As a meals author and vegetable lover, the usually bandied-about phrase “You will not miss the meat!” rankles me. With a properly made vegetarian meal, why would I miss the meat? However even I perceive {that a} pot pie with out its typical star ingredient—rooster—may appear a bit of missing, abstemious, and simply sort of a bummer. May a vegetarian pot pie presumably be as satisfying, comforting, and flavorful because the traditional?

The reply—within the type of this savory, hearty, and satisfying mushroom pot pie created by our Birmingham-based check kitchen colleague Renu Dhar—is 1,000% sure. The recipe builds on deeply savory and umami-rich elements to create a hearty and creamy filling of mushrooms, carrots, parsnips, pearl onions, recent thyme, all topped with crispy and buttery puff pastry. Not solely will you not miss the rooster, you, like me, could properly want this vegetarian model.

Actually, as quickly as I tasted this pot pie whereas visiting our Birmingham check kitchens, I knew what I needed to make for my vegetarian pals this Thanksgiving. Not that I plan to attend till the vacation to make this lovely pot pie—to attract on one other meals writing cliché, that is simple sufficient to make on a weeknight, requiring simply 20 minutes of prep earlier than it goes within the oven. Plus, it is versatile: You possibly can bake it as one beautiful centerpiece pot pie, or divide it into ramekins for particular person servings. Learn on for the methods Renu used to make a chicken-free pot pie with all of the stick-to-your-ribs goodness of the unique.

4 Methods for Vegetarian Pot-Pie Success

Choose up some store-bought puff pastry. Whilst you can definitely use a do-it-yourself crust if you would like, we opted for store-bought puff pastry for this mushroom pot pie (as we did in our simple rooster pot pie). We went this route as a result of we needed to maintain this recipe simple sufficient for a weeknight meal, and in addition as a result of we really feel that in the event you use an all-butter frozen puff pastry, equivalent to Dufour, the outcomes will nonetheless be glorious. Not solely is that this a lot faster and simpler, it additionally provides you a fantastically crispy, buttery topping that enhances the creamy filling.

Use quite a lot of recent mushrooms. This recipe requires blended recent mushrooms, equivalent to cremini, portobello, and shiitake. And when you definitely may make it with primary button mushrooms, utilizing a number of the mushrooms listed right here provides the ultimate dish an earthy, umami depth that makes it actually particular. Utilizing quite a lot of mushrooms additionally performs into our chicken-free technique, offering quite a lot of textures and flavors much like the best way rooster does with its silky thigh meat, tender breast meat, and melting gelatin.

Whereas white button, cremini, and portobello are technically variants of the identical mushroom, they’ve totally different textures and intensities of taste: White button are the mildest, so we skip them right here, whereas cremini are tender and juicy with a deep savory taste, and portobellos are bigger and meatier. Shiitakes have a profound umami and a silky texture when cooked. The mushrooms we steered right here additionally all maintain their form properly after cooking and are not vulnerable to getting mushy or slimy. Along with shiitake, cremini, and portobello, be at liberty to spherical out the combination with different meaty and flavorful mushroom varieties you discover on the market.

Pump up the mushroom taste with dried porcini. To maintain this pot pie vegetarian and to boost the mushroom taste, Renu makes a fast inventory with dried porcini and stems from the recent mushrooms that will get blended with milk and stirred into the filling combination to amplify the flavour of the mushrooms and kind a wealthy, creamy base.

This can be a good transfer that pays dividends: As an alternative of making a mushroom broth that has had the solids strained out, she makes use of the pure fiber from the mushrooms to thicken the sauce when blended, constructing much more textural richness into the pot pie combination whereas infusing each drop with deep mushroom taste. “Utilizing mushroom stems and mixing them with porcini mushrooms creates probably the most pleasantly potent mushroom flavored sauce,” Renu explains. “This sauce is the bones of the dish and presumably the hero with out the cape!”

Stir in some miso paste. The umami is deepened with white miso paste—one other nice vegetarian taste booster. “The white miso provides a savoriness that doesn’t compete with mushrooms however stays pleasantly within the background,” Renu says.