Serves 4
Time: 30 minutes (not including sunflower seed soaking time)
The most important people in my life are my recipe testers. Luckily, my sister and mom are included in their numbers, so all of my bases are covered.
Recipe testers are why my cookbooks work. Before a recipe gets to you, it has already been tested by a bunch of people, all over the world. They all have different levels of experience, from beginner cooks to lifelong kitchophiles. Some live in rural areas and harvest their own kale, while others lug huge bushels home from the farmer’s market on the subway. And there’s a happy medium in between.
But not only do testers test my recipes, they also give me inspiration. I can ask if there’s anything I’m missing, anything they’re craving, or just any ingredients they need to use up. It’s a great way to get ideas!
And over the years, I’ve learned many of their quirks, likes, loves and allergies. One of my most favoritest testers who has been there with me from the very beginning is Jess Sconed. I can’t say enough about her amazingness! I mean, not just as a recipe tester but as a friend and as a person. She is always creating something, always making the vegan community a better, more awesome, and more fun place. She started Vegan Iron Chef and is one of the organizers of Vida Vegan Con. She has like 20 blogs, but you might know her from Get Sconed, where she’s been blogging for ever. This recipe, created in her honor, is totally fitting because she’s a lot like a sunflower. One with dyed black pigtails and purple nail polish, but a sunflower all the same! Just a glowing ray of tofu light.
I know how she feels about raw onions and cilantro (not too good), and so I often come up with recipes keeping that in mind. And recently Jess has developed a tree nut allergy! I can’t imagine a worse fate right now, what with the cashew craze and my out of control almond butter lust. Knowing how much she loves vegan macs, I wanted to experiment with a sauce that I knew Jess would love, using ingredients that would be good for her, too. And so I pulled out the sunflower seeds.
I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Was this going to taste very 70s health-foody? I mean, it’s sunflower seeds. Our grandparents put them on their oatmeal. Would they even blend well? Cashews slurp up water and get tender and ready to puree. Sunflower kernels seem so hard and unwelcoming. I had my doubts, to be sure.
But all those doubt washed away as I poured the perfectly creamy sauce over the little macaronis in a positively cheddary orange waterfall. Sunflower seeds have a mellow nutty quality that fit right into a cheezy sauce. The backdrop of garlic and onion, with a hint of vegetable sweetness from carrots, and the rich toastiness from the sunflowers had me at the first creamy forkful. Bottom line: I really dug it! And from now on, I’ll have a canister of sunflower seeds standing proudly beside the cashews in my cupboard. Thanks for the inspiration, Jess!
I love to serve my mac with some steamed kale, so here was my plate.
The mac is under there somewhere! Steamed broccoli would be a good choice, as well. PS If you’d like to see all the testing that Jess did for Veganomicon, you can check out her post here.
8 oz macaroni pasta (I used whole wheat, use brown rice pasta to make it gluten-free)
1 cup unroasted sunflower seed kernels, soaked (see directions)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups vegetable broth
2 tablespoons organic cornstarch
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Sweet paprika for sprinkling
Place sunflower seeds in a bowl and submerge in water. Let soak for about 2 hours and up to overnight. Drain well.
Boil a pot of salted water for your pasta.
Preheat a sauce pot over medium heat. Saute carrots and onions in oil with a pinch of salt for about 10 minutes, until onions are translucent and carrots are slightly softened. Add garlic and saute for 30 seconds or so, then remove from heat.
Place the carrots and onions in a blender or food processor. Add vegetable broth, corn starch, nutritional yeast, tomato paste and sunflower seeds. Blend until very smooth. This could take up to 5 minutes depending on the power of your machine, so give your blender motor a break every minute or so and test the sauce for smoothness. It should be very smooth, with only a slight graininess.
If your water is boiling, prepare the pasta according to package directions.
In the meantime, transfer the sauce back to the sauce pot. Turn the heat up to medium and let cook, stirring very often, until thickened. This should take about 15 minutes. Add the lemon juice and taste for salt and seasoning.
The pasta should be done while the sauce is thickening, so drain and place back in the pot you cooked it in. Set aside.
When sauce is thick, pour most of it over the pasta, reserving some to pour over individual servings. Mix it up, and serve with extra sauce and paprika for sprinkling.
This pasta recipe was tasty and my 4-year-old sister liked it however it was nothing like mac and cheese. The colour was orange-pink, not nearly as yellow as on the picture here. The pasta had also an overwhelming taste of onion and carrots. The texture wasn’t cheesy at all, just thick and creamy. It was good, but we will not prepare it again. Still looking for an authentic vegan mac and cheese. We’re gonna try the other one made of cashews.
Made this tonight and it was very good! Not as rich as chipotle mac n cheese. I doubled the nooch and added a tsp of miso , along with some dry mustard and turmeric.
Sprinkled some sesame seeds on the top along with the paprika.
Overall a good tasty and lighter version. Could have had a bit more depth to it, but overall very good!
What can we use if we cannot use Tomato paste?
YUM.
Made the sauce this weekend, and used it to make a polenta lasagna, layered with this sauce and a homemade tomato/eggplant sauce. Lots of sauce leftover, think I am going to try making a ‘white’ pizza with spinach and garlic with the rest.
Thank you for these postings!
I just made this and it passed the kid test. Great flavor and texture!
This was great, as are all your recipes! I’m currently restraining myself from eating the whole batch. Sure its not 100% like macaroni and cheese, but i mean…isn’t that the point? This is so delicious and much, much better 🙂
This is my favourite mac and cheese, period. Thank you.
This makes a ton of sauce. After about a week of staring at the container in the fridge I mixed the leftover sauce with a roasted buttercup squash for a whole new sweeter sauce. Mix in some peas, top with toasted pepitas and voila, delish without repeating the same meal
Hi Isa! I am a HUGE fan, Love the falafuls, etc. I have 3 of your cookbooks including the newest one- which I just tried this recipe last nite. I found it “okay” and my partner who sometimes eats cheese, was not really impressed, I am so sorry to say~ I ended out adding some mustard and ended out liking it that way, although I am going to try it a gain with the left over sauce, making baked mac. but will add mustard to it and maybe throw in some sweet redpepper and sweet onions. My fave pasta one of yours was the fettucini alfreda!!! I am so happy I tried although? I think it may have been the sunflower seeds that didnt appeal. No matter however- because you ROCK! Probably falafuls tonite~~ HUGS DARLING!!!
Just made this – fantastic! Perfect as a comfort food. Added lots of broccoli and kale as well. Seasoned with adobo, tumeric and red pepper flakes.
Made this last night with and for my daughter who has been nagging me to make mac n cheese for the past week. I used cashews instead of sunflower seeds because that’s all I had on hand. O! M! G! We ate until we were stuffed with delicious, luscious, creamy, vegan mac n cheese. I love you, Isa! <3
Just bought Isa Does It, and I really appreciate that you’re having recipes that give me skills I can use all around, as well as making things basic enough so that after making a dish a few times I can include it in my arsenal. This was so creamy, De-lish!
I just made this, and its really delicious! Earthy tasting and ! Thank you for sharing!
This is my favorite mac and chez I’ve tried so far.
Just made this, very good! However I have a big pot full of it and a family that is afraid of vegan food hahaha! I was hoping they’d have a change of heart but it’s looking like I will be eating it for the next few days.
This was one of my first vegan recipes and I must say, I feel much better physically after eating it than after regular mac and cheese… why am I not surprised? 🙂
Can I use roasted seeds? I mistakenly purchased two bags of roasted, and I don’t have any other use for them.
Re-heats surprisingly well! I just had some for lunch and it was delish. I had some green beans on-hand so I added them, and they’re also quite nice.
Isa please help me – my husband hates nutritional yeast and he can spot it in every meal i put it in. Do you know of a good substitute?
Now this is soy free and dairy free, right?
Made this today and it came out amazing– a great, creamy comfort dish! I added a dash of cayenne to my sauce because I just lean spicy 🙂 Love your vegan magic Isa!!
I am so glad to see you used sunflowers for soaking… my husband is allergic to cashews.. are there any other nuts/seeds that you found work well for soaking in your recipes that call for cashews? I assume part of the reason they are used is because they are mild flavored and blend up nice and creamy… do you have any other recommendations?
Made this last night – thumbs up from two fussy kids! Easy to make too
Helpful hint: Not sure if someone already mentioned this in the comments above, but mine turned out pretty grainy after buzzing in my food processor for 7 minutes and I was doing batches of it so I was afraid of burning out the motor. I ended up finishing it with my immersion blender and that got it to be silky smooth very quickly. So try that if it isn’t smooth enough for your tastes using a blender or food processor. The whole family loved it. I liked it more the next day and am glad to have found a recipe that uses sunflower seeds which are way cheaper than cashews.
How many people does this serve?
I’ve made this a few times and it’s always a big hit. After making the sauce this evening I realised I had no pasta, so I mixed it with some leftover millet and added cucumber and cherry tomatoes to make a warm salad. It was really good!
Could you use tahini, do you think? Instead of soaked sunflower seeds? Just thinking I could make this without going to the store.
And, unlike cashews, I can GROW sunflowers. Awesome. Question though: When you use nutritional yeast here, does it matter if you use powder, mini flakes, or regular flakes?
Made this tonight: delicious, but I had to make a few modifications because the sauce was tasting pretty bland. I added: about 2 tbsp of white miso, some smoked paprika, and a little more salt. Helped a lot!
I’m not allergic to anything, I just had a bunch of sunflower seeds and wanted to use them up.
Is the tomatoe paste just for flavor and is there something I could sub for it or just leave it out? My little is allergic to tomatoes.