Friends, Romans, countrymen … pass me your plates. Today, I come to you with one of my proudest breakthroughs: A vegan version of Hamburger Helper that is the comfort food to beat all comfort foods.
It’s all in the cheesy sauce. I’ve been toying around with concocting just the perfect sauce for a long time now and I’ve finally come up with a winner! And you’ll never believe the base – are you ready for this? It’s potatoes and carrots! Boiled and blended until totally smooth, it’s the perfect creamy base to add spices to and turns out beautifully cheesy in the final analysis.
Now, this recipe has a bit more in it than your standard pack-of-powdered-orange-cheese that you’ve come to expect from the real brand-name Helper. But in all honesty, the cooking time (and prep time) isn’t really much more in this version than it is in the box version. And regardless, I think the trade-off is well worth it.
The recipe is below. Here’s hoping it rocks your comfort-food world!
VEGAN HAMBURGER HELPER
Serves 4
What you’ll need:
For the sauce:
3-4 medium-sized Yukon Gold or white baking potatoes (5-6 smaller, 2-3 large)
1 cup shredded carrot
2 cups vegetable broth
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. salt (more to taste after the sauce is complete)
1 tsp. pepper
Juice from half a lemon
¾ cup nutritional yeast
2-3 tbsp. salsa, optional
For the rest of the meal:
1 box elbow macaroni
1 bag vegetarian beef crumbles
1 tsp. olive oil
First, make your sauce. Either use a stock pot or use your pressure cooker to boil the potatoes along with the carrots in the broth (you could use water, too, but the broth gives off more flavor). On the stovetop, keep the veggies at a high boil for about 15-20 minutes or until everything is nice and soft; in the pressure cooker, cook them at high pressure for eight minutes and then let the pressure come down naturally for 10 minutes before you quick-release.
Then either use an immersion blender right in the pot or transfer the vegetables to a blender and continue on with the recipe.
Add the garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, lemon juice and nutritional yeast to the mixture and blend everything together until silky smooth. Give it a taste – does it have enough flavor? If it’s still too bland for your taste (hey, it happens), add some more of any of the above ingredients to balance things out. What you’re looking for is a fairly neutral cheese sauce that will soon take on the ambient flavors of the rest of the dish, so stick with it.
Next, I like to add a few teaspoons of salsa to my cheese sauce – it adds a nice smokiness without turning the dish into tomato sauce. (You can also use this trick with cheese grits, by the way.) Just stir it in and then set the sauce aside for a moment.
Now, turn your attention to that macaroni and beef. First, prepare the macaroni according to the package instructions, drain, and set aside. While the macaroni boils, pull out a pan, add a splash of olive oil, and heat it up to medium heat. Heat the veggie crumbles until thoroughly cooked, and then add the cooked macaroni (or as much as your pan can handle – save the rest, though, and add it before you put leftovers away!).
Next, start spooning the cheese sauce over the macaroni and beef mixture, mixing everything together as you do to ensure the sauce coats everything evenly. Keep adding sauce and macaroni, stirring together, until you run out of room in your pan and then, again, set the sauce aside for adding to the pan when there’s more space.
Serve on festive plates or in bowls, and enjoy!
:)