The Cheesiest Vegan Mac and Cheese You Ever Tasted

 Today we will have a look at how Chef Joya makes the tastiest vegan mac and cheese we have ever seen.

This mac and cheese is just not only vegan it is delicious now this is what mac and cheese is supposed to look like all right hey guys I'm chef Joya and I am an expert at transitioning non-vegans to vegan food today on the menu the cheesiest vegan mac and cheese you've ever tasted it alright so we're going to start with a pot of rapid boiling water and you want to make sure you always flavour your water i like to use vegetable bouillon cubes or if you have powdered vegetable bouillon you can use that if.

you have vegan chicken bouillon you can use that but whatever you do you want to make sure you season the water because your noodles are going to absorb the flavour and if you don't have any vegetable bouillon cubes, you can use salt but don't just use plain water whatever you do all right so we're going to go ahead and add our pasta to it.  We're going to use elbow noodles so you want to make sure you use regular apple noodles I know a lot of times you see the jumbo elbow noodles no don't use that you're going to add your top back to the pasta we're going to cook you about eight to 10 minutes to about al dente and stir in between go drain it you follow it you come with me or no no.

 I'm by myself okay so we're gonna add our butter now you can use as much butter as you want there are no rules on butter the more butter the better okay, so we're gonna dump that all into the pan and then we're going to allow that to melt down once our butter is melted we're going to add our all-purpose flour and you want to make sure that your heat is on medium-low because you don't want this to burn at all.

Next we're going to add our tapioca starch you may also see that the tapioca starch say tapioca flour those are the exact same things so you can use that as well we're going to go ahead and whisk this now you're going to need a lot of strong arm motion because this is a lot of stirring okay so we're going to mix this until it's well incorporated and that's why it's good to leave that residue in it because it's getting some of that flavour as well now this is another one you can use as much as you want there is no rules on it just whatever your heart's desire just go into it tells you stop all right , I'm going to blend it all the way down so once your cream cheese is melted down you're going to go ahead and add your slices of cheese this time I'm going to add about six slices of my vegan cheese and if you feel like using more cheese use more cheese and this is where our vegan cheddar is going to come in. 

 Add that here now we're going to go ahead and add our unsweetened cashew milk now you want to make sure that you use unsweetened milk that is the worst to have a mac and cheese that's super sweet i don't think anyone will like that and we're going to add our milk in a little bit at a time and you want to also make sure that the milk is already at room temperature you don't want to put super cold milk into your pan because it actually will seize the cheese so we're going to give this a nice little stir and like i said you got to get your manpower up because we're going to do a lot of stirring so once that's absorbed like this we're going to add a little bit more milk and trust me it is a lot of standing over the pot but it is worth every moment at this point our cheese is still melting down but it's at the point where we need to add our seasonings so we're going to start adding some flavour we're going to go ahead and add some black pepper we're going to add a little bit of sea salt a little bit of garlic powder and yes you have to have garlic powder.

 Now don't go adding fresh onions to this it is not it's it's not what you need it's not what you need at all let me get we didn't open all these so we're gonna add our onion powder and enough until you're about covering the pan and you're gonna see that your cheese sauce is starting to boil even more and it should be thick almost like pancake mix you see that you wanna make sure that all those flavours are getting incorporated into the cheese sauce and remember you can always add but you can't take away so that's why we add a little bit of milk at a time next we're going to add our nutritional yeast and this is used to give pretty much all the vegan food their cheesy flavour if you use way too much of it it tastes really chalky and i know a lot of vegan mac and cheeses are very chalky they're not good so you want to make sure that you don't use too much of that nutritional yeast next we're going to use a little bit of hot sauce now trust me this is not going to make your mac and cheese spicy at all but it is going to amplify the flavour trust me i know if you can't find vegan Worcestershire sauce you can use tamari you can use coconut aminos.

You can also use soy sauce but you want to make sure you use a very little bit of it just a little bit get a nice little stir let's add some more milk in between there remember when i say don't use any sweetened plant-based milk that's because you're going to add a little bit of sugar into it you can use any raw sugar that you like but you're going to use a very little bit not a lot just a little bit okay so we're going to give this a nice stir and it's almost there look at that pool, we are getting there look at this now this is what mac and cheese is supposed to look like all right so the last spice that we're going to add to this is a little bit of creole seasoning now I'm making it more traditional soul food baked mac and cheese it is going to be super creamy and cheesy but we're going to actually put this in the oven this cheese sauce is going to attach to the noodles it's going to thicken up so it's almost like a pie it's like a thick cheesy gooey crusty thingamajiggy that you're just going to love all right there you go all the clumps are almost out like if your mac and cheese don't look like this i don't want it i don't for real all right we're going to add our bouillon to our cheese sauce and we're going to make sure we mix that really well let's spread the love in there i'm excited.

I am so excited you see how good this look no this is for real like this is really like oh yes we're going to take our pasta noodles and we're going to season it with a little bit more creole seasoning I like to use creole seasoning when i first learned how to make vegan mac and cheese I would use like salt pepper garlic powder onion powder paprika but the thing about it is creole season has all those flavours all those spices in there and more creole seasoning is a one-stop seasoning shop and it has everything in it that you need all right so we're going to go ahead and take our seasoned pasta noodles and we're going to add this to our mac and cheese sauce like you need your noodles to be drowning,  it needs to drown in all of this cheese sauce if your noodles aren't drowning you need to make more sauce you don't want to save these noodles they need to drown so let's drown the noodles add them to the pot and we're going to mix that in there you may have to poke a little bit of holes in it push it down to the bottom so you want to make sure that you taste your mac and cheese because once you put in the oven you can't add any more seasoning to it so you want to go ahead and grab it oh make sure oh look at that I'm like in mac and cheese heaven right now now we're going to take our bacon dish and want to make sure that we grease it with a non-stick spray because this is going to be ooey and gooey and it will stick and burn and we don't want that to happen.

So we're going to go ahead and add that just pour it right into the pot oh look at that look at that magic we're not done yet because we're going to add more cheese the way we're going to do is we're going to fold it up like this and we're going to tuck it in there all right so it's kind of like hiding in there and I actually got this my cousin when she used to make the original style of mac and cheese she used to stuff cubes of cheese at the top of her mac and cheese so i just do it with my vegan mac that's what you want you don't even want to be able to move you want to just be like this like real stuff next we're going to layer it with more shredded cheddar cheese you want this fully covered with our shredded cheese oh my gosh look at that all the bubbles and cracks all that spillage you want all that spillage that's when you know it is really done this isn't good vegan food this is good food whoa like oh goodness that is so beautiful cheese pool [Music] it's like an entire party in my mouth this is super creamy super delicious doesn't taste what you think is vegan this is just the best cheesiest mac and cheese ever like this is good i know you can't say that but now that you have the secrets to the cheesiest vegan mac and cheese let me know if there's anything else that you would like for me to veganize comment below for more delicious recipes you can follow me at cooking witha on all social media you can also find more vegan soul food recipes in my soul food cookbook called it's so amazing at cookingwithjoya.com see you guys soon oh yes you.

If you like this dish please see Chef Joya's other cooking video on her you tube channel and please like and subscribe to her channel for more awesome vegan recipes.