Vegan Mac and Cheese by Robin Robertson

Vegan Mac and Cheese by Robin Robertson ISBN-13: 9781558329737 Hardcover: 144 pages Publisher: Harvard Common Press Released: September 17, 2019

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Awesome recipes for entirely plant-based vegan cheeses and cheese sauces, used in more than 50 recipes for comforting and deeply flavorful dishes. If you were a vegetarian before you became a vegan, chances are you ate a lot of cheese, some (or maybe even a lot!) of it in macaroni and cheese. But you don't need to give up cheese and cheesy dinners! Robin shows you how to make rich, delectable vegan cheeses that start with plant milks, vegan butters, and nut butters as their base ingredients. Using these—or, if you prefer, using store-bought vegan cheese—you then can make the delicious recipes in the rest of the book.

These include many variants on mac and cheese itself, from the familiar and homey, such as Mom's Classic Mac UnCheese, to the globally adventuresome, such as Indian Curry Mac or Salsa Mac and Queso. An entire chapter is devoted to veggie-loaded mac and cheese dishes, like Buffalo Cauliflower Mac, Arugula Pesto Mac UnCheese, or Smoky Mac and Peas with Mushroom Bacon. Another chapter serves up meatless mac and cheeses that use vegan meat substitutes. And, for delicious fun, there are recipes for Mac UnCheese Balls, Mac UnCheese Pizza, Mac UnCheese Waffles, and Mac UnCheese Muffins.


My Review:
Vegan Mac and Cheese is a vegan cookbook for a variety of non-dairy cheesy sauces which are combined with pasta and other ingredients for healthy, tasty meals. The author included recipes that were nut-free, gluten-free, or soy-free (and occasionally free of all three). While the book included many different combinations to create vegan uncheese sauces, she occasionally suggested using store-bought vegan "cheese" or vegan "meats" for a recipe...though she often also included homemade alternatives. The recipes usually only used ingredients that are fairly easy to find, and many could be made with what I (used to vegan recipes) already have around the house. I also suspect that these recipes will taste good even with some substitutions (like yukon gold rather than russet potatoes?). The recipes don't include an approximate guess at how long it'll take to make (which I would have liked) or nutritional information (which doesn't matter to me).

The author included 8 recipes for basic uncheese sauces (including one that's a dry mix for quick prep time), 12 recipes inspired by various pasta-and-cheese traditions around the world, 15 recipes that add various veggies to the pasta and uncheese, 11 recipes for vegan "meat" added to pasta and uncheese, and 10 recipes for re-using leftover mac and uncheese or other unique ways to eat pasta and uncheese. I immediately tried making the Free Mac, which my family enjoyed. As I expected based on the ingredients, it doesn't taste exactly like Mac and Cheese, but other recipes in the book do. The recipes sometimes assumed a basic cooking knowledge, though the recipes are not difficult to make as long as you have a high-speed blender. Overall, I'd recommend this cookbook.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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