Plant Based Juniors

Two Registered Dietitian Nutritionist helping you raise your plant-based babies, toddlers, children and teens.

Dairy-Free Alfredo Sauce

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Dairy-Free Alfredo Sauce! It has all the creaminess of cheese but it’s made with cashews. This is the most luxurious, subtly sweet cream sauce!

This recipe comes from our Learning Center Co-Director and Pediatrician Dr. Reshma Shah and is part of our brand-new course, Plant-Based Nutrition for Kids: Your A to Z Guide. It is currently the most comprehensive course on plant-based diets for kids that you can find. The course includes a 30-recipe ebook featuring recipes like this one. We’ve heard great feedback from those who have started the course. We encourage you to check it out! You can learn more about it here.

Creamy light yellow sauce is being poured out of a blender into a pot of pasta shells

How to Make Dairy-Free Alfredo Sauce

Start by flash soaking your cashews in boiling water. Then saute onions and garlic in a little vegetable broth before blending them with your softened cashews, lemon juice, and spices. Easy! Serve the sauce with your favorite pasta. My kids are partial to shells at the moment.

Why we love this recipe – it’s PB3-Plate approved!

This delicious sauce also works well if you’re building a PB3 Plate-approved meal, something you’ll learn about in our new course, Plant-Based Nutrition for Kids: Your A to Z Guide. Meals that meet all the components of the PB3 Plate contain three categories of nutrition: grains and starches, fruits and vegetables, and protein-rich foods. Since the sauce contains vegetables (onion, garlic), and it’s served over pasta (a starch), all you need to do is add a protein-rich food! We like stir-fried chickpeas or veggie sausage. You could also serve it with a legume-based pasta to boost the protein content.

In addition to all the nutrition fundamentals, our new course also has an entire module on applying these principles to the PB3-plate with meal planning, prep, and cooking. We understand that after a long day, it’s hard to find the energy to design nutritionally complete meals, let alone figure out what to make for dinner in the first place! Our new course, Plant-Based Nutrition for Kids: Your A to Z Guide does all of that for you and more. Choose meals from the 30-recipe ebook that comes with the course and then after completing the module, design your own with tools we provide.

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Dairy-Free Alfredo Sauce

Dairy-Free Alfredo Sauce! It has all the creaminess of cheese but it's made with cashews. This is the most luxurious, subtly sweet cream sauce!
Print Recipe

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup cashews
  • 1 medium onion (diced)
  • 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth (divided)
  • 2 garlic cloves (minced)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 Tablespoon lemon juice
  • 2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast

Instructions

  • Add cashews to a bowl with boiling water and “flash soak” for 10 minutes.
    1/2 cup cashews
  • Sauté onion with 1 cup veggie broth for 10 minutes, add garlic and continue sauteing for 2 minutes, stirring often to ensure it doesn’t burn.
    1 medium onion, 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth (divided), 2 garlic cloves
  • Add sautéed onion and garlic to a blender with soaked cashews (drained), 1/2 cup veggie broth, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and nutritional yeast.
    1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 Tablespoon lemon juice, 2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
  • Blend until smooth.
  • Add to your favorite pasta and enjoy!

More Pasta Recipes:

PB3-Plate and More:

Chime In: Have you referred to the PB3 Plate in your household? How has it helped with your family meals?

Comments

  1. 5 stars
    This is a super tasty recipe! I was pleasantly surprised by how good this tasted. Try it! Add it to your family recipe book!

5 from 1 vote

Our course

  • plant based nutrition for kids: a to z guide

    Plant-Based Nutrition for Kids: Your A to Z Guide

    • Meet the moms behind the blog.

    Plant-Based Juniors (PBJs), is a community for parents and educators interested in properly implementing plant-based diets for children. Created by Alexandra Caspero MA, RDN and Whitney English MS, RDN – both moms and registered dietitian nutritionists – PBJs is dedicated to filling the gap in credible pediatric nutrition information for plant-based infants and children.

    PBJs promotes an all-inclusive “predominantly plant-based” approach, supporting all families from vegan to vegetarian to flexitarian. Basically, if parents want to get more plants on the plate, PBJs wants to help!

     

    Grab our book – it’s a bestseller!

    Our book, The Plant-Based Baby & Toddler is where we translate nutrition information in a practical non-anxiety-inducing way and provide everything you need to raise healthy, conscious kids.