Cheesy Roasted Broccoli with Vegan Cheese Sauce

Name: Cheesy Roasted Broccoli with Vegan Cheese Sauce
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Amercian
Ingredients: 4 cups (approx. 400 g) broccoli florets; 2 tsp olive oil; 2 tbsp nutritional yeast; optional extra flavourings: pinch each of sea salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes; 2 cups (270 g), peeled and diced yukon gold potato, or any other yellow potato; 1 cup (140 g), peeled and chopped carrot; 1/2 cup water (plus more to reach desired consistency); 1/4 cup almond milk (or more water if you don’t have any milk on hand); 1/2 cup (45 g) nutritional yeast; 1 tsp garlic powder; 1 tsp onion powder; 1 tbsp soy sauce or gluten-free tamari; 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice; sea salt, to taste

posted: 11/27/17 — updated: 05/02/23 by Deryn Macey

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I’ve been making this crispy, cheesy roasted broccoli a lot lately to snack on and the last time I made I got to thinking…what if I put cheese sauce on cheesy roasted broccoli? It sounded a pretty good idea to me. Turns out I was right and this crispy cheesy roasted brocoli served with healthy, oil-free vegan cheese sauce not only hits all the spots but it tastes amazing too!

Crispy Cheesy Roasted Broccoli wth Vegan Cheese Sauce

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Tips for Crispy Roasted Broccoli

How to Make Vegan Cheese Sauce

Tips for Crispy Roasted Broccoli

Spread the broccoli on the pan evenly, in one layer.
Make sure the broccoli is dry for best results.
Toss thoroughly with oil and spices so each piece is coated.
Pre-heat the oven.
Use some olive, coconut or avocado oil for roasting.
Flip half way through.

That’s about it. I usually let mine roast for about 35 minutes or more so they’re nice and crispy and browned. Start keeping an eye on them after 20 minutes to ensure they don’t burn.

How to Make Vegan Cheese Sauce

There are a ton of recipes available for vegan cheese sauce, so this is nothing new. There are a few different ways you can make but I always use nutritional yeast for it’s flavour, colour and nutritional benefits. I’ve made it with cashews, potato and carrot, zucchini, sweet potato and a combination of those ingredients. I’m not a huge fan of how it comes out with sweet potato though. It tastes good but it has a hint of sweetness that doesn’t really go with a cheesy flavour. I’d recommend sticking to yukon gold or any other yellow-fleshed potatoes for this one.

Aside from the nooch, you’ll be needing potatoes, carrots and a couple spices. Potatoes provide the creamy, starchy base and carrot provides added volume and colour.

It’s really easy to make. All you need to do is boil the potato and carrot until soft, then blend them with the rest of the ingredients. A lot of the vegan cheese sauce recipes out there call for oil but I decided to leave it out and just use water and almond milk.

The result is a..

highly addictive
beautifully smooth
perfectly flavoured
melty
dipable…

cheese sauce you’re gong to want to put on just about everything.

Of course you can make these two recipes independently and use them however you like but they do go pretty great together. Any leftover extra cheese sauce can be used to make mac and cheese, for dipping tortilla chips, drizzling over vegan pizza, as a dip for baked fries…or anywhere else you’d use a delicious, cheesy sauce.

I’m even thinking apple slices…would that be weird? Either way you can go ahead and dip away because this cheese sauce is super healthy! No oil, no dairy…just veggies and nutritional yeast, so not only will you be enjoying a delicious, cheesy sauce, you’ll be sneaking in tons of nutrition at the same time. WIN.

As for the broccoli, I like making a double or triple batch with my food prep for snacks and throwing in macro bowls all week. It’s salty, cheesy, crispy, tender and one of my fave ways to eat broccoli.