Homemade Vegan Ricotta
Growing up with a severe dairy allergy, I find myself amazed and somewhat overwhelmed by all of the non-dairy cheese options on the market.
In an attempt to eat dishes that are traditionally highly dairy forward, such as Italian pasta dishes, while appealing to a plant-based and non-dairy diet, I found myself making my vegan cheese alternatives from scratch.
If you want to start making cheese alternatives at home, then this homemade ricotta “cheese” recipe using cashews is just what you need.
I typically use a food processor to make this cheese, but a high-speed blender should work too. You can find all of the ingredients for this recipe at your local grocery store.
This take on ricotta cheese goes excellent in a lot of baked pasta dishes. My personal favorites include lasagna, baked rigatoni, or baked spaghetti.
A note about using cashews - now there are a variety of cashew options on the market. I opted for roasted/unsalted cashews, but raw cashews or salted cashews will work fine.
In an ideal real-world, soaking the cashews for up to 24 hours would yield the mildest cashew flavor, so it’s best if you’re trying to get the closest flavor palette to ricotta. For me, probably because I’ve never tasted dairy ricotta, I enjoy the nutty flavor.
If you recreate this recipe, be sure to snap a picture and tag @plantbasedbre across social media accounts.
Vegan Ricotta Cheese
Ingredients
- 1 cup cashews, soaked and drained
- Roughly 1 cup unsweetened soy milk or preferred plant milk
- Roughly 4 tbsp of nutritional yeast
- 3 tsp salt
- 3 tsp black pepper
- Juice of one lemon
- 3 tbsp basil, chopped, lightly packed.
Instructions
- Bring roughly 3 cups of water to a boil.
- Add your cashews to a heat safe container, pour the boiling water. Soak your cashews for at least 30 minutes.
- While the cashews soak you can prep the other ingredients.
- After the cashews soak, drain and rinse them.
- Add the cashews and soy milk to a food processor/high speed blender. Mix for 30 seconds.
- Add them salt, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, black pepper, and fresh basil to the food processor. Pulse for roughly 90 seconds until the texture is thick.
- Store in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
