Monday 2 September 2013

Mac 'n Cheese Monday - My Favourite Mac 'n Cheese Recipes

Mac 'n Cheese, or Macaroni Cheese, as we call it here in the UK, was always up there with my favourite foods before I was vegan and it's still right up there now hence my Mac 'n Cheese Monday theme.

As a student I used to eat the kind that comes out of a can and when I met my husband it was one of the only things he could cook so he made it for me a lot. When I first went vegan I avoided trying to make a macaroni cheese for fear of disappointing myself but once I threw myself into the nutritional yeasty deep end I realised I didn't need to worry, vegans can have cheesy pasta fun too!

Here are my favourite macaroni cheese recipes...

New Farm Cookbook Mac and Cheese

One of the first vegan mac recipes I ever tried and still up there with my favourites. This recipe is all over the internet and it's totally worth making.

Appetite For Reduction - Mac and Trees

Photo Credit: Kristen from The Noochy Noodle




















I eat a lot, both when I travel and when I'm reviewing restaurants and eating out locally, so when I cook at home I sometimes eat more on the low fat / low cal end of the scale, y'know, for balance! AFR is by far my favourite healthy cookbook and the Mac & Trees is one of my go-to dishes when I need to make a fast healthy meal, I love the high broc content and easy to throw together sauce.

Veganomicon - Mac Daddy

Only the second Mac recipe I ever tried and still a favourite today. I love the creaminess of the tofu ricotta, the relative low fatness of the cheesy sauce and the overall creamy baked deliciousness of the recipe. I like to add peas to this one!

Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites - Five-Cheese Baked Macaroni and Cheese

This book, now known as Home Cooked Vegan Comfort Food, contains one of THE MOST EPIC macaroni and cheeses in the history of veganism. You really do need five cheeses to make it, Daiya (or FYH / Veganic Pizza Cheese), Toffuti Cream Cheese, noochy sauce, a tofu ricotta and walnut parmesan sprinkles. It's insanely delicious and totally worth the effort. If I had these ingredients to hand more often I would have made it many more times than I have currently. Edit: Joni just happened to post the recipe for this on her blog today! Here's a link, go make it!

Best Ever Mac and Cheese from Crafty Earth Mama

Photo Credit : Crafty Earth Mama



















This recipe was posted during Vegan MoFo 2011 and it's genuinely one of the best ever mac and cheeses I've ever made, it's also Nick's absolute favourite. We'd eat it more often if laziness and bad planning didn't often prevent us from buying and roasting a red pepper!

Cheezy Mac - Vegan Diner





















Similar in style to Crafty Earth Mama's mac this creamy cashew based sauce gets the majority of its flavour from smoked paprika rather than roasted red pepper. It's delicious and one we come back to over and over again.

There are a whole load of mac's I still haven't gotten around to including Isa's Chipotle Mac & Cheese with Roasted Brussels Sprouts (minus the chipotle's!), Isa's Mac & Shews, Allyson Kramer's Smokey Butternut Mac and Cheese and VegNews' Vegan Macaroni & Cheese.

As well as those recipes I also need to make this Mac-Shroom Sandwich from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day and this epic looking Creamy Mac & Cheese Pizza.

Next Mac & Cheese Monday I'll be making a brand new to me mac and I haven't even decided which one yet. Help me out, which recipe is your favourite? Maybe it'll make an appearance next week.

41 comments:

  1. Haha, my post was on point after all then! :)

    One of my favourite cheezy sauces is still this one: http://veganyumyum.com/2009/09/hurry-up-alfredo-vyy-cookbook/

    RIP Vegan Yum Yum :'(

    x

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    1. Bookmarked!! And totally on point, you're winning at MoFo!

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    2. I love the vegan yum yum hurry up alfredo too - it is probably one of the cheeze sauces I make most though even when I toss it through pasta I don't think of it as mac and cheese though I guess it is. Love your mac and cheese round up as I love a good cheeze sauce

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  2. I used to love that horrible stuff in a can as a kid. To this day I know when I'm getting ill as I develop an irrational craving for it!

    Usually I'm lazy and just make Isa's cheezy sauce and pour it over some pasta. Will have to try the mac and trees though.

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  3. I loove mac and trees! That five cheese baked mac sounds INSANE!!!! I will have to try it next time I have oven access. I've made a baked mac and cheese before, though I can't remember where I got the recipe. It was a lot of effort, but it sure paid off.

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  4. Great round up of Mac recipes. The only one I've tried of those listed is the Smokey Butternut Mac and I loved it. Will have to check out some others.

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  5. Mac and Trees is our go to as well! So yummy.

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  6. WOW! All those mac n cheese pics are making me hungry! It is one of my favs too- vegan and GF for me! I love EVERYTHING Isa makes, but I was not a fan of the mac n trees. In MoFo's past, I created a mac n cheese recipe that has become a staple in my house and in friends. I am really looking forward to your Monday theme! MMM!

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  7. Yum! I really have to get around to that five cheese mac! Greg likes to sneakily slip mustard into our cheese sauce when I am not looking, and I still can't tell if I love or hate the flavor that it adds.

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  8. I haven't tried Mac and Shews or the Vegnews one either. A quick and simple one that get rave reviews in our house is this one: http://chefchloe.com/entrees/vegan-mac-n-cheese.html I usually halve the recipe!

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    1. Whilst I am suspicious of agave in mac & cheese I may consider giving it a go!

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  9. I took me a long time before I would try vegan mac n cheese, it's my favorite food, so I was worried it would be gross and my life would be over. The VegNews one is one of my favorites but I didn't lrealize how many recipes I haven't tried yet!
    Also, there's a mac n cheese that comes in a can? Weird!

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  10. Yum, this post is so necessary. I love vegan mac and cheese and keep trying (and failing) to improve my fave Vegan Yum Yum recipe. Have you ever tried the Hot Knives version?

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    1. No! I don't even know what Hot Knives is! Enlighten me.

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  11. I just can't get over the idea of mac n cheese in a can!

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  12. Dang!! You are a true connesieur of Mac n cheese! I am amazed!

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  13. Oh gosh! I have never seen mac and cheese in a can but I am so glad to see you've moved on! I'm not entirely positive I've ever made a vegan mac and cheese but now I know I can turn to you for the ultimate guide.

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    1. Ha, if there was vegan mac and cheese in a can I'd totally be eating it!

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  14. This is such an awesome post. I am totally making mac n' cheese tonight !

    I would've tried the recipe Joni posted on her blog today, but it requires too many ingredients I don't have right now.

    I'll have to stick with an old favorite, the Best Ever Baked Macaroni and Cheese, to which I always add some miso paste, smoked paprika and and way more nooch (of course!). The recipe is super easy and only requires ingredients that I always have on hand.

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  15. I love the idea of mac and cheese, but for some reason never get around to actually making it happen. Thanks for putting together this collection!

    Mac and Trees looks right up my alley though. I need to whip our Appetite for Reduction and make some. Perhaps even today on this auspicious mac n cheese Monday...

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  16. Oh man, the Mac and Trees recipe from Appetite For Reduction is so so good! Yep. Nutritional yeast is one of the bests thing that ever happened to vegans.

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  17. the first mac & cheeze i made was based on the new farm recipe. then i started doing a simple stove top version every week. when i want to go fancy i do the pumpkin cheeze sauce from ohh she glows - really good stuff!

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  18. Mmmm Mac 'n' cheese Monday! Thank goodness for nutritional yeast and mustard!

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  19. That is some serious Mac n Cheese love! I'm not quite the connoisseur but I didn't mind Chloe Coscarelli's version which is posted on her site.

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  20. This is a great post - so many mac 'n' cheese recipes I haven't tried! The VegNews recipe is probably my favourite for now, but I'd really like to try the Mac&Shews.

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  21. Five cheese mac and cheese sounds amazing and worth the effort of getting five different vegan cheeses!

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  22. So many new recipes I just added to my queue, thanks!
    Haha, despite all my time in London, I had no idea about 'macaroni cheese'!! So weird! I think I saw those cans (CANS! HAHAHAH) in Tesco but assumed it was just the cheese sauce!

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    1. Nope, totally THE WHOLE THING! Pasta in a can! Cheese in a can! Someone needs to veganise it!

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  23. Oooo...I want the 5 cheese one. I wonder how the daiya cream cheese would work in place of the tofutti.

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  24. Fun theme!

    I was not a big fan of the Mad Daddy, but I certainly will take a look at the Mac and Trees. I'm not sure I've made it yet.

    My favorites are Claire's Macaroni and Cheese from La Dolce Vegan, Vegan Dad's KD (with red peppers) and the recipe from Yeah, that vegan shit,

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  25. oooh, i pre-ordered that monster appetites book along with isa does it (so now i have to wait until october), but i'm excited that joni posted the recipe today! excellent list of recipes, i really should try them all.

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  26. Wow, they all look great! Mac and cheese never was a big thing in Germany and I am glad I finally went vegan. That got me addicted to mac and cheese pretty soon.

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  27. I'd never seen canned Macaroni Cheese before! That's a new one to me!

    All of those mac & cheese options look so creamy and decadent! My husband isn't into macaroni cheese at all, but hearing about the one from Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites makes me want to throw a party so that I have an excuse to make a vat of that!

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  28. This post is making me so hungry, I have to make mac & cheese tacos soon!

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  29. I'm afraid to make the Creamy Mac & Cheese Pizza...It looks ridiculously addicting. ;)
    Thanks for the rundown and links! Happy MoFo!

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  30. cant have enough good mac and cheese recipes!:)

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  31. I love Mac and Cheese so much! My favourite. I've made a few of those you'd mentioned - ARF, Hearty Vegan, Vcon and Vegan Diner.
    The Vegan Diner one is very close to my favourite (I've also been testing for Julie's new casserole cookbook and the mac and cheese recipes in there are fairly epic).
    I also really love Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's recipe in Vegan Table. It is a bit of extra work to make the cheese sauce for it, but OMG it is amazing.

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  32. I still haven't found my perfect mac n cheese recipe, but I think the Monster Appetites one might be the next one for me to try!

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