Vegan Parmesan Cheese (Nut-Free!)

The perfect combination of raw pumpkin seeds, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, hemp seeds, and salt for the perfect sprinkle-on-everything, nut-free Vegan Parmesan Cheese you can make at home in just 5 minutes!

If you’ve spent some time on my blog you’ve probably noticed I have a slight obsession with vegan parmesan cheese. Truth is I love cheese, but I broke up with cheese long ago because, well cheese doesn’t love me. So the day I discovered Minimalist Baker’s Vegan Cashew Parmesan Cheese the gates of new recipe opportunity opened. I put it in and on tons of my recipes, like my CREAMY LEMON PASTA. It’s borderline a problem, but because it’s so easy to make and actually has some great nutrients I don’t think I need to get help just yet ?.

The thing is, though, most Vegan Parmesan Cheese recipes you might find on Pinterest contain nuts, most often cashews. And the cashews are great to give it a little “creaminess”, however, if you’re avoiding nuts that definitely won’t work.

I’ve been slowly trying to cut certain nuts out of my diet, as I think they might be causing some inflammation and GASP! that means no more of my all-time favorite topping, maybe even more devastating than my break-up with real cheese. We literally have this stuff stocked in our fridge at all times, so I was determined to develop a Vegan Parmesan Cheese using a cashew replacement- maybe like seeds! I tried a version with sunflower seeds and the sunflower seed flavor came through too much, so next on my list was raw pumpkin seeds. They are pretty mild in flavor, so I gave it a go and yes, yess, yesssss!

There are some great tasting vegan parmesan cheese replacements you can buy at the store, and I do use them occassionally, but I like to make my own at home, not only becasue it tastes different, but then I also know exaclty what’s going into it. This recipe is so easy, it literally takes less than 5 minutes to make and it’s great to keep on hand if you’re like me and you want to put it on errryyythhaanng. You simply place all ingredients in your food processor/blender and blend until the mixture is very finely blended up.

I like to keep my Vegan Parmesan Cheese stored in the fridge, but you certainly don’t have to. Maybe that’s my nerdy way of tricking my brain into thinking it’s real parmesan cheese, haha. Well anywho, I hope you like this recipe and find yourself putting it on everything like we do. It’s great on pasta, in “meatballs”, sprinkled on soup, over roasted veggies, on a salad… So whatdya say?! Give it a go? Don’t forget to tag me on Instagram or Facebook with whatever y’all are gettin’ cheesy with!