Cauliflower Cheese with Mature Cheddar Cheese Sauce (vegan)
A sharp, savoury, grown-up gratin for the Christmas table.
Table of Contents
- ✨ Before We Begin…
- Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- What Will You Learn Whilst Making This Recipe?
- Watch It Being Made
- The Cook’s Mind
- Free Companion Quiz: Mature Cheese Sauce Edition
- A Note on Origin
- Ingredient Focus
- My Favourite Way to Eat This
- Serving Suggestions
- Multi-Purpose Recipe
- Handpicked to Go With This One
- Waste Less — How To Use Up Your Ingredient Stash!
- Cauliflower Cheese with Mature Cheddar Cheese-style Sauce (vegan)
✨ Before We Begin…
This recipe is built from an accidental discovery — a fennel–leek base that, when browned and folded into a roux with a particular sauerkraut brine and mustard, turns into the closest thing to mature cheddar you’ve ever tasted without dairy. Using a well-cooked roux adds further flavour and also a structure that coats the palate like dairy cheese. Be particular with the ingredients… other ingredients have not been tested as at time of writing.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Because it tastes like cheese and it’s rich and luscious.
- When you eat it, you’ll begin to remember all those times you wanted a cheese flavour…
What Will You Learn Whilst Making This Recipe?
- How to build mature cheddar flavour using only vegetables, mustard, brine and roux.
- How to caramelise fennel and leek to create sweetness and natural umami.
- How to make a proper roux that forms the backbone of a classic-style cheese sauce.
‘Must be best food offer, of any genre, in Kendal. Hugely accomplished cooking and very much recommended.’
Tony P, Kendal; Food Customer
Watch It Being Made
The Cook’s Mind
Teaching Points — What This Helps You Practise
- Browning vegetables slowly to build umami.
- Creating a roux and taking it far enough for flavour.
- Understanding the fat → umami → lactic acid triangle that gives this sauce its structure.
Make-Ahead
This sauce benefits an overnight rest. The lactic edges settle, the mustard melts in, and the nutritious yeast rounds into full savoury depth.
Freezer-Friendly
Freeze the sauce only (without cauliflower). Add these fresh once the sauce is reheated.
Rescue Mission — What To Do When Things Go Wrong
- Burned the leeks and fennel? It is time to begin again.
- Sauce too thick? Loosen with a splash of soya milk.
- Not tasty enough? It’s likely that the caramelisation of the leeks and fennel wasn’t adequate, and possibly that the roux wasn’t allowed to reach the correct colour.
Do you have a question? No question is silly, and I’m interested in what you have to say… email me
Key Substitutions
None — please don’t expect the same results with different ingredients. This exact ingredient set is fixed.
Cooking Parlance
Shaving the fennel wafer-thin: means slicing it finely enough to bend under its own weight, ideally so thin that it’s translucent. This helps it melt into the sauce and develop the key flavour undertone of onion.
Free Companion Quiz: Mature Cheese Sauce Edition
Put your kitchen knowledge to the test — five short multi-choice questions drawn from this recipe.
A Note on Origin
- This sauce sits between classical French technique and old-world cheesemaking.
- The lactic acid comes from fermentation, not dairy.
- The umami comes from vegetables, not cheese.
Ingredient Focus
Fennel behaves like a quiet trickster: sharp, sweet, faintly anise — the thing that gives this its “aged cheddar” lift.
✨Bright, grounded and rare topped with feathery fronds
To Ingredient Focus: Fennel — what it brings, how to use it, and how to store it well.
My Favourite Way to Eat This
In a bowl with some salad on the side… perhaps a few chickpeas thrown on top… A touch of salad dressing that’s a little too sharp would be lovely.
Serving Suggestions
- Serve beside Christmas centrepieces
- Add the sauce to lasagne layers
- Top a jacket potato
Multi-Purpose Recipe
This recipe has more than one life…
- Fold leftover into pasta for a Boxing Day bake.
- Spread cold onto toast, grill until blistered — a quiet revelation.
Handpicked to Go With This One
A few recipes that play well together — flavour friends, not just neighbours.
Waste Less — How To Use Up Your Ingredient Stash!
Cauliflower Cheese with Mature Cheddar Cheese-style Sauce (vegan)
Cauliflower Cheese with Mature Cheddar Cheese Sauce (vegan)
A mature cheddar flavoured cauliflower cheese built from fennel, leek, lactic brine and proper roux technique – thick and creamy and richly comforting.
Photographed truthfully. If you cook it, yours will look like mine.
Ingredients
Vegetable base
- 1 fennel bulb | trimmed and shaved wafer thin
- 1 large leek | outer greens removed; washed thoroughly; thinly sliced
Fat + roux
- 2 tbsp sunflower oil | it must have a neutral flavour; to soften and caramelise the vegetables
- 1½ tbsp Flora Original | for making the roux
- 1 tbsp plain flour | for the roux
Liquids + lactic backbone
- 10 g Knorr vegetable stock cube | it must be Knorr specifically
- 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard | I used the ALDI branded one
- 2 tbsp Dawton brand sauerkraut brine
- 500 ml soya milk | unsweetened; specifically I use ALDI soy milk in a red carton.
- 3 tbsp nutritious yeast | I used Special Ingredients brand
Vegetables to add to the sauce
- 1 cauliflower | a large cauliflower, broken into small florets and steamed for 5 minutes before adding the sauce
Instructions
Soften the vegetables
- Place a heavy casserole (I used a Le Creuset) over a low heat. Add the oil and ensure it is warm before adding the sliced fennel and leek. Cook very slowly for about 15 minutes, stirring often, until the vegetables soften and collapse, and become translucent. Keep the heat low — this step builds the base flavour.1 fennel bulb , 1 large leek , 2 tbsp sunflower oil
Build the mature-cheddar flavour
- Crumble the stock cube directly into the pan and press it gently into the base of the casserole to dissolve. Add the wholegrain mustard and stir through to combine.10 g Knorr vegetable stock cube , 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
Deglaze
- Bring up the heat of the pan and shake up the sauerkraut. When the pan is hotter, pour in the brine. Stir well and allow the spare liquid to evaporate. This process will bring a natural lactic sharpness.2 tbsp Dawton brand sauerkraut brine
Create the roux in the same pot
- Push the vegetables to one side of the pan. Add the Flora to the cleared space and let it melt. Sprinkle the plain flour over the melted fat and stir to form a loose roux. Cook the roux for 4 minutes until there is a definite colour change.1½ tbsp Flora Original , 1 tbsp plain flour
Combine the roux with the vegetables
- Stir the roux through the fennel and leek so everything is lightly coated. Let it cook together for two minutes. This helps the sauce thicken evenly later and keeps cooking the roux.
- Add the soya milk, stirring as you pour. Allow it to come up to a gentle simmer.500 ml soya milk
- Add the nutritious yeast and mix. Then put a lid on and simmer on the lowest heat possible, for at least 10 minutes. The sauce should already taste remarkably like a dairy cheddar cheese — sharp, savoury, rounded.3 tbsp nutritious yeast
- You’re looking for a sauce that lightly coats the spoon: thick enough to cling, still loose enough to pour.
Rest the sauce
- Take the casserole off the heat and let the mixture sit. Once cool, refrigerate overnight.
- This overnight rest is essential — the acidity settles, the nutritious yeast rounds, and the flavour deepens into its full, savoury self.
Next day
- Begin to reheat the sauce as you steam the cauliflower. Fold the the florets into the rested base and continue reheat until everything is creamy and hot.1 cauliflower
Video
Nutrition
Calories: 164kcalCarbohydrates: 21gProtein: 9gFat: 7gSaturated Fat: 2gPolyunsaturated Fat: 2gMonounsaturated Fat: 2gTrans Fat: 0.03gSodium: 184mgPotassium: 948mgFiber: 7gSugar: 7gVitamin A: 1400IUVitamin C: 147mgCalcium: 168mgIron: 2mg
Nutritional values are estimates only and will vary depending on specific ingredients used. Nutrition is per serving. Information is for the main recipe, not optional accompaniments.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
COPYRIGHT
© The Golden Polar Bear, 2025. Recipes and photography by Julia Savory. If you share this, please pass it along with kindness and if possible share a link back to this site. #ForTheAnimals
Photographed truthfully. If you cook it, yours will look like mine.
Next Steps?
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