This white sauce is a fantastic thing to have in your little bag of tricks. I've made it bechamel style here, but it can be so easily tweaked into a pasta sauce for alfredo, carbonara or even mac and cheese. I've used it as is in lasagne, and with a few extra herbs for a dish of scalloped potatoes. My brother the omnivore has even used it on nachos because he couldn't be bothered going out to buy regular cheese. The world is your creamy, dairy free sauce.
Around 500grams (a small head) of cauliflower, cut into florets
At least 1 cup of an unsweetened, neutral flavoured milk. You will likely add a bit more
1/2 teaspoon dried mushroom powder
~2 teaspoons salt. Adjust to suit.
~4 tablespoons nutritional yeast. Stronger cheesy sauces need more, while some dishes suit a milder flavour. Use your tasting parts
A random amount of pepper. A tiny pinch in mac and cheese but a ton in carbonara.
4 tablespoons fake butter of choice (I like nutellex for taste)
4 tablespoons tapioca flour
Cook your cauliflower until tender. Steaming or boiling work well, but I often microwave them without a small amount of water. You're aiming for it to be soft enough that there's only a tiny bit of resistance when you stab it with a fork.
Drain your cauliflower and put it in the blender with your milk and the smaller amounts of the various flavorings.
Blend! If your blender is struggling add more liquid and keep blending till everything is well mixed and smooooooooth.
Taste and season appropriately. If the mixture is still too thick for your liking, add more liquid again. Once you're happy with it, get out a pot deep enough to hold your sauce, but don't pour it in yet.
Over a medium heat, melt the butter in the pot, and when fully melted add your flours.
Whisk the flours into the melted butter until it is fully incorporated and begins to thicken and bubble.
Pour roughly a third of your sauce into the pot with the roux and whisk to combine. Don't worry if it's lumpy at first, by adding a small amount to begin with it becomes much easier to mix the rest in.
Once it starts looking smooth, slowly add the rest of your liquid, stirring as you go.
Continue stirring over heat until you feel the mixture thickening. You'll likely also start to see the mixture bubbling in a way that is somehow both slow and violent. Be careful you don't get burnt when the bubbles pop and spit.
Remove from heat and add to your dish!
Makes enough sauce for a family sized amount of pasta
A stick mixer will be able to make short work of this, but it tends to be on the messier side for me. Food processors will work okay with this, however you may find that the liquid ends up beyond the "no liquids above this" line unless you have a large capacity model.
The roux is listed as separate from the rest of the ingredients because 1: I don't want you putting it in the blender, although the world wouldn't end if you did, and 2: if you're in a rush you can skip the step entirely and just pour the sauce straight on whatever you're eating it with. The roux does really help sell it though, as it thickens the sauce, adding body and importantly - fat. Cauliflower isn't exactly known for its high fat content, so it can seem a bit starchy without the silkiness that the fat in dairy provides. Some recipes use a small amount of cashews to fix it, but I'm not a millionaire with a fancy blender. This is the cheap and easy way.
If you get to the end and the thickness of the sauce is off, don't stress. If it's too thick for your liking simply stir in more liquid and re-season to taste. If it didn't thicken enough, take a tablespoon of flour (whichever suits) and mix it in a small bowl or cup with enough water to make a very thin, liquidy paste. Pour this paste into your sauce while stirring and wait for the heat to start thickening the sauce. Repeat as necessary.
There are plenty of flavours you can add to this to tweak it. Garlic, onion and mustard powders make for a strong cheesy sauce, for instance. When I make this for carbonara I'll skip the roux and instead toss it and the pasta through oil I've toasted facon in. Plenty of people add miso paste or even soy sauce for more umami flavour, or tumeric for a stronger yellow colour. Do whatever makes you and your mouth happy.
Because cheesy pasta is basically my main food group, I keep a few bags of frozen cauliflower florets in the freezer in case of emergency and to be honest... I feel like it tastes just as good as using the fresh stuff. Plus it makes this way more accessible for when cauliflower isn't in season, when you can't use vegetables before they go off or don't have the ability to cut apart the head yourself.
Why citric acid? You can get it in the baking section, it's cheap, lasts forever, and makes your cheeses tangy without making them taste like vinegar or lemons. Add more if you're feeling it, but it gets sharp very quickly so be careful. You obviously don't want a dish that was meant to be delicate and creamy tasting sour.
Why sugar??? Dairy has sugar in it. Not a lot, and it's hard to pick out amongst the other flavours, but it's in there. It adds to the flavour complexity but it's also what makes cheese brown under heat. So we add the tiniest amount here and we get a sauce that browns a little around the edges when you put it in the oven.
Yes, you can skip the mushrooms and the citric acid and the sugar and the pepper. You can even swap the milk for water. But it tastes better if you don't. You can't leave out the nutritional yeast and expect it to taste right though. Or the salt. Please don't try.
