Creamy Mushroom Sauce with Cashews
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My creamy mushroom sauce gets its body from soaked cashews instead of cream, and I blend some of the browned mushrooms in too, so the base tastes like mushroom rather than just carrying it.
Most cashew mushroom sauces are cashew cream with mushrooms stirred into it. Mine blends some of the cooked mushrooms into the cream itself, which changes everything about how it tastes.
Brown a pound and a half of cremini until they’ve given up their water and turned deeply golden, then send a scoop to the blender with the soaked cashews, garlic, and water. What comes out is the color of café au lait and tastes like concentrated mushroom rather than like nuts. Pour it back over the mushrooms still in the pan, and you get two textures of the same ingredient, silky underneath and sliced and meaty throughout.
There’s no stock, no wine, no nutritional yeast, and no thyme in this creamy mushroom sauce, which is deliberate. Six ingredients means nothing competes with the mushrooms.
How to serve my cashew mushroom sauce
- Toss it with pasta. Thin it with a splash of pasta water and it coats long noodles well. Figure on about 1½ cups of sauce for half a pound of dry pasta.
- Spoon it over potatoes. Mashed, baked, or roasted. This is what I make it for most often.
- Turn it into soup. Add broth to thin it, plus thyme and plenty of black pepper, and you’ve got my cashew cream of mushroom soup in about 20 minutes.
- Bake it into a casserole. It’s the base of my green bean casserole, and it works in baked pasta too.
Creamy Mushroom Sauce with Cashews
Ingredients
- 1 cup cashews (soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 ½ lb crimini or button mushrooms (sliced)
- 1 large garlic clove (minced)
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 ½ cup water
Instructions
- Add the olive oil to a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned, about 15 minutes.1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 ½ lb crimini or button mushrooms
- Drain the cashews then add them to your food processor or blender. Add the garlic, sea salt, pepper, water, and a scoop of the cooked mushrooms, and blend on high until smooth.1 cup cashews, 1 large garlic clove, 1 teaspoon sea salt, ¼ teaspoon black pepper, 1 ½ cup water
- Pour the sauce into the pan with the rest of the mushrooms. Bring the sauce to a boil then remove it from the heat.
Nutrition
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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.