➤ story by EMILIA LOPEZ • photos by CÉSAR O’NEILL
I live in a household where the fridge is always stocked with cheese. Its versatility is truly unmatched! Every once in a while however, I manage to run completely out of it. And just my luck, it happened to me on a day where my kids requested nachos for dinner.
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Just as I was getting ready to layer all the ingredients together it hit me: I had forgotten to pick up the cheese at the grocery store. Not in the mood to go on another grocery run, I decided to search for a cheeseless nacho cheese alternative. Sounds impossible right? Well, I ended up finding a really good one. (Thank you TikTok!)
The recipe that I now swear by comes from creator @thejenjones whose social media moniker is fittingly “The Plant-Based Queen.” Her vegan-friendly nacho cheese recipe consists of a cooked sweet potato base, plus coconut milk, as well as sriracha, nutritional yeast, miso paste, and tamari — ingredients that I luckily already had on hand. I admittedly was a bit skeptical of the inclusion of coconut milk (“Won’t it be too overpowering?” I wondered to myself). I decided to trust the process, and it was for the best!
Does it taste like nacho cheese?
Okay okay, obviously it’s not going to taste exactly like nacho cheese because we’re working with sweet potato here. However I can confidently vouch for this recipe as a delicious substitute for the real thing. And I’m not even a vegan!
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When served with the right ingredients as part of a dish where you’d normally use nacho cheese sauce, it honestly works really well. It has a similar richness, color, and consistency of actual nacho cheese sauce that it could easily fool anyone who’s not thinking to hard about it. At least in my household it was a win!
Check out @thejenjones‘ recipe below.
Sweet Potato Nacho Cheese Sauce
recipe via TIKTOK / @THEJENJONES
Ingredients
- 1 large roasted sweet potato
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup full fat coconut milk
- 4 tbsp sriracha
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp white miso paste
- 1 tbsp tamari
- Salt, black pepper and garlic powder, to taste
Directions
- Roast the sweet potato in the oven for 45–60 minutes at 400°F.
- Let cool slightly before removing the skin.
- In a blender, add the sweet potato and remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth.
- Warm in a saucepan if desired.
- Serve and enjoy!
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