Indulge That Snack Attack With Beet Crackers and Cheeseless “Cheese” Dip

Think vegan food has to be boring, bland, and difficult to make? Health blogger and cookbook author Remy Park is here to prove you wrong.

Park’s cookbook, Sesame, Soy, Spice: 90 Asian-ish Vegan and Gluten-free Recipes to Reconnect, Root, and Restore is brimming with pan-Asian recipes that run the gamut from easy to ambitious. One of our personal faves? Park’s entirely plant-based, gluten-free beet crackers paired with her cheeseless “cheese” dip.

“These beetroot crackers are (almost) too pretty to eat,” Park writes in the book, describing the bright pink-purple shade. Park then includes some handy instructions so that you can decide which appliance to bust out for cooking: “Either dehydrate to maintain the stunning pink hue from the beets, or bake in the oven for toastier flavor.” Regardless of which tool you use, we’re sure you’ll love that the recipe calls for only five ingredients.

Park recommends that you “enjoy [the crackers] with your favorite soup” or with her cheeseless “cheese” dip — which manages to be both wholesome and luscious.

“I never would have believed that you could make a cheesy dip out of potatoes, carrots, and onions,” she writes about this delightful concoction. “But then I went vegan and started enjoying this cheeseless dip with anything I could think of.” The dip gets a boost of umami flavor from white miso paste and a heaping quarter cup of savory nutritional yeast. Plus, cashews provide that scrumptious dose of healthy fats.

Oh, and you don’t need to confine yourself to crackers. Park also recommends using your imagination to pair the dip with some exciting, creative accompaniments: “Turn it into a pasta sauce or thin it out with more water to drizzle it over broccoli for a nostalgic bite.”

No matter how you choose to enjoy it, we’ll tell you how to make the crackers and the dip, and you can experiment to your heart’s content!

Beetroot Flax Crackers

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients

1 cup blanched almond flour

2 tablespoons flax seeds

1 tablespoon black sesame seeds

One 15-ounce can cooked beets

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F or a dehydrator to 115°F.
2. Toast the almond flour, flax seeds, and sesame seeds in a dry pan over low heat until fragrant and lightly golden, 3 to 5 minutes, shaking the pan constantly to avoid burning. Transfer to a medium bowl.
3. In a blender, blend the beets and the liquid from the can until smooth. Add 1/4 cup of the beet mixture to the almond flour mixture and mix to form a dough. It should stick to itself and form a dense ball. You can save the remaining beet mixture for smoothies, soups, and more!
4. Place the dough on a long sheet of parchment paper and lay another sheet on top. Roll out the dough to about 1⁄16-inch thickness. Season generously with the salt. Cut the dough into any shapes you like (squares, triangles, or otherwise), or leave whole to bake, then break the sheet into crackers after baking.
5. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or dry in the dehydrator for about 3 hours, until crisp.

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Cheeseless Cheese Dip

Makes about 5 cups, for 4 to 5 servings

Ingredients

1 cup diced and peeled russet potato

2 cups diced and peeled carrots

1/2 yellow onion, diced

5 garlic cloves, peeled

1/3 cup raw cashews

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

1 tablespoon white miso paste

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions

1. Bring a small pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the potato, carrots, onion, garlic, and cashews and cook until the potato and carrots are fork tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking water, then drain off the rest. Transfer the cooked vegetables to a blender.
2. Add the remaining ingredients to the blender and blend until smooth. Add a bit of the cooking water as needed to adjust the thickness.

Excerpted from Sesame, Soy, Spice: 90 Asian-ish Vegan and Gluten-free Recipes to Reconnect, Root, and Restore © 2024 by Remy Morimoto Park. Photography © 2024 by Kristin Teig. Reproduced by permission of William Morrow Cookbooks, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.