Vegan Cashew Queso Dip

As someone who’s written love sonnets about Tostito’s salsa con queso, I had a miserable time saying goodbye to melted cheese when I started cutting out dairy. It was… borderline tragic. On one drunken night in college, I found myself scrolling through the Taco Bell website for twenty minutes and singing breakup songs to pictures of nachos. My friends were thrilled when I perfected this recipe, seeing as a) it’s delicious, b) it’s vegan, and c) it’s made me less likely to tell a fast food menu to come back to me, you can blame it all on me, I was wrong and I just can’t live without yooooouuuu. 

This isn’t an exact dupe for cheese (it’s not gonna fool anybody, I mean), but it gets pretty close. It was able to fill the hole in my heart that nacho cheese left behind, and that’s saying a lot. I hope you like it!

What you need:

• 1 cup raw cashew pieces
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 3 tbsp salsa of your choice (just make sure it's red)
• 1 tbsp each of onion powder, garlic powder, turmeric
• 1 jalapeño pepper (or more or less, depending on how much you like to spice up your life)
• 1/4 cup chopped red onion
• salt, pepper, cumin, and crushed pepper flakes to taste

What you do:

1. Soak the cashews in the water for an hour or longer. You can even let them sit overnight for a better texture, if you have the patience for that kind of thing. I do not.
2. Plop the cashews and water into your blender. Combine them into a paste.
3. Pour the blended cashews into a small plan and put it over low heat.
4. Add the spices and nutritional yeast, stirring until the mixture goes from off-white to yellow. If it doesn't get yellow, add a bit more turmeric.
5. Add the salsa, chopped pepper, and onion. The salsa should dye everything to an orange-ish queso color. Feel free to add more if you don't like the color yet.
6. Taste your queso! Now's the time to add as much salt, pepper, cumin, and pepper flakes as you want. Add hot sauce if you feel like it! And cayenne pepper! Do whatever your heart desires!

You’ll end up with enough dip to serve about four people. It also keeps pretty well– I’ve refrigerated my leftovers in tupperware for about a week and it was perfectly fine. Of course, you can also eat it by yourself in one sitting. Just relax and do your own thing.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with the Veggie & Flaxseed Tortilla Chips (yes, that’s a proper noun) from Trader Joe’s, and they pair really well with this. If you want to keep things on the healthier side, this is an awesome dip for baby carrots and celery sticks, and I love adding a dollop to burritos, taco salads, breakfast scrambles. Let me know if your brilliant brain comes up with any other ideas!

I haven't officially decided what to call this yet (salsa con cashew? Fake-o queso?) so if you try out the recipe, give me your vote.