you a recipe for cheese without cheese that is edible and delicious, has great consistency, is nothing like eating plastic, has an easy no-soy option, and that you will want to make it by the vat so you are so sad when it’s done.

Get a pot of water boiling now. Get the blender out.

In-greed-ients.

1.5 good size (almost large?) baking potatos. peeled, diced into one inch cubes

2 carrots sliced into 1/2 inch slices

1 yellow onion, sliced 1 inch

5-7 cloves garlic

1 to 1.5 cups nutritional yeast

1/4 cup cashew butter (which can be made very easily out of raw cashews in a food processor or blender, they’re soft enough for most machines to handle, add small amount of olive oil for processing if needed)

1/4 cup Earth Balance vegan butter (or olive oil for soy-free version)

salt to taste (as much as a tablespoon sometimes i think, just add slowly and keep tasting)

your choice of salsa or the traditional can of Rotel with green chilis

Cookin’ It

1. Boil carrots, potatos, onion (maybe garlic cloves, see optional next step) until soft

2. optional roasting of the garlic. lately, i have been pan roasting my garlic cloves instead of boiling them. I pan roast 5 cloves until dark, then add on clove of raw garlic when I am blending.

3. put ALL ingredients into blender with a splash of water to get it smooth as needed, but WAIT *RED LIGHT* do not put boiling hot vegetables into your blender. you will crack it. i did that the other day and my delicious roasted garlic potato soup all over the counter instead of in our bellies. devastating, and i still have not replaced the blender.

4. blend until smooth adding salt as you go.

5. add salsa

now looky looky here you big beefy hunk of love, you can use this cheese for a whole damned slew of things.

dip brocolli in it!

make brocolli cheese soup with it!

make mac-n-cheese with it!

nachos

do that thing we do in austin and add black bean, pico, avocado and eat it at midnight (or 3 am) when you get home

use it in a cassorole style with fake ground beef and stuff

mmmmm, what about using it as your gravy in a pot pie!!!!

now leave me in peace and have fun

Cook topless and Wear an Apron and know I Love you All

😉

Real Texans

Carry guns and believe in seceding from the United States to preserve the freedom we had during times of slavery.

Nope. Not true anymore.

Real Texans stop at HEB (a store named after it’s proprietor Harold E. Butt) at 1 a.m. and buy one singular thing.

Tortilla chips in the shape of Texas.

Then we arrive home at 1:30 and put a bowl of delicious Texassness into a bowl and consume until we fall asleep on the table snoring with a full belly.

“What’s in that bowl?” your questions echos in my ears from across the world.  Oh, how I want to answer you, but dare I say it.

In the bottom of the bowl is a lazy Texan’s spiced canned black beans, at 1 in the morning, you have not had the forethought to have had black beans cookin’ in the crock pot all day. Few spoons of black beans from a can, lemon juice, cumin, chili powder, salt.

Over that a hot layer of Courtney’s Vegan Green Chili Queso. That’s right, don’t mess with me, I said VEGAN (dairyless) queso with fresh roasted Hatch green chilis and Ariba’s tamatillo salsa. Top that with radish sprouts, many chunks of fresh avocado, and chopped tomatoes.

Eat only with Texas shaped tortilla chips at 1 am. At other times, eat with whatever you want.  That’s what I did last night. What did you do?