Our recipe is perfect for everyday family dinners. It’s ready in about 30 minutes, and you can make it with simple ingredients. The combination of mushrooms, tomato paste, and balsamic vinegar creates a savory, earthy, and irresistible flavor. Well, we developed this mushroom ragu recipe based on your feedback and what we learned from these other 40+ meatless pasta recipes. For example, we use balsamic vinegar instead of soy sauce to add flavor while reducing sodium. It’s such a cool trick! Here, the simplest ingredients come together to create the most flavorful vegan bolognese sauce, making this recipe a tasty and healthy meatless alternative to a classic bolognese. So, if you are craving a comforting, satisfying Italian pasta dinner without the usual heavy cream, butter, beef, or pork, this mushroom bolognese is the recipe for you! Plus, it packs over 20 grams of protein per serving, and it’s so satisfying you won’t believe it’s without beef.
Mushrooms
We use a mix of white button mushrooms and brown mushrooms. You can also use cremini mushrooms, portobello, and baby bella mushrooms. For extra flavor, you can add a few fresh shiitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, wild mushrooms, porcini mushrooms, or portobello mushrooms. But that’s optional.
Olive oil
Use extra virgin olive oil to make a soffritto, a simple and effective flavor base to build taste from the ground up.
Onion, celery, carrot, and garlic
Onion, celery, carrot, and garlic are essential to infuse the vegan bolognese with plenty of flavor. You can use white, yellow, or red onion.
Tomato paste
Our mushroom bolognese uses tomato paste—the thick dark-red paste that comes in a tube or small 6 oz can—to add a deep and rich savory flavor, also known as umami. Don’t mistake this with canned tomatoes or tomato puree. They are not the same. Tomato paste is made by cooking tomatoes for several hours until most of the liquid evaporates, leaving a flavorful, rich, and thick tomato concentrate.
Herbs
We recommend sturdy herbs such as rosemary and bay leaves. You can substitute sage or thyme for rosemary and bay leaves. We also recommend serving the mushroom ragu with fresh basil or parsley.
Salt and black pepper
Season the sauce with sea salt or kosher salt, and freshly ground black pepper. If you like, you can add red pepper flakes to taste.
Balsamic vinegar
Balsamic vinegar is an optional ingredient, but we recommend it because it adds sweet, sour, and savory notes to the sauce. It’s a flavor booster, and a tablespoon or two enhances the overall flavor of this meatless ragu while keeping it low in sodium. If you have thick, aged balsamic vinegar, it’s even more flavorful. You can substitute soy sauce or tamari for balsamic vinegar.
Pasta
Like traditional bolognese sauce, mushroom bolognese is delicious with tagliatelle, pappardelle, fettuccine, spaghetti, and linguine. It also goes well with gnocchi, polenta, rigatoni, penne, and other short pasta types. Here, we use tagliatelle.
Parmesan cheese
If you serve mushroom bolognese with polenta, gnocchi, or pasta, add grated or shaved parmesan cheese—we recommend Italian Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano. For our vegan readers, you can omit the cheese or replace it with a non-dairy alternative. If you use a food processor, pulse in 3 or 4 batches to prevent the mushrooms at the bottom from getting mushy and overprocessed. Set aside in a bowl. Finely chop celery, carrot, and onion. You can do so with a chef’s knife on a cutting board or pulse them in a food processor.
2. Make the flavor base
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven. Add the chopped vegetables and sauté for 5 minutes, stirring often. Now, add tomato paste, grated garlic, rosemary, and bay leaves, and sauté for 3 more minutes until the tomato paste turns a shade or red darker.
Add the mushrooms
Add the chopped mushrooms, season with salt and black pepper, and cook on medium-high heat for about 20 minutes, or until all water from the mushrooms has evaporated. Stir in the balsamic vinegar, then turn the heat off, taste, and adjust for salt. Aim for a savory, rich, thick, and almost creamy mushroom ragu.
How to serve mushroom ragu?
We recommend serving this sauce with a long pasta such as tagliatelle, fettuccine, spaghetti, bucatini, or linguine. To do that, cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water as per package instructions. When the pasta is al dente (cooked but with a bite), reserve one cup of pasta cooking water and drain the pasta. Add the pasta to the pan with the ragu, add a ladleful of pasta water, and toss on medium heat for a few seconds until the pasta and the sauce are well combined. Serve with a handful of basil leaves, a drizzle of olive oil, and grated or shaved parmesan cheese. Freezer: You can freeze mushroom bolognese in freezer bags or an airtight container for up to three months. Thaw: When ready to use, remove it from the freezer and warm it in a pot with a dash of water until hot. You can also reheat it in a microwave.
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