Vegan Bechamel

Reminder: I'm not a vegan, I do eat cheese, I just like to challenge myself to figure out ways to modify recipes to be dairy free. This was a last minute throw together and let me say it was perfect.

I wanted to make a béchamel for a turkey lasagna I'll be posting about soon but didn't buy any cashews or cauliflower which I had seen were usually staples in vegan cheese sauce recipes.

I did however have pine nuts so after a quick google search I found a recipe idea that I modified to create my béchamel:

• 1 cup filtered water
• 1 cup pinenuts
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• big squeeze of lemon (half of a small lemon)
• 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
• 2.5 tsp nutritional yeast
• big pinch of salt

Blend everything until smooth, about 30-60 seconds.

I wanted it to be thicker so I brought it to a light simmer in a pan over medium/high heat and that was it! It was nutty and salty and tasted A LOT like béchamel. I'm excited to try more homemade vegan cheese sauces since this one was SO easy.