Vegan Mushroom Alfredo

🍝 Why We Love This Recipe

• Creamy and rich, but 100% vegan: We use soaked cashews to replicate the richness of cream and butter while keeping this dish completely vegan. The sauce ends up being silky smooth, and nutritional yeast adds a cheesy flavor. It's also easy to make and comes together in a blender!
• Comfort food: This vegan mushroom alfredo is great on a cold day in the fall or winter as a hearty and filling dinner for the whole family.
• Easy to make gluten free: simply use a gluten free pasta of your choice.
• Sauce can be made ahead of time: since this isn't a traditional dairy-based alfredo sauce, it can actually be prepped several days ahead of time. Store in an airtight container until ready to add to the pasta.

🍄 Ingredients

Here's everything you'll need to make this vegan mushroom alfredo:

📋 Ingredient Notes

• Mushrooms: We used a combination of button and shiitake mushrooms, but you can use whatever you prefer. Maitakes would be great, and chanterelles are a great option too.
• Cashews: Be sure to use unroasted, unsalted raw cashews, otherwise they won't soak properly or will throw off the flavor of your sauce.
• White wine: Use a relatively cheap bottle of a dry wine, like a pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc. Don't use something you'd never drink on its own, but no need to splurge on something special in this vegan mushroom alfredo.
• Pasta: Use a long, flat noodle like fettuccine or tagliatelle for best results. Spaghetti will also work if you have some on hand!
• Shallot: feel free to sub with an equal quantity of yellow onion.
• Nutritional yeast: nutritional yeast is a natural deactivated yeast that has a distinctly cheesy flavor, which adds a ton of flavor to this vegan alfredo.

🔪 Step-by-step Instructions

(1) Soak 1 cup raw cashews in room temperature water for 2 hours. If you're short on time, you can soak in super hot water for 30 minutes. Drain and rinse. 

(2) Add the cashews to a blender with remaining cashew cream ingredients (3 tablespoon nutritional yeast, 2 teaspoon lemon juice, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper and water). Blend until smooth and creamy. If not using right away, store in an airtight container in refrigerator for up to a week. 

(3) Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

(4) Meanwhile, preheat a large sauté pan to medium. Add 3 tablespoon olive oil, ¼ minced shallots or onion and 3 cloves minced garlic and cook for a few minutes, until softened. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside - you’ll add them back in later.

(5) Slice up 16 oz total of mushrooms and increase pan heat to medium-high. Add mushrooms to pan and cook until most of the liquid is reduced - about 15 minutes. Stir often throughout.

(6) Boil pasta until al dente. Reserve about a cup of pasta water in case you need to loosen up the alfredo sauce.

(7) When the liquid is mostly reduced from mushroom pan, deglaze with ½ cup of white wine. Add back in cooked shallots and garlic, salt, pepper and fresh parsley. Cook for a few more minutes, taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

(8) When pasta is finished cooking, add to the pan with mushrooms and coat with alfredo sauce. If you need to loosen up the sauce, stir in a bit of the hot reserved pasta water. Top with more fresh parsley and enjoy!

🎥 Recipe Video

💭 Expert Tips and FAQs

• If you're short on time, you can soak the cashews for 30 minutes in hot water instead of 2 hours in room temperature water.
• Be sure to reserve some pasta water after you've cooked the pasta. You can use this water to loosen up the alfredo sauce if it looks too thick.
• Using tongs makes it much easier to toss the pasta, mushrooms, and sauce together.
• Feel free to use whatever variety of mushrooms you prefer. Button, shiitake, and chanterelles are all great in this vegan mushroom alfredo.
• Like the mushrooms, feel free to use the pasta of your choice. We'd recommend a flat, long noodled pasta like fettuccine or tagliatelle. If you're gluten free, use a GF pasta of choice.
• Make sure to use high heat when cooking the mushrooms, this will help to remove any excess moisture from them. If the heat is too low, they'll take ages to cook down.
• Fresh parsley on top really helps to cut into the creaminess of the sauce, and adds a fresh, herbaceous flavor. Don't skimp on it! Same goes for lemon juice – if it's too rich for your taste, add an extra squeeze of lemon for acidity.