Vegan Thanksgiving Sauces to Wow Your Guests

Everyone expects the same old things at the Thanksgiving: canned cranberry sauce, basic gravies and the like. However, your guests will be astounded when you serve up one of these amazing sauces from our bloggers! They’ve shared some incredible holiday recipes with us, and trust us, you need to see them! Here are a few tips and tricks selections that they shared on our Food Monster App to get you started on amazing Thanksgiving sauces!

1. Make Homemade Cranberry Sauce, Not Canned!

Image Source: Festive Cranberry Sauce

We have to start, of course, with the classic Thanksgiving sauce: cranberry sauce. This isn’t your standard canned cranberry, though. We’ve got some wonderful homemade cranberry sauces that will make you forget the canned stuff ever existed. Seriously, just look at this Festive Cranberry Sauce from Alenoosh Matakupan. Can’t you just picture that at the center of your holiday table?

Logan Dunn also has a great tip for making your cranberry sauce amazing – sweeten it naturally, like in his Date Sweetened Cranberry Sauce, which is perfectly full of festive flavors! You could even add some citrus into your classic sauce, inspired by Mitra Shirmohammadi‘s Gingerbread Oatmeal with Warm Cranberry Orange Sauce (and if there’s any left, it clearly would go great on breakfast the next morning!)

2. Spice Up Your Vegetables!

Image Source: Tangy Chili Sauce

Who says vegetables have to have the same old seasoning every year? Why not spice them up this year with a fantastic sauce to drizzle on top? This Tangy Chili Sauce by Iva Mrdjanov will bring some bright spice to your holiday table, and will elevate your regular cauliflower, green beans, potatoes, or whatever you put it on.

With all the amazing Thanksgiving dishes, a side salad is likely to be exactly that: left to the side. Well, that won’t be the case if you top it with Annie Oliverio‘s Spicy Chipotle Salad Dressing! Everyone will be going back for seconds on the salad rather than just the mashed potatoes and stuffing. If you’re like us and you love a good hot sauce on, well, everything, then you won’t regret whipping up this Whiskey Hot Sauce from Erika Ghanny. It will be amazing over your plant-based ‘turkey’, stuffing, you name it!

Gratitude: Plant-Based Thanksgiving Cookbook

No other holiday captures the spirit of home cooking the way Thanksgiving does. This is why you need the ultimate Thanksgiving cookbook, One Green Planet’s Gratitude: Plant-Based Recipes to Create your own Thanksgiving Tradition! In the cookbook, you’ll find our 100 most popular plant-based Thanksgiving recipes like Soft Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts, Spiced Apple Cake with Cashew Frosting, Sweet Potato Chocolate Pudding with Nut Crumble Topping, Cinnamon Apple Hand Pies, and hearty entrees like Roast Root Vegetable Stack With Dukkah, Vegducken: Butternut Squash Stuffed With Eggplant, Zucchini, and a Mushroom Lentil Stuffing, and Seitan Roast With Sausage and Pear Stuffing and Apple Cider Gravy and so much more!

3. Homemade Gravy Too!

Image Source: Oil-Free Gravy

Gravy is essential to many Thanksgiving foods. It’s amazing on stuffing, mashed potatoes, veggies, everything. You can buy gravy at the store, but trust us when we say that you’ll never want to again after tasting an amazing homemade gravy. For example, this Oil-Free Gravy from Alenoosh Matakupan will ruin store-bought gravy for you forever.

Gravy just makes every dish even better, and can be served over so many amazing things. Make a Country ‘Meatloaf’ with Gravy from Katie Koteen and be astounded how they combine to make a perfect Thanksgiving entree. And of course, everyone needs biscuits at a holiday table, and they’re even better with this great sauce. Molly Patrick‘s Biscuits and Mushroom Gravy will show you exactly what we mean!

4. Repurpose Classic Pasta Sauces!

Image Source: Parsley Pumpkin Seed Pesto

You can absolutely make pasta for Thanksgiving (in fact, we recommend it), but even if you don’t, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use pasta sauce on your holiday table. For example, this Parsley Pumpkin Seed Pesto from Melissa Tedesco can be put over potatoes, veggies, whatever you like. Speaking of what would go good with potatoes and veggies, this Simple Bechamel Sauce from Rene Barker would make the perfect complement to any side dish.

Really, who doesn’t love cheese sauce? Is there anything it isn’t awesome on top of? Find out by making Kristina Humphreys‘ Creamy Nut-Free Cheese Sauce for anything and everything you need sauce for. Wow – imagine it on your mashed potatoes? Amazing. You should also cook up your veggies in this Creamy Roasted Red Pepper and Mushroom Sauce from Maria Koutsogiannis!

Easy Ways to Help the Planet:

• Eat Less Meat: Download Food Monster, the largest plant-based Recipe app on the App Store, to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals and get healthy. You can also buy a hard or soft copy of our favorite vegan cookbooks.
• Adopt-a-Pet: Visit WildWatchers, a watchdog platform specifically designed for animal, earth, and wildlife warriors to actively give back, rescue, and protect animals and the planet.
• Reduce Your Fast Fashion Footprint: Take initiative by standing up against fast fashion Pollution and supporting sustainable and circular brands like Tiny Rescue that raise awareness around important issues through recycled zero-waste clothing designed to be returned and remade over and over again.
• Support Independent Media: Being publicly funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high-quality content. Please consider supporting us by donating!
• Sign a Petition: Your voice matters! Help turn petitions into victories by signing the latest list of must-sign petitions to help people, animals, and the planet.
• Stay Informed: Keep up with the latest news and important stories involving animals, the environment, sustainable living, food, health, and human interest topics by subscribing to our newsletter!
• Do What You Can: Reduce waste, plant trees, eat local, travel responsibly, reuse stuff, say no to single-use plastics, recycle, vote smart, switch to cold water laundry, divest from fossil fuels, save water, shop wisely, Donate if you can, grow your food, volunteer, conserve energy, compost, and don’t forget about the microplastics and microbeads lurking in common household and personal care products!