Recipe: Vegan Mushroom Pie with Ale & Lentils

This hearty vegan mushroom pie is a crowd-pleaser – a rich beery gravy with thickly cut chestnut mushrooms and nutty puy lentils.

This is the dish that launched the blog – my entry into the Linda McCartney competition in 2011 to find ‘the Nation’s Tastiest Meat-Free Dish’.  I won, and this vegan mushroom pie became part of their ready-meal range!  It was a surreal but brilliant experience, watching my pie recipe go into production in their factory in Norfolk.

The pie is always a crowd-pleaser – beer and puff pastry is surely a winning combination in anyone’s book.  This is just as good with chips and mushy peas as it is with roast potatoes and all the trimmings.  I often make little individual pies, instead of one big one – the recipe below makes 4 individual pies or one big one as pictured.

If you’re in a hurry, you can speed this recipe up by using tinned green lentils instead, though I tend to find them a bit mushy so prefer to use dried puy lentils whenever I have time.

You can head over to YouTube for a little video of me cooking my vegan mushroom pie for the Linda McCartney competition – this went out as an advert on national television… eek!

Fun!

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tagging me @thevegspace or using the hashtag #thevegspace to show me how you got on!

What you need for your Mushroom & Lentil Pie

Ingredients

Shallots Go for the small, round ones (pickled onion size), or if you can only get hold of the big ‘banana’ shallots, just use 3 of them and slice into rounds.

Chestnut Mushrooms work really well here as they tend to hold their shape much better than other mushrooms when cooked, and retain their ‘meaty’ bite.

Ready-rolled puff pastry Many of the big brands of puff pastry are in fact vegan, just avoid any that are marked ‘all butter’ and do check the label before buying.

Puy lentils give such a brilliant texture to this pie – they are dark green and very nutty. If you can’t get hold of any then any other dried lentil will be fine.

Dried porcini mushrooms These give the ‘gravy’ all of its intense, mushroom flavour. They aren’t cheap but they do go a long way so do splash out if you can.

Brown ale There are a lot of vegan ales out there these days – many are clearly marked on the label, but if you’re not sure there’s a really handy app called Barnivore which is very good for checking whether alcoholic drinks are vegan.

If you’re cooking for kids or someone who doesn’t like beer, just swap it for more vegetable stock.  Or for a bit of variation you can use red wine instead, to turn this into a bourguignon-style pie.  Lovely!

Vegan in 15 Cookbook

There are plenty of similarly quick and easy recipes in my new book, ‘Vegan in 15‘*.

Hop over to Amazon for a look. Thanks for your support!

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Hearty Mushroom, Ale & Lentil Pie

Kate Ford | The Veg Space

This hearty vegan mushroom pie is a crowd-pleaser – a rich beery gravy with thickly cut chestnut mushrooms and nutty puy lentils.

5 from 4 votes

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Prep Time 15 mins

Cook Time 50 mins

Total Time 1 hr 5 mins

Course Main

Cuisine British

Servings 4 people

Calories 385 kcal

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• Olive oil
• 10 small shallots, halved
• 1 tsp garlic purée / ready-chopped garlic
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 75 g puy lentils, washed and drained
• 300 g chestnut or flat mushrooms, sliced thickly
• 20 g dried porcini mushrooms
• 275 ml brown ale (check it is vegan)
• 200 ml vegetable stock
• 50 g baby spinach
• Cornflower and dariy-free margarine made to a paste (to thicken)
• Ready-made puff pastry (check it is vegan)
• Soya milk to glaze

Instructions

 

• Heat a little olive oil in a pan, add shallots and cook gently until brown. Reduce heat, add the garlic and cook for two more minutes.
• Stir in tomato purée, lentils, and mushrooms. Turn up heat and cook for five minutes.
• Stir in the brown ale and 100ml of the stock. Cover, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
• Meanwhile, soak the porcini mushrooms in 200ml warm water for 20 minutes, drain (reserving the soaking liquor) and chop roughly. Add both the porcini and the soaking liquor to the pan.
• Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/Gas Mark 4.
• Simmer for a further 10 minutes, using the remaining stock or the cornflour and margarine paste to adjust the consistency until a thick gravy-like pie filling is achieved.
• Stir through the baby spinach, and spoon the mixture into the pie dish. Brush the edges with a little soya milk and cover with rolled puff pastry.
• Brush the pie top with soya milk and bake for 20 minutes or until pastry top is golden and well risen. Serve immediately.

Nutrition

Serving: 1portionCalories: 385kcalCarbohydrates: 31.7gProtein: 8.3gFat: 23gSaturated Fat: 5gSodium: 122mgPotassium: 563mgFiber: 4.4gSugar: 0.9gCalcium: 42mgIron: 3mg

Keyword lentil pie, vegan mushroom pie

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