Creamy Mushroom Sauce with Cashews
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This creamy mushroom sauce is pure magic! It’s a lightened-up dairy-free sauce with earthy mushrooms and creamy cashews, perfect for pasta, potatoes, and more. It’s quick and easy to make, and it’s ready in 25 minutes!
While the mushrooms in this sauce won’t make you feel funny, it does taste quite magical. It’s a dairy-free mushroom sauce that tastes like it has whipping cream, but it doesn’t. It’s so rich, creamy, and delicious that you may not even know the difference!
It’s an easy vegan sauce that’s perfect for quick and easy weeknight meals. Toss it with pasta, pour it over mashed potatoes, or add in some chunks of tempeh and serve it over brown rice for a completely vegan meal.
To make it, simply brown some mushrooms in a pan with olive oil then transfer some to your blender along with the soaked cashews, garlic, salt, pepper, and water. Blend it all until smooth and creamy. Add the sauce back to the pan with the remaining mushrooms and warm it over the stove. That’s it!
One thing to keep in mind is that the cashews need to soak either overnight or using our quick-soak method. You’ll also need a good blender for that extra smooth texture.
Magic mushroom sauce ingredients
You only need a few simple ingredients and most of them you’re likely to have on hand. Here’s what you need to make this mushroom sauce:
- Cashews – look for raw un-roasted and unsalted cashews for this recipe. They need to be soaked either overnight, or using our quick-soak method (see below).
- Olive oil – for sautéing the mushrooms. You can also use a vegan butter alternative if you prefer.
- Mushrooms – we use a mix of cremini mushrooms but you can use button mushrooms or a mix of your favorites.
- Garlic – because garlic and mushrooms belong together, and because garlic adds lots of flavor to the earthy mushrooms.
- Sea salt + pepper – for seasoning, to taste.
The cashew quick-soak method
Don’t worry if you didn’t plan ahead and soak your cashews overnight. This easy quick-soak method is here to save the day!
Here’s how to quick-soak cashews in just two simple steps:
- Place cashews in a heat-safe bowl or dish.
- Cover them with boiling water for at least 1 hour. That’s it! Now they will be soft enough to blend into a creamy sauce.
Ideas for serving this mushroom sauce
There are so many delicious ways to enjoy this cashew mushroom sauce. Here are some simple ideas to get you started:
- Use it in a casserole. It’s the sauce we use to make our vegan green bean casserole, and it tastes great in tuna noodle casserole, or baked pasta dishes, too.
- Pair it with potatoes. Serve it with mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, or any other kind of potatoes you can think of.
- Make a grain bowl. Serve it with some tempeh or cooked chicken chunks and spinach over brown rice for a complete meal.
- Toss it with pasta. Fusilli, spaghetti, penne, you name it. Use gluten-free pasta if needed, or veggie noodles for a lighter meal.
- Turn it into soup. In our cashew cream of mushroom soup, we add vegetable or chicken broth to thin it and some thyme and black pepper for flavor. In just 20 minutes, you can wrap your hands around a mug of this not-from-a-can mushroom soup.
Creamy Mushroom Sauce with Cashews
Ingredients
- 1 cup cashews (soaked)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 ½ lb crimini or button mushrooms (sliced)
- 1 large garlic clove (minced)
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Add the olive oil to a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are brown, about 15 minutes.1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 ½ lb crimini or button mushrooms
- Add the soaked cashews, garlic, sea salt, pepper, 1 ½ cups of water and a scoop of the cooked mushrooms to a food processor or blender and blend on high until smooth.1 cup cashews, 1 large garlic clove, 1 teaspoon sea salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper
- Pour the sauce into the pan with the rest of the mushrooms. Bring the sauce to a boil then remove it from the heat.
Notes
Nutrition
We have thoroughly tested this recipe for accuracy. However, individual results may vary. See our full recipe disclosure here.
I’ve made this several times and it’s delicious.
Good post guys!
To be fair, there’s no reason not to make this with fresh magic mushrooms
I made this tonight and it was so yummy! I added onion and zucchini and served it over millet and brown rice pasta! Excellent! This is definitely a keeper 😊
Made this for dinner tonight as a sauce for chicken and going to have the rest as soup for lunch. Absolutely delicious! Have had to cut out dairy due to medication induced lactose intolerance and am looking forward to trying out more cashew substitutions. I only soaked the cashews for 2 hours and used my food processor. I think it would have been a bit smoother if I had soaked them longer, but it still came out great! The garlic is key for seasoning.
Hello ! Thanks for this very good recipe 🙂 : it’s both good when eating it, and good for me.
This turned out perfectly! Delicious! I might try different versions of it in the future (like herbs and garlic) but as is, this was terrific. My whole family loved it.
I want to preface this comment by saying: I never follow recipes. Ever. I use them as inspiration and then make my own recipe.
I’ve been making this recipe without alteration since 2017. My kids and I are respectively dairy free and plant based due to allergies and this makes holidays in my food centric family really difficult.
I have taken over the food making for holiday meals (it only takes one year of watching a Thanksgiving you can’t eat from behind your peanut butter sandwich.) and this sauce makes a green bean casserole that is not only “acceptable” but raved over. I hate canned cream of mushroom soup (even cooked into stuff) I will eat this with a spoon.
As long as I am cooking holiday meals this recipe will be a part of our family traditions, and my kids love to help me cook, so maybe they’ll keep making it when I retire in fifty some years.
Thanks for something amazing,
Kate
That makes me so happy to hear! Thanks, Kate!
Just a quick update since I made the recipe for Thanksgiving this past weekend. I made the full recipe and was surprised how much sauce it made – over 3 cups! It was verrry thick once it sat in the fridge for a few hours. But the great thing is that it’s easy to thin with a little water if needed. I sauteed the garlic with the mushrooms rather than adding them raw into the blender. I would advise using white mushrooms as the brown ones I used made the sauce quite gray. I love Herbs de Provence seasoning so I added a teaspoon (dried) or so to the mushrooms as they cooked. The result was excellent!! Creamy and delicious. I used the sauce to fold into my wild rice casserole and everyone loved it. Forget Cream of Mushroom soup (full of chemicals and sodium!) from now on – this sauce will be my go-to. Thanks, Kristin.
You’re so welcome, Julie!