Raw Vegan Parmesan Recipe (2024)

A quick and easy raw vegan parmesan recipe with just 3 ingredients. It’s light, cheesy, salty and savoury. Sprinkle it over your favourite raw dishes like raw zoodles, salads, soups and just about anything you’d use with traditional parmesan.

How to make vegan parmesan

This recipe uses just 3 ingredients.

1. pine nuts.
2. nutritional yeast.
3. sea salt or pink himalayan salt.

It's a nut free, gluten free and dairy free parmesan cheese alternative.

It aims to replace the taste of real parmesan as much as is possible with a raw vegan version that's quick and easy to make without using a dehydrator.

My favourite version is this one. Made with pine nuts because of their light, rich, slightly nutty, sweet flavour and creamy melt in your mouth texture.

Add the ingredients to a blender or mixer with an s blade and turn it on. Not for too long. You want a breadcrumb-like texture or a powder if you prefer.

As soon as this is reached, switch your machine off. It's done. If you leave it to run any longer it'll turn to mush.

FYI, I use a mixer and prefer my vegan parmesan to have some texture so when I make this it takes about 30 seconds at the most.

I find a silicone spatula is the easiest way to get it from the machine into a jar.

Ingredients

Many of the vegan cheese recipes you find online use other nuts like cashew nuts, as well as onion and garlic powder, miso, chilli, fresh and dried herbs, which works really well. In fact making vegan cheese is a wonderful thing to do and I heartily recommend it.

To keep things simple and flavourful here for this recipe I use 3 ingredients:

Pine nuts - rich in protein, fibre, fats, vitamins and minerals such as vitamin E, K, B vitamins, zinc, copper, manganese, phosphorus, magnesium, iron and copper.

Nutritional yeast - (also known as nooch) although not a raw food, is much loved by many vegans because of its slightly nutty cheesy flavour.

You can use Nutritional to create cheesy flavoured sauces, use it in baking, making your own raw vegan cheese and this vegan nut free parmesan.

It’s a deactivated yeast in the form of yellow flakes or powder and is often fortified with essential nutrients including vitamin B12.

Salt - I like to use a salt that has minimal processing and will keep some nutritional qualities. Table salt is stripped on most of its nutrition during processing.

How to store

Pine nuts are actually not a nut, but a seed that comes from pine trees. They do deteriorate quite quickly and so are best stored in an airtight container in the fridge.

You can store this recipe in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Recipe variations

I’ve made this dairy-free vegan parmesan with brazil nuts, pumpkin seeds, macadamia nuts, cashew nuts and others.

And after trying many different versions, I’ve found that using hemp seeds and sunflower seeds are my next fave (after pine nuts) because of their mild flavour and texture.

I replace the seeds in the recipe at a ratio of 1:1. The other ingredients remain the same.

Hemp parmesan - there's no need to put these in a mixer or blender. Just measure out some hemp seed hearts into a bowl, add the salt, nutritional yeast and then stir with a spoon.

Hemp seeds are rich in protein, fibre and nutrients, including essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals - iron, zinc, vitamin E, B vitamins, magnesium, potassium and more.

This is my next favourite version after the pine nut version. The texture is good. I’m gonna get in my omega-3’s, and this is definitely the fastest method.

Sunflower seeds - these take a little longer to break down in the mixer as sunflower seeds can be quite hard. Definitely good to use if you’re after a nut-free parmesan topping with some texture or crunch. They work really well and store well too.

Sunflower seeds are rich in protein, fibre and nutrients, including iron, zinc,

Notes

Take care when blending so as not to over mix. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

This recipe goes perfectly with courgette spaghetti with broccoli, lemon, chilli and courgetti spaghetti with vegetables and also squash noodles with pesto and pomegranate.

📖 Recipe

Hey, did you like this recipe? If so it would mean the world to me if you would please Pin this to your Pinterest boards or even share it on social media so others can find it too.

I’m off for some tea.

Love raw food.

XOXO

Juliette