Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show.
Iím Heather and tonight weíre gonna make a mushroom Bolognese sauce.
And you can use this over spaghetti which is the traditional way or you can try it over
some whole grains, some millet, some rice or even some soothe vegetables some zucchini
would be lovely.
So what Iím gonna show you is just the sauce and weíre gonna start with the mushrooms
and Iíve got this mushrooms diced so that theyíre just little mushrooms chunks.
Now obviously youíre not really gonna fool anyone with them as an alternative to meat
but thereís something a little bit reminiscent about meat with mushrooms.
Theyíve got a lot of nice nutrients in them including a lot of potassium, great!
So Iíve got a pot heating up here and this is the pot that Iím gonna do the sauce in.
All Iím gonna do first is soothe the mushrooms, the onions and the garlic.
Normally onions will go in first followed closely by garlic but with mushrooms they
go in first because they take the longest to cook and they also use the most oil.
So what youíre gonna do once your pot is heated up; just put some small amount of oil
in here, thatís probably about a teaspoon.
Mushrooms take out more than other vegetables, youíre gonna put them right in there.
No needs to heat the oil up before you get those in.
The purpose of the oil is to coat the mushrooms not the pan.
So stir that in, and it looks like a lot right now but these mushrooms are really gonna shrink
down and I tried to think on how many mushrooms you would use, I had twelve mushrooms that
were about that big.
You can see that?
That big!
And what Iím gonna use for the sauce is a canned of tomatoes, so I donít know, I usually
judge how much is in my bag thinking about how big my canned of tomatoes is.
So make sure they all get a little bit of oil on them and then you wanna leave them
to cook.
Ok, if you keep stirring them, theyíre not gonna be able to cook.
They cook by having contact with the bottom of the pot.
So just let them hang out, you can dice up your onions and your garlic if you havenít
done that already while they cook.
So stir these mushrooms occasionally and Iím at about ten minutes here and Iím not sure
if you can see it through the glass on the film but thereís water here that come out
from the mushrooms.
Ok, so thatís the first stage of their cooking.
Theyíve shrunk down quite a bit if you notice but theyíre not fully cooked, what weíre
waiting is for them to reabsorbed all that juice that theyíre giving off right now.
So probably another five minutes here, yes mushrooms take a while to cook especially
when you have as much as I have in here.
These guys have actually taken about ten minutes here but they have now reabsorbed their liquid,
some of it has probably evaporated, thatís cool too.
And they can cook a little bit more if you like, if you have some picky mushroom eaters,
cooking it more will make them a lot less noticeable, lot tastier, better texture.
What Iím gonna do is throw the onion and the garlic right in now, mushrooms will get
a little bit more of a chance to cook before I throw the tomatoes in and they should be
just perfect!
Stir it occasionally, you gotta wait until the onions are nice and soft and the mushrooms
will have cook a little more as well and then youíre gonna add your seasonings so Iíve
got some oregano, beautiful for pasta sauce.
And by the way if you have someone or if you yourself are very anti mushroom but you want
to make a Bolognese sauce, very easy just use tempeh.
Just take some tempeh, cube it and put it in the tomato sauce when itís done.
So you wonít start with the mushroom, you just start with the onions and garlic and
make a regular tomato sauce.
So herbs are going in, this is some basil and just give it a little squeeze between
your fingers as it goes in.
Really helps to bring out the flavor of these dried herbs.
And last but not least some marjoram.
Oregano, basil, marjoram they are my usual suspects for Italian sauces especially with
the tomatoes, so nice!
Alright!
So get those herbs stirred around, you want them to infuse into the oil with the onions
and the mushrooms so that their flavor gets carried through the dish rather than just
getting overpower by the tomatoes which is also why we soothe the mushrooms and the onions
before putting the tomatoes in because it really helps to retain their flavor within
the sauce rather than just being kind of a blend all over sauce.
This way you get the flavor of the onion, the flavor of the mushrooms and weíre gonna
bring it all together but its gonna be individual first so that their flavor will get the chance
to come out.
Ok!
So this just needs a couple of minutes to come into the oil then Iím going to put a
little bit of salt in here and every good Bolognese sauce has a little
bit of wine.
I never seem to have red wine on hand and I canít justify buying it for just this little
bit that I use it so Iím using white but red much better.
Pour it down there, let it sizzle and itís gonna bring up all that flavor thatís might
have been stuck to the bottom of your pot.
Smells nice too!
And you can also take this excuse to pour yourself a glass while you wait for the sauce
to finish cooking because all weíre gonna do next is put the tomatoes in here perhaps
add a little bit more salt and then let it simmer and you wanna let it simmer as long
as you can while you go off and enjoy yourself while you wait for you dinner to get together.
Now I usually go with dice or whole tomatoes from a canned and yes Iím using canned because
itís winter.
I donít like to use the cans of tomatoes sauce; I just donít like the texture of them.
Thereís nothing really bad about them, I just donít like the texture so Iíve got
some whole tomatoes in here and all Iím doing is just breaking those whole tomatoes up with
my spoon here.
And then itís nice because you get some chunks of tomatoes, my favourite is diced but for
some reason the store doesnít have any diced just the whole.
You can also cut these before you put it in if you prefer but I definitely like the texture
better than those sauces in a can.
So like I said, Iím just gonna add a little bit of salt for the tomatoes and then you
can let this simmer and the longer you let the tomato sauce simmer the more the flavors
gonna come together and the more the flavors gonna come out of those herbs and things.
So let this simmer then you wanna cook some noodles separately.
Whole grain noodles will take about ten minutes to cook once the water is boiling and youíre
ready to go.
So I hope you enjoy.
You can find this recipe at HealthyVeganRecipes.net.
Iím Heather and this is Freshly Served.