Vegan Cheese Sauce Recipe with Sodium Citrate
Make this smooth and creamy vegan cheese sauce recipe out of any plant based cheese with sodium citrate – guaranteed to melt perfectly!
Table of contents
Plant based cheeses are notorious for not melting well. They often throw off the realistic and pleasing look of dishes they’re used in. While there are some brands that you can coax some decent results out of, it’s unnecessarily difficult. People often escape this problem by making a vegan cheese sauce with their store bought plant based cheeses.
Regular Plant-Based Cheese Sauce
The most common technique is to make a béchamel sauce from butter, flour, and plant milk to melt the cheese in. The drawback to this is that the flour and natural sweetness of unsweetened plant milk make the sauce taste off. I experimented with this old-school method that works with dairy cheese to see if it could work with vegan cheese too.
Special Ingredient For Emulsifying Cheese Sauce
Sodium citrate is a natural plant based chemical additive that does a couple of things in a cheese emulsion to make it stable and silky. It lowers the acidity of the cheese sauce and strengthens the emulsion enough to prevent it from breaking. This has the effect of making the sauce silky and smooth as well. It’s what gives processed cheeses like Velvet and Kraft Singles their soft and meltable texture. However, I’ve also found it to work on plant based vegan cheeses too.
- One Ingredient / Premium Food Grade Sodium Citrate
- Food Grade Emulsifier / Helps Melt Cheese and Prevents Oil Separation
- Kitchen Pantry Essential / Try Adding to Nacho Cheese, Fondu, Mac & Cheese…
Last update on 2025-04-14 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
A Substitution For Sodium Citrate
If you don’t have sodium citrate, there’s also a way to react two common ingredients that will yield it. Mixing citric acid and baking soda in a small amount of liquid will give us sodium citrate, carbon dioxide, and water. The reaction looks similar to mixing baking soda and vinegar. There’s a lot of different recipes I found researching for this experiment. The best was this post from The Cheese Wanker. I tried other recipes that were using too much sodium citrate before finding this. It might be that you can use even less with plant based cheeses. I made a thicker sauce with only a quarter teaspoon each of citric acid and baking soda to a bag of cheese shreds.
More links you might be interested in:
Ingredients for the Vegan Cheese Sauce Recipe
- Plant based cheese
- Water or other liquid
- Sodium citrate or substitute ingredients
There are countless options for flavors and variations of vegan cheese sauce that you can make by adding onto, or modifying, the base recipe. If you change the recipe, you should aim for a ratio of about 7 to 8 ounces of plant based cheese to 1 cup of liquid to 1 teaspoon of sodium citrate.
Instructions for Making the Vegan Cheese Sauce Recipe
- Dissolve the sodium citrate (or the substitute) in water or chosen liquid, carefully adding a little at a time so the bubbling reaction doesn’t spill over. Heat and stir in cheese shreds and stir until melted. Add any seasonings or other ingredients.
Tips And Variations
Combine the ingredients while the liquid is cool and in a container with tall sides to avoid spilling.
Some white wine and a white cheese, or beer and cheddar makes a great sauce too. You can also make a hot and spicy nacho cheese with your favorite jalapeño peppers and seasoning.
FAQs
You can use sodium citrate to make foods with a spherification technique, such as various fruit flavored orbs or plant based caviar. Sodium citrate is also great for various cleaning jobs around the home.
This smooth and melty Vegan Cheese Sauce with Sodium Citrate is ideal for topping comfort-food classics. Spoon generously onto our hearty The Best Vegan Philly Cheesesteak – Easy Tofu Recipe, or enjoy it alongside crispy appetizers like our spicy Crunchy Buffalo Cauliflower Wings. To further explore your vegan cheese adventures, don’t miss our creamy Siete Copycat Dairy-Free Queso – Vegan Cheese.
Get the Recipe Vegan Cheese Sauce Recipe with Sodium Citrate
Ingredients
Ingredients For Vegan Cheese Sauce
- 1 7-8oz bag plant based cheese, or homemade
- 1 cup unsweetened plant milk, or water or beer
- 1 tsp sodium citrate, see substitution info
- 1 tsp dried mustard, optional to taste
- 1 tsp garlic powder, optional to taste
- 1 tsp onion powder, optional to taste
- 1 tsp paprika, optional to taste
- 1 tsp salt, optional to taste
Instructions
Instructions For Making Vegan Cheese Sauce
- Carefully add the sodium citrate to the liquid, slowly to prevent spillover from bubbling reaction, and stir to combine
- Bring liquid to a simmer in a medium sized or tall saucepan
- Add half of the cheese and stir to melt, then add the other half and continue to stir until all of the sauce is melted and smooth
- If the sauce is too tight, mix an additional 1/4 cup liquid and 1 teaspoon of sodium citrate in a tall cup and add liquid to the sauce and stir until the desired consistency is achieved
- Season to taste and serve while warm
