Ingredients
1 can (13.5 ounces) full-fat unsweetened coconut milk – we use the Thai Kitchen coconut milk from Costco, it’s organic, and at about $10 for six cans it’s a good price!
1/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons agar powder (if you instead have agar flakes, we have seen recommendations of using 3 parts flakes for every 1 part powder, so 3 tablespoons agar flakes would equal one tablespoon of powder, meaning that in this recipe you would use 6 tablespoons of flakes)
1 teaspoon white or rice wine vinegar (use apple cider vinegar if doing AIP)
4 Tablespoons nutritional yeast (depending on how strong a cheese flavor you want)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

Place everything but the agar in a medium saucepan, and whisk until fully mixed. Then mix in the agar, and turn the stove on to medium.

Whisking constantly, bring mixture to a low boil, then turn to low heat so the mixture just simmers, and continue whisking for five minutes.

Remove from heat, and pour into your mold. Using the butter stick mold is ideal because you know exactly how much each stick of cheese sauce contains (1/2 cup), but if you don’t have a butter stick mold, you can really use anything. (You can get the butter stick mold that we use here; we also use it for our homemade vegan butter.) In fact, small glass canning jars are also good because you can take them from the fridge, and stick them right in the microwave to melt your cheese sauce.

Butter Stick Mold

To Use

Remove however much cheese sauce you want from the fridge (the amount will depend on how much macaroni you have cooked, and how saucy you like your macaroni and cheese), put in a microwave-safe dish, and heat on high for 30 seconds. You want it to just melt, if 30 seconds doesn’t do it, then add 10 seconds at a time.

NOTE: this does not melt like regular cheese, it will be much more liquid, but it does stir into your macaroni and turn it into a lovely mac and cheese.

Melted Stick of Cheese

Stir the melted cheese sauce into your cooked macaroni.

If you have an Instant Pot here’s how to cook macaroni (or really any pasta) in an Instant Pot: Put the pasta in the bottom of the pot. Add enough water to just barely cover the pasta. Determine the regular cooking time provided on the package of pasta; if it’s an odd number, round down – if it’s a range (such as 7-9 minutes) choose the average. Now divide that number in half, and subtract 2. The resulting number is the amount of time in minutes that you want to cook your pasta at manual high pressure. It will usually be 1 or 2 minutes, although sometimes it will be 0 minutes (yes, that’s a thing, it cooks while coming to pressure). Let NPR for 5 minutes, and then quick release (be careful, if a lot of pasta goo starts sputtering out of the valve, close it up again for another 5 minutes and then QR it, although this will yield a mushier pasta).

Mmmmm good!