What’s the best thing to use in a meat-free bolognese? I’ve tried dried soy beans, but the result was disappointing. Any tips, spices or magic ingredients you can think of?
Chloé, Belgium
If you’re after something that tastes as close to bolognese as you can get without using meat, mushrooms are your friend here, especially when they’re supported by other big-hitting ingredients such as miso or Marmite, soy sauce and red wine.
Slowly sweat onions, garlic, celery and carrots in plenty of olive oil until soft and sweet, then add the mushrooms – I find that a mix of fresh and rehydrated dried ones works best, especially if you also use the mushroom soaking water, too – then build up the sauce from there: a splash of red wine, a spoonful of miso or Marmite, lots of seasoning, maybe some soy. Then it’s all down to perhaps the most important ingredient of all: time.
From there, you can bulk out the sauce pretty much as you wish: add a tin of cooked lentils, say, or some roast walnuts – blitz them up first, so they have a softer texture; cubes of roast aubergine or tofu would also work well.
Another option is to take your bolognese in a different direction altogether. Make a white ragu with cooked white beans – cannellini or butter beans, say. Again, slowly saute some onions and garlic (some fennel and fresh thyme would also go well in the mix, too), then add the beans and a splash of white wine, and cook for long enough that all the flavours develop.
As for spices, I tend to use ones I usually have close to hand anyway: think ground cumin for its warmth, and smoked paprika for its smoky depth. Allspice, bay, rosemary, chipotle chilli flakes also sometimes feature, though perhaps not all at once.
Either way, the more time you allocate to that first stage, sweating the onions in wine, the better. Bolognese, as with so many long-cooked dishes, needs regular testing, tasting and tweaking, and is more than happy to simmer away until you get it just right.
