This story is so short that even I cannot make it long. We made “steak” and mushroom pie. It was maybe the best pie I’ve ever had?! We ate it all in one evening and then my tummy hurt. Here’s (our best guess at) the recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 medium white onion
• 1 chunky carrot
• 2 celery stalks
• 250 g chestnut mushrooms
• 160g “Beyond” steak bits¹
• 2 bay leaves
• handful of thyme and sage
• knob of vegan butter
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 250 mL red wine
• 1 Knorr vegetable stock pot²
• olive oil, salt, black pepper, water
• Bisto gravy granules³
• vegan puff pastry (e.g. Jus-Rol)

Method

1. Mis-en-place: (Very) finely dice your onion, carrot, and celery. You should have about the same quantity by volume of each vegetable. Clean the mushrooms with a paper towel and cut them into chunks. Dissolve the stock pot in about 200 mL⁴ of warm water and set aside for later.
2. Mirepoix: Heat up a large pot. Add some olive oil and your onions, and turn the heat to medium. Sauté the onions with a pinch of salt for a couple of minutes. Add the carrots and celery and another pinch of salt⁵. Cook the vegetables for a while on low to medium heat so that they release their moisture and soften – but without browning.
3. Move the vegetables to the side of the pot and add the butter in the middle. Into the melting butter, grind some black pepper. Add the herbs (bay, thyme, and sage) and the tomato purée and stir it all together.
4. Stir in the wine and stock, then add the mushrooms and “steak” chunks. Let it simmer on low heat for at least 15 minutes but probably longer⁶.
5. Thicken up the liquid by stirring in a teaspoon of gravy granules at a time, until you get the right consistency. If the pie filling isn’t saucy enough for you, add a bit more water as well. Taste and add more salt and pepper as needed.
6. Let the pie filling cool for a bit and pre-heat the oven at 180°C (convection oven).
7. Transfer the pie filling to a suitable dish and cover with a sheet of puff pastry. Crimp the edges and optionally, brush the top with a bit of oat milk. Cut steam vents in the pastry. Bake for about 30 minutes – the top should have puffed up and browned a little.

It may look something like this! Let it cool a bit before cutting into it. Serving suggestion: don’t eat the whole thing with two people, that is too much pie.

Notes

1. Beyond Steak. I wouldn’t normally fuss over the brand. But knowing how great this pie turned out, I would absolutely make sure that next time I’m using the exact same ingredients. So I felt like I should give you that information also. To set you up for success, ya know. ↩︎
2. Knorr vegetable stock pots. See 1. However, f*** Unilever. ↩︎
3. Bisto gravy granules (the regular, red one). For this one, I wouldn’t really know another brand/product that works the same way. We thicken up the pie filling AND add the salty and savoury flavour of the gravy at the same time. You could certainly find another way to thicken the sauce – for example with a corn starch slurry – and compensate with more salt (but you wouldn’t get the exact same flavour of course). ↩︎
4. The amount of liquid is kind of a wild guess. It’s easy to add a bit more water later on if the sauce looks to dry (but pretty difficult to take it out). ↩︎
5. The salt helps the vegetables release their moisture and cook quicker. Plus, adding salt at different steps in the cooking process builds deeper flavour. However, this recipe should be undersalted until the final step because we add vegetable stock and gravy granules, both of which have a good amount of salt in them already. ↩︎
6. I didn’t time anything, sorry! I think the total cooking time including the mirepoix was about 1h15m. ↩︎