Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing #protein #recipe #cashews #dip #dressing

Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing evokes a dairy-free cheesiness that everyone can appreciate with a surprisingly low-calorie count to boot! It tastes delightful slathered on your favorite sandwich or wrap.  Dollop a spoonful on top of a veggie burger to add bright cheesy flavor.   Or drizzle this dressing over a plate of your favorite roasted vegetables to enjoy it as a lovely sauce. Enjoy it swirled it into a bowl of warm rice or served as a healthy dip alongside fresh raw veggies.

Oh, and you’ll love how it tastes in our Vegan Tempeh Blue Cheese Buffalo Bowl!

Here are a few interesting tidbits about the nutritious ingredients:

  • Cashews bring the creaminess which helps keep it free of added oils. . .  yay!
  • Also, the tofu provides a generous serving of protein – 12% of your RDA, to be exact!
  • Additionally, tahini is what makes this recipe taste like traditional dairy-based blue cheese dressing!

In case you aren’t familiar with tahini, tahini is a Middle Eastern paste or sauce made from ground sesame seeds. The touch of bitterness gained from the tahini that seems to make a real flavor deposit into this sauce.  Tahini creates a uniquely sharp flavor.  That sharpness magically mimics that little somethin’ – somethin’ that blue cheese lovers appreciate about blue cheese.

In addition to the delightful cashew-y smoothness of Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing, it’s also tangy, earthy, decadent and cheesy!  It’s even cooling to the palate which makes it ideal to drizzle over any dish with the word buffalo in the title. In fact, I first made this sauce for my family to enjoy as a dairy-free dip for baked cauliflower buffalo wings, no chicken involved, of course.  Now we love to drizzle it over a new recipe  I mentioned called Vegan Tempeh Blue Cheese Buffalo Bowl. You’ll have to check it out because I make an Oil-Free Buffalo Hot Sauce to go with it that’s out of this world tasty, and I make it using super healthy hemp seeds!

Anyhow, oil-free, gluten-free, dairy-free Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing is a sauce that I know you’ll use in more ways than I can even imagine, and I’m so happy to be sharing it with you! Pin this recipe for safe keeping and to keep it handy to share with your friends; yes, they will ask!

Finally, once you’ve tried Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing for yourself, leave a kind comment and tell about your experience. I’d love to hear how it goes!

Happy eating!

Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing #low-cal #blue #cheese #bleucheese #sauce

Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing #plant-based #dairy-free #gluten-free #GF #no-oil

Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing

  • 10
    Prep:
  • 0
    Cook Time:
  • Yield: 16 Servings

Are you craving a traditional bleu cheese dressing but want to keep it vegan? No problem! Gluten-free dairy-free and oil-free Creamy Vegan Blue Cheese Dressing is a way to healthily indulge in the lusciousness of decadent bleu cheese taste, without any artificial flavors. Rich and velvety smooth, this creamy dressing will inspire you to try it in a thousand different ways and never cease to amaze you. Trust me; you will soon forget that you ever even craved traditional bleu cheese! I use this dressing in my recipe for Roasted Steak-y Mushroom Kale Salad, and it makes the whole dish come together! And don’t forget to try it as the dressing to top off a zesty Vegan Tempeh Blue Cheese Buffalo Bowl, too.  In the Buffalo Bowl recipe, you’ll find our hemp seed infused version of a creamy Oil-Free Buffalo Sauce Dressing that you don’t want to miss!

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup raw cashews, soaked and drained - See notes for soaking methods.
  • 14 oz organic extra-firm tofu, with 1/4 saved for crumbles
  • 3 to 4 cloves garlic, peeled
  • juice of one large lemon or about 1/2 cup or so
  • 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar from the mother - I like this brand.
  • 8 tbsp or 1/2 cup tahini - I buy this organic brand in bulk since I use tahini so frequently - the price is unbeatable!
  • 1/4 cup veggie broth or water, in a pinch
  • 4 to 5 tsp pure maple syrup or raw agave nectar
  • 3 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 2 to 3 tsp rice vinegar
  • a dash of salt, to taste
  • ¼ cup reserved extra-firm tofu, crumbled  
  • optional garnish of green onions or fresh parsley, finely chopped

Instructions

  1. Combine all the ingredients other than the reserved portion of tofu, in a high-powered blender, blending until smooth and deliciously creamy. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired and then transfer the protein-packed creamy sauce to your serving or storage container.
  2. Now, crumble the reserved portion of tofu and stir it into the creamy dressing; this makes those lumps we all expect in a traditional bleu cheese.  Garnish with chopped bits of green onion or parsley and enjoy immediately or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to about one week.  By the way, this sauce tastes fantastic drizzled across the top of a hearty and satisfying Vegan Tempeh Blue Cheese Buffalo Bowl.

Notes

  • Cashews are a very soft and forgiving nut and can soak for as little as 15 to 30 minutes in hot water or even overnight.  For more detailed information regarding soaking methods, visit my recipe link for a No-Cook Spreadable Cashew Cheese.
  • Read this article to learn more about the nutritional benefits of tahini.
  • Portions are estimated at a generous 1/4 cup per serving since this dressing makes an excellent dip or sauce to go with all things labeled buffalo in their title!  When dressing a side salad, you may use half that amount, perhaps just two tablespoons which cuts the calories, etc., in half.
  • Whenever there are ingredients written in the color orange, it means that the link is clickable and that the item may be available on Amazon.  Mostly this is a feature used when the best deal on a particular item is found on Amazon, but sometimes it is merely because an item may be hard for some people to find.  It's also potentially helpful to those who may be unfamiliar with a specific ingredient.
  • Here's an example of a wonderfully clickable link... when I stock up on cashews since they're used so often in my recipes, I usually order this brand because, pound per pound, the value is unbeatable for excellent tasting raw organic cashews.

Nutrition

% DV

Calories Per Serving: 138
  • Total Fat 10 g 15 %
  • Saturated Fat 1.5 g 8 %
  • Cholesterol 0 mg 0 %
  • Sodium 28.1 mg 1 %
  • Carbohydrates 7.6 g 3 %
  • Fiber 1.4 g 6 %
  • Sugar 2 g ---
  • Protein 5.9 g 12 %
  • Vitamin A 0 %
  • Vitamin C 5 %
  • Iron 11 %
  • Calcium 5 %

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Comments

  • This looks delicious. Do you have any suggestions for a substitute for the tahini as I am allergic to sesame.

    1. Another nut or seed butter could replace of the tahini – we thought of sunflower seed butter first, since it’s rather subtle with a few bitter notes similar to the flavors in tahini.

      Sure hope another nut or seed butter will work for you, Therese.

  • This is great! It’s the recipe closest to blue cheese that I have tried.

    1. Thank you for sharing such a positive review, Zina, and you’re so right – this combo of ingredients does a excellent job of bringing the creamy blue cheese tang!

  • I have an allergy to nuts so no cashews for me. Do you think raw sunflower seeds would be a suitable substitute? Thanks!

    1. Thanks for asking, Sierra. In other recipes, I’ve often substituted raw pumpkin or sunflower seeds for nuts, and everything has turned out fine. I haven’t tried that substitution for this recipe, but I expect it to be delicious, even without the extra buttery flavor of the cashew.

  • I’ve read people use chickpeas as subs for cashews, so I’m gonna give this recipe a try with chickpeas instead of cashews…

    1. That sounds great, Wendy – let us know how your trade of using chickpeas in place of cashews works out!

  • Great recipe! Has anyone tried freezing this?

    1. Great question, Jean. Since we usually gobble this dressing up by using it within the week in our Vegan Buffalo Tofu Tacos, Buffalo Tempeh Bowl, Buffalo Tortilla Bowl, or to dress a fresh and crispy wedge of lettuce, we don’t have much experience in trying to save it for the long haul.

      I would say that from my experience in working with tofu, I’d certainly give it a shot. It may need to be stirred a bit after allowing it to thaw in the fridge, but I suspect it will keep well in the freezer.