Attempted Mac 'n Cheese

After figuring out that my favorite soy cheese "Teese" had tapioca in it and was making me horribly sick, I have been on the search for a comparable alternative. This post is NOT an alternative, it is more of a "what to avoid" post. Some research I had done suggested that "Nutritional Yeast" could be substituted for cheese - in combination with other ingredients of course. 

So I got everything I needed, soy milk, powdered mustard (I thought this was a bit strange but having never made this before I thought it might be necessary - like potato salad has to have mustard or else it's not quite right), olive oil, flour (I used arrowroot). 

I followed the directions exactly, mixing the mustard and flour into the oil (picture at left) after it had heated then slowly mixing in the milk (next picture) - which took a painstakingly long time to do. By this point it wasn't smelling wonderful, but I thought well the yeast flakes are supposed to give it a cheesy sort of flavor. 

So I finally got it all mixed, cooked it the extra 2-4 minutes until it was a creamy texture (it did not look very appetizing - picture at left). I took it off the heat and added the flakes - upon first opening the flakes they seemed to smell kind of cheesy but the longer they were open the worse they smelled. 

But I added them any way, the product they made in combination with the milk mixture was a gooey yellow blob that smelled relatively awful and it looked gross (picture at left) - and the recipe said to mix it with the noodles (cooked while making "cheese" mixture) and bake it. 

But don't be fooled by the actually decent looking picture to the left of what appears to be tasty mac & cheese. I, however, thought sometimes baking changes the flavor of things so I decided to go ahead and mix the "cheese" stuff with the noodles and bake it. 

However, once it came out, I am very glad I had a glass of juice standing by because it was nearly inedible. I DO NOT recommend this as an alternative to cheese - there has to be something better out there. For now I will stick with pasta and sauce, having so many food allergies I try not to be too picky, if I can eat it I usually do, but this was absolutely disgusting. 

If anyone has an alternative, or knows what went wrong please post it below. I hope this post is helpful for those thinking about trying "Nutritional Yeast" - my vote is don't.