One of my goals for 2018 is to eat a more plant based diet but I’m a serious comfort food kind of girl! So I came up with this recipe for Hearty vegan stew & dumplings. For when you need a bit of cruelty free comfort food in your life. Going from full on meat eating to almost vegan has actually saved us so much money so far.
Hearty vegan stew & dumplings recipe
This recipe is really easy to throw in your slow cooker or in a pot on the hob and doesn’t take much time to prepare at all. It’s also pretty frugal, as you can use any veg you need to eat up. For this recipe I used the Morphy Richards Digital Sear and Stew, which enables me to cook the food on the hob before I put it in the slow cooker. But if you have a regular slow cooker you can use a cooking pan or skip the sautéing altogether.
As you can see I added mushrooms to my stew as I had half a packet that needed eating up!
What you will need
For the stew
- A slow cooker (plus a cooking pot if cooking on the hob)
- 1tbsp of oil
- A mixture of root veg (carrots, swede, parsnips, sweet potatoes, onions, turnips etc) you’ll need enough for the amount of people you’re cooking for. Aim for around 400g of veg per adult.
- 1tbsp Vegan gravy granules (yes I cheat it’s easier) if you prefer a thicker sauce use more, if you prefer it runnier use less.
- 1tsp mustard powder
- A sprig of rosemary (optional) or 1tsp dried rosemary if you have it.
- 1tbs Marmite or other yeast extract
For the dumplings
Makes 12 dumplings
- 1 cup of self raising flour
- 1/2 cup of *coconut oil or vegan margarine
- Water
Method
- Pop your oil in the slow cooker cooking pot and add in your veg. I used a mixture of frozen and fresh veg when I made mine (It was basically whatever we had that needing eating up). Sauté the veg on the hob for around 10 minutes to give it some colour. You don’t need to do this step but it does add to the flavour.
- Add the Marmite, gravy granules, mustard powder and rosemary (if using) to the veg and give it a good stir.
- Add the water to the stew and stir well again.
- Pop the cooking pot in the slow cooker and cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6 hours.
- When you have roughly 40-50 minutes left on your slow cooker you can add the dumplings.
- To make the dumplings, pop the flour and butter in a bowl and rub together until it looks like breadcrumbs.
- Add enough water to form a soft dough.
- Divide the mixture into 12 and roll into balls.
- Pop the dumplings on the top of your stew, put the lid back on and let it finish cooking.
- As soon as the dumplings are cooked through you can serve.
*For these dumplings I used half coconut oil and half vegan margarine. The coconut oil was quite difficult to work with so I may stick to the margarine in future. As long as it’s a solid fat you should be good though.
Frugal vegan comfort food
Back in October I decided to eat a more plant based diet, partly for my health and partly for the environment. Going from full on meat eater to almost vegan hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would in all honesty. There are some great substitutes for things like dairy (which I can’t have anyway as it makes me poorly) and so many things are ‘accidentally vegan’ that I haven’t had to change much at all.
Price wise there hasn’t been much change to our grocery budget as meat used to be one of the most expensive things I had to buy. Even when I buy the vegan mince and chicken pieces etc it still comes in cheaper than when we would be buying meat.
As I’ve already said I love my comfort food so this vegan stew & dumplings really did hit the spot when I was craving something hearty and nutritious.
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