As most of you know, I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian until about 10 years ago. I spent two of the 8 years I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian eating a plant based diet only – aka as a vegan. Vegan life wasn’t always easy or exactly tasty and there were many nights I spent eating peanut butter sandwiches for lack of anything else more exciting (or vegan friendly) to eat.
During my vegan days, I learned how to make several meat substitutes for ground beef (aka minced meat) in dishes such as tacos, enchiladas and other Mexican dishes or for things like Shepard’s Pie.
Below is my recipe for my favorite vegan ground beef/ mince meat substitute. It is made from inexpensive champignon (button) mushrooms and the recipe can be doubled as needed.
Vegan Meat Replacement/Mushroom Mince Meat
Ingredients
250 grams champignon (button) mushrooms
1 tablespoon neutral oil (chili oil is a good spicy alternative)
125 ml water
Salt and black pepper to taste
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8.8 ounces champignon (button) mushrooms
1 tablespoon neutral oil (chili oil is a good spicy alternative)
1/2 cup water
Salt and black pepper to taste
Directions
1 If you have a KitchenAid Standing Mixer and the KitchenAid grater attachment, use the larger grater plate and grate the mushrooms. If you don’t have a KitchenAid or the grater attachment, chop the mushrooms into very small pieces.
2 Place the oil in a skillet, then turn the skillet on medium-high heat. Once the oil is warm (but not smoking), add the grated mushrooms and stir. Let cook for 5 minutes, or until the mushrooms begin to wilt.
3 Once the mushrooms begin to wilt, add the water and let the mushrooms cook for an additional 10-12 minutes or until all of the water has evaporated and the mushrooms are completely soft.
4 Add salt and black pepper to the mushrooms and allow to cool. Use the mushroom mixture instead of ground beef / mince meat in dishes such as tacos, enchiladas and other Mexican dishes or in dishes such as Shepard’s Pie.
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I am not a vegetarian but tonight I chopped up mushrooms real fine and added them to my ground beef to try to stretch the beef plus add nutritional value for my husband and 2’daughters who would never eat mushrooms if they knew. Well it turned out wonderfully! My picky husband and middle daughter did not suspect a thing! None of them did! The meat was seasoned and had added tomato sauce but I still do not think you would have known!
So glad you got a chance to try this! I’ve ben testing out a few ways to using vegetables to stretch or replace meat too and this is something still on my list.
I’m not a vegan, nor a vegetarian. However, I like looking for bargains, or coping with a glut of fruit or veg off my land. Last week I bought, for a couple of quid, about 5kg of mushrooms (that is a *lot* of mushrooms). Big beautiful richly flavoured chestnut mushrooms. So I gave some away to my neighbour and then set to. I made mushroom catsup, I boiled and then froze loads (they reduce in size to half and are like tinned mushrooms in texture without losing any of the flavour), I made loads of mushroom pate (I adore pate but shop bought has factory farmed meat in so I can’t have it) and took some to the neighbour and one pot is reserved for the person I got the mushrooms from. The pate is delicious, garlicky and rich, but wouldn’t be so with the little white tasteless mushrooms I suspect. Then, I made mince. As I said, I’m not vegetarian, but I figured that while I have mince in the freezer, each pack portion sized for me, if I have an unexpected guest, I might need to make more of it. So I made mince but I minced onions with the mushrooms as I use onions with *everything* (so good for you). I bagged mine and froze it because I live very rural and have large freezers and not much shelf space for dried or bottled things.
I know American people have different taste buds and a lot of their food is bland, then spiced up with loads of salt or hot chilli, but I like neither salt nor hot food so I prefer basic ingredients with a strong flavour. Hence the chestnut mushrooms.
Incidentally a pie made with mushroom mince would not be a shepherds or shepards (I’m assuming this is how they spell ‘shepherd’ in America)pie because a shepherds pie is made with lamb. It might be a cottage pie though. That’s normally made with beef, but a cottager would also forage for food and might indeed use mushrooms.
And the reason my mushrooms tasted so strong is that they hadn’t had the flavour chilled out of them on the dry cold supermarket shelf, but were in a cool warehouse, and were mature. So mature that had I not got them all processed within 3 or 4 days, they would have had to go onto the compost heap.So that’s a tip from me. If you want flavour, buy chestnut mushrooms and leave them until the base of the stem starts to go brown and you have to cut it off, and *don’t* keep them in the fridge.
Has anyone tried this recipe and then mixed it with chopped black beans for more protein? Also, how about mixing them together and putting them in the dehydrator? This would be the answer to making a LOT of product to keep on your pantry shelf for convenience.
You are so awesome. Yay!