Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. Heat the oil in a large casserole pan and fry the onion and leek for around 5 minutes until soft
2 tablespoon vegetable oil, 1 onion, 1 leek
Add the carrots, parsnips and sweet potato and cook for 5 minutes until soft
1 carrot, 1 parsnip, 500 g sweet potato
Add the tinned tomatoes, passata, vegetable stock, worcestshire sauce, thyme and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Make sure the liquid covers the vegetables. Bring to a boil then cover with a lid and place in the oven for 30 minutes
400 g chopped tomatoes, 500 g passata, 300 ml vegetable stock, 2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoon fresh thyme, 1 dash salt, 1 dash black pepper
Vegan Dumplings
Mix the dumpling ingredients together with a little cold water until you can mould the mixture into small balls about the size of ping pong balls. If you want to add in extra flavours, add these to the mixture before you form the dough together into balls
125 g self raising flour, 60 g vegetable suet, 3-4 tablespoon cold water
Carefully place on top of the stew for the last 20 minutes of cooking and leave the stew uncovered.
When the dumpling are cooked and slightly browned, serve everything together
Notes
Nutritional Values are a guide based on the vegetables and quantities used in the recipe and are per portion. Please note the nutritional calculation does not include dumplings.
Vegan Dumplings
For a simple dumpling, all you need is self raising / self rising flour, vegetable suet and cold water. You can either keep the dumplings simple or add in some flavours. If you don't have self raising flour, mix 1 teaspoon of baking powder with every 100g of plain flour. Give it a good stir to make sure the baking powder is evenly distributed. The baking powder is the raising agent and will ensure the dumplings are light and airy.
Additional Flavours for Dumplings
The following can be added to your dumpling mixture to bring extra flavour to your dish.
Vegan Cheddar Cheese. Grate the cheese and add around 100g for every 125g of flour. Some cheeses are stronger than others so you may wish to add a little less if you have a stronger cheese.
Chives Freshly chopped chives can be added and go particularly well with cheese.
Thyme As well as adding thyme to the stew, you can add a couple of teaspoons of fresh leaves to the dumpling mixture before bringing the dough together. Dried thyme won't work as well as there is not enough moisture in the dumplings to hydrate the dried leaves.
Pesto Green basil or red sun dried tomato pesto can also be added to spice the dumplings up a little. Add four teaspoons of the pesto to the dumpling mixture before bringing the dough together.
Serving Suggestion
A stew is a great one pot dish, especially if you add dumplings so you don't need to serve anything extra. Sometimes, people like to add something green on the side. I recommend peas but anything green such as cabbage or broccoli will do. This vegetable stew already contains potato. If your stew doesn't have potato in it, you might like to serve some mash on the side. Mash is also great for mopping up the gravy or sauce.
Storage
You can keep this stew in the fridge for 3 - 4 days. You can also freeze it although root vegetables can go a bit mushy when they've been frozen.
Leftover Vegan Stew
As an alternative to freezing any leftover stew, you can turn your leftover stew into a soup. Just add some vegetable stock and blitz the vegetables and you will have a lovely thick vegetable soup. Adding milk will make it a little creamier. If you've got any other vegetables leftover, this is a great opportunity to use them up. Chop them into small pieces and add in. Once they are soft enough, you can mash them up or put the soup through a food processor.