Easy Healthy Vegan Mozzarella with Broccoli

My kids are really picky eaters but we are very lucky that they will eat broccoli. You know what that means? We cook it with everything. We recently posted our vegan mozzarella recipe and our kids love it so I decided to take it a step further and mix some broccoli into it. The result? We have another great, healthy, oil-free, Easy Vegan Mozzarella with Broccoli recipe that you can dip into it when it is warm or it can be used on a pasta bake or in a quesadilla. 

This recipe is simple enough to throw together in a moment's notice and all the ingredients except the broccoli are shelf-stable, so you will not need any fresh food besides the green stuff (and maybe if you want to do fresh garlic instead of powder which I LOVE) lying around. 

You will just want to make sure you give your cashews 2-24 hours to soak and soften so your cheese blends up nicely and doesn't turn out grainy. I usually soak in filtered water in the fridge, but if you forget to soak, you can throw them in a small pot of water for a few minutes.

Then, you simply throw everything but the broccoli in the blender and once liquefied, you keep stirring mixture in low/med heat saucepan until it magically turns into gooey cheese. If your heat is low, it is a slow process, if it is too high, it will glob up right away. Add your broccoli and you kick the nutrients in this dish up a notch. Take it off heat right away once it is gooey.

Once all the ingredients are mixed together, you can grab some tortilla chips and dig right into this mixture as a dip. You can also spread the cheese on a tortilla and brown in a quesadilla.

This cheese browns beautifully on a pizza or pasta bake. You just need to watch it closely for burning in a toaster or conventional oven.

With a small handful of cashews and some starch, nutritional yeast, and spices, you can whip this gooey, stretchy, vegan mozzarella "cheese", that browns in the oven or makes creamy cheesy quesadillas in no time. 

Easy Healthy Vegan Mozzarella with Broccoli Recipe

Ingredients:

1/2 cup raw cashews (soaked or boiled)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice)
1 1/4 cup water
1 1/2 tbsp nutritional yeast
3/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder (or chopped and freshly sauteed in oil, or oven roasted)
1/4 cup tapioca flour (also called tapioca starch)
1 cup chopped broccoli (cooked)

Instructions:

If you are starting with fresh broccoli, steam it on the stove or cook however you like it until it is soft and easy to chop up finely or chop finely and saute with oil over low/med heat.

Make sure your cashews are soaked for at least 2 hours or overnight. If you forgot to soak them you can boil them for a few minutes until they are soft.

Then put all your ingredients except the broccoli in the blender and run until liquefied.

Pour mixture into medium saucepan on low/med heat and stir until it becomes thick, gooey, and stretchy. Stir chopped broccoli to the mixture and remove from heat.

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Use your cheese in quesadillas, on pizza, on top of a pasta bake... it can even be used as a dip!

Take any unused portion and refrigerate for 2-3 days.