Cashew

Cauliflower is a magical vegetable. It’s tasty on its own, but it can transform into oil-free creamy sauces and even replace meat. In this recipe, it’s the base for a creamy, cheesy take on queso dip. This is great on chips but even better on top of burritos and enchiladas. Best of all, you can get the pickiest of eaters to eat their veggies this way.

A sheet-pan salsa and quick-cooking tostadas make this multi-component meal easy to pull off.

This green pesto owes its intense and powerful flavor to the use of kombu. It’s such an easy recipe that you can experiment with the ingredients as much as you like. The arugula and basil, for instance, can be substituted with any leafy green of your choice. And the pine nuts can be replaced by any other type of nut, such as cashews or hazelnuts. You can even use sunflower seeds! Serve the pesto on crackers, on a grilled vegetable sandwich, or with a bowl of pasta.

Instead of butter and cream, cashews provide richness and creaminess to the sauce for this vegan pasta dish.

Canned chickpeas up the convenience factor in these naan wraps, which have a lovely balance of sweet and spicy flavors and creamy and crunchy textures.

Cashews lend body, creaminess, and richness to this pea soup and also make it vegan; sub almonds if you prefer.

Chefs do crazy things with nuts. In this otherwise straightforward chicken dish, cashews are transformed into a creamy sauce, and candied spiced walnuts are used as a crunchy topper.

If we had to give this salsa a heat index rating, it would get three out of five chiles.

Berries are such a great source of nutrients called polyphenols, which make them and the foods they are mixed with a lovely slow energy releaser, perfect to avoid those unwanted energy highs and then lows after eating refined sugar. These tarts are wonderful for when you are entertaining guests and need an easy and cool-looking dessert.

Don’t like dairy butter? Give this a try. You can use almost any nut, so get creative.

Step into January with this healing, brothy Cambodian-inspired soup, perfumed with warming spices, revitalizing ginger, and spicy dried chiles.

This is such a sweet little dessert. As you know, I’m not one for sweet treats but this is a little pop of yumminess—perfect for dinner parties, and it won’t leave your guests rolling around on the floor with indigestion.

The broccoli should still have snap and crunch after charring.

Try this drizzled over roasted potatoes or as a sub for mayo in chicken salad.

This power-breakfast smoothie will be extra smooth if you soak the nuts and oats in water overnight; drain before proceeding.

There's really no other word for these burgers except: YUM. The flavoring and the satisfaction of a meal you can wrap your hands around is unmatched.

Drummed up by our intrepid recipe tester Lauren Godfrey, this nontraditional taco, sweet with squash, earthy and nutty with kale, and crunchy with fried pumpkin seeds (pepitas), is—shhhhh—vegan. Don't tell anyone, but because it is so tasty, no one will care. The cashew crema can be replaced by store-bought crema or our Cumin-lime crema, but after polling both vegetarian and carnivorous friends, everyone preferred the nutty and rich nondairy cashew version (which must be made with raw cashews to work). To prepare the butternut squash, use a sharp peeler to remove the tough skin before slicing it in half and scooping out the seeds and fibers. Lazy cook's tip: Some markets sell butternut squash already peeled and seeded and ready to go.

Malcolm Livingston II, the pastry chef at WD~50 in New York City, shared this recipe exclusively with Epicurious. What's the inspiration behind this unusual dessert? "Chef Wylie Dufresne said to me, 'We both love root beer, so let's make it come to life as a dessert,' " Livingston explains. The first challenge was finding the right root beer. Livingston and Dufresne tried making their own, and sampled 12 different sodas before finding Fitz's —that's their preferred brand, but feel free to use your favorite. Consistency and texture were the next obstacles. "I wanted to make a pudding that had the consistency of Jell-O pudding, but with more texture, so I crushed up barrel-shaped root beer candies," says Livingston. The candy was combined with milk, milk powder, cornstarch, root beer, and eggs to create a smooth and creamy pudding that Livingston likens to "a solidified root beer float." Use extra caution when grinding the root beer candy, which can be hard on anything but a commercial or high-powered blender.

I'll eat just about anything with "sticky" in the title, which prompted me to create a sticky energy bar my raw foodie friends and I can savor together. I've cast sesame seeds in a lead role here because I'm tired of seeing one of my favorite ingredients marginalized atop hamburger buns and everything bagels—they have a terrific earthy-nutty flavor and a delicate crunch that goes well with so many dishes. Moreover, their nutritional profile will leave you star-struck. Sesame
seeds are a very good source of manganese and copper and a good source of protein, calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, vitamin B1, zinc, and dietary fiber. Further, they contain two special types of fiber, sesamin and sesamolin, which are members of the lignans group and can lower "bad" cholesterol and help prevent high blood pressure. And did I mention chocolate? Namely, raw chocolate drizzle? Sesame seeds plus raw chocolate drizzle equals crazy good.

Vegan Green beans, cashews, mint, carrot, cucumber, and lime shine through the pearly noodles in this pretty, uplifting dish. The noodles will seem undercooked at first, but they will soften as they absorb the marinade and the moisture from the other ingredients. If you cook them all the way, the finished dish will be mushy. • Rice noodles of various thickness can be purchased inexpensively in most Asian-themed grocery stores, some supermarkets, and online. Use medium-thin ones for this recipe. • You can freeze the unused coconut milk in an ice cube tray, then transfer the cubes to a heavy plastic zip-style bag for making this (or something else) in the future. Don't forget to label the bag. • This tastes best within a few hours of being assembled, so plan accordingly. • Make sure the cucumber is sweet.

Nutritional note from Junelle Lupianai: "This bar is a perfect mid-afternoon snack to bring with you to work or for your children." The oats and cereal provide whole-grain goodness, and the nuts and seeds provide plant protein and fat. Flaxseed meal is included here for its nutritional punch, but it’s optional.

Rice sticks are a magic trick in a bag: Crumble them into hot oil and they poof instantly into crispy, twisty little morsels of browned, puffed rice—ready in seconds to serve as a crunchy topping for bite-sized pieces of quick-cooked chicken, broccoli, and almonds.