DISCLAIMER: I am aware of the fact that this recipe does not have perfect macros, nor is it the most nutritious. However, after posting a picture of this cheesy af pasta on my Instagram, people seemed pretty keen to make it themselves, so on that basis I’ll give it a pass this time and let it go on the blog. It does taste pretty great too, so at least it has that going for it. If you do want to improve those macros, I recommend upping the protein with a bit of seitan chopped up and thrown in, and if you fancy some veg you could swap out the fusilli for some courgetti, and it will still be pretty good (just don’t cook the courgetti for as long as you would pasta in this!).

Also, if you’re looking for a good vegan cheese sauce for a recipe, this is great for that (minus the pasta, obviously). Tasted like cheese sauce I ate when I was a kid, and I could honestly barely tell the difference. If you need it stringier and less runny, by all means up the amount of tapioca starch in this recipe, but I felt this was a pretty similar consistently to the “real”, non-vegan norm for cheese sauce. Let’s get on it.

Ingredients

75g Wholewheat Fusilli

55g Cheddar-Style Vegan Cheese (for this I strongly recommend using Sainsbury’s grated cheddar-style, it melts amazingly and is the most ‘cheese-like’ cheese I have found so far. In fact, their whole cheese range is pretty bomb. Go Sainsbury’s, getting with the times.)

150ml Unsweetened Almond Milk

7g Nutritional Yeast

3g Tapioca Starch (can sub for cornflour but I haven’t tried this recipe with that substitution, so do so at your own risk.)

Method

1. This is pretty damn simple. Boil a kettle, and stick your almond milk, cheese and a pinch of salt in a pot over a medium heat on the hob. Throw in your pasta and add 100-150mls water, enough to cover your pasta, and turn up the heat to medium-high. Stir very regularly, as you would with a cheese sauce usually.

2. Once it is half-cooked, add your tapioca starch (use a sieve when doing so if possible to avoid clumps) and your nutritional yeast, and reduce to a medium heat. Nutritional yeast with B12 loses its vitamins if you boil it, and what’s the point in using it if you can’t get that B12, you feel?

3. Once the sauce is to your desired consistency, serve immediately. I recommend dusting it with a little smoked paprika for a bit of extra flavour if you fancy it, but it’s good comfort food regardless if that’s not your thing. Serves 1 because everyone should get intimate with a bowl of intensely cheesy pasta every now and then.

Per Serving:

475 Calories

14.8g Protein

17.4g Fat

60.7g Carbs