This is the BEST healthy broccoli cheese casserole with rice! It’s so savory and creamy – you’ll love it whether you’re vegan or not! It makes the perfect easy weeknight recipe.
Casserole is easily one of my favorite cold weather comfort foods. This vegan broccoli cheese casserole with rice is one of the first meals I make as soon as the weather cools off.
This vegan broccoli casserole is creamy, delicious, magically cheesy even though it’s dairy free, and happily healthy. It’s a meal I love and look forward to as the seasons change, and I make it throughout the winter.
How to make broccoli casserole vegan:
The magic of this recipe is all in the sauce. You can easily make a vegan broccoli rice casserole by adding nutritional yeast and starch to the sauce. Both of those ingredients thicken while the casserole is baking and help bind the rice together, which is what gives you the classic casserole texture.
How to make vegan broccoli rice and cheese casserole:
Weeknights are too busy to fuss with complicated recipes, so I purposely made this recipe simple with hardly any hands on time. As long as you have some meal prepped rice in the fridge, this casserole will be in the oven in under 10 minutes.
All you have to do is combine the sauce ingredients in a blender, layer the broccoli and rice in an oven safe skillet or 9 x 9 baking dish, and pour the sauce over the rice and broccoli. After the minimal prep time, and 40 minutes in the oven, you’ll have a hassle free dinner on the table in under an hour!
What you’ll need:
There are three ingredients and two tools that make all the difference in this recipe.
Ingredients:
The first ingredient is really good vegetable bouillon. This is what adds so much flavor to the dish and makes it so. dang. good. This is the brand I recommend, and I use it in all of my vegan recipes.
The second ingredient you’ll need is full fat coconut milk. I’ve noticed a huge difference in the quality of coconut milk by brand, and it seems like the cheap brands water the coconut milk down. I think that because they’re so liquid when I open the can, whereas the good brands have solid coconut cream portions. This is the brand I use in all of my cooking, and I love that the ingredients don’t have any additives or guar gum.
The third ingredient you’ll need is nutritional yeast. This is such a vital ingredient! It both thickens the sauce to create a true casserole and gives the dish a wonderful cheesy flavor. This is the brand I use, and it is such a great value compared to other brands.
Tools:
The first tool you need is a 9 x 9 metal baking pan, or my preferred method, an oven safe skillet. I love this affordable oven safe skillet because it’s durable and such a great value.
The second tool you need is a blender. You don’t need anything fancy or overly powerful for this recipe, something like this small blender will work perfectly.
Vegan Broccoli Cheese Rice Casserole
This is the BEST healthy broccoli cheese casserole with rice! It’s so savory and creamy - you’ll love it whether you’re vegan or not! It makes the perfect easy weeknight recipe.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup full fat coconut milk
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic granules
- 1 Tablespoon vegetable bouillon
- 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
- 3 cups cooked rice
- 2 medium heads broccoli, roughly chopped (about 4 cups)
- Oil to grease pan (I use coconut oil)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 F.
- Place coconut milk, water, nutritional yeast, salt, garlic granules, vegetable bouillon, and cornstarch in a blender and blend until completely smooth. It will be very liquid at this point, but the corn starch and the nutritional yeast will help it set when it cooks.
- Grease a medium sized pan (I used a vintage size 6 cast iron skillet, a 9” square pan would also work well).
- Place 1/2 of the broccoli on the bottom of the pan. Spread the rice over the broccoli. Place the second 1/2 of the broccoli on top of rice, pressing the broccoli florets into the rice.
- Pour the sauce over the rice and broccoli.
- Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes.
- Remove aluminum foil. Bake for an additional 10-15 minutes, until the top is turning a light golden brown.
Notes
This is the vegetable bouillon I used for this recipe. If you have access to it, I 100% recommend that you use it, too! It's by far my favorite vegetable bouillon and makes such a difference in the flavor of this recipe.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Amount Per Serving: Calories: 215Total Fat: 6.3gCarbohydrates: 31gFiber: 2.8gSugar: 2.6gProtein: 7.5g
Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Let me know what you think of this recipe in the comments and on Instagram! @keytomylime #keytomylime
Be sure to pin this recipe for later!
Do you prefer quinoa over rice? Fit Foodie Finds has a great Vegan Broccoli and Cheese Casserole made with quinoa.