If I told you I was cooking dinner all day in the oven (well not all day but for a few hours), would you guess it was a vegetarian dish? This vegetarian cassoulet, or cannellini bean stew is roasted for 4 hours with porcini mushrooms, red wine, tomatoes, broth, carrots and celery and it is amazing.
I serve it with warm French bread to sop up the juices and wow️!
When I came up with this Vegetarian Cassoulet, I originally was researching traditional Cassoulet, a French dish, which has all of these same ingredients but it has lots of meat added to the dish. Although it sounded yummy, it seemed like just too much in one pot for my taste.
With this version, the porcini mushrooms make a nice substitute for the meaty flavor and the dried beans that are cooked in the oven taste so amazing especially when they have had a chance to soak up all of the broth and red wine. And let’s talk about that broth!
Make sure you have some really good french bread to dip in your bowl to not let any of that broth go to waste! The dipping is the best part part of the meal for me. I like to make a jazzed up version of store bought boule bread.
When buying ingredients for this dish, make sure you use the best quality ones you can find. Sine this is an all vegetable dish, quality ingredients will really help boost all that delicious flavor.
This dish is a wonderful addition to your your Fall and Winter meal plans. It is cozy, not heavy and full of great flavor and goodness. It is the perfect all vegetable meal for the colder months.
Once you give this a try, I am certain you will have a new favorite vegetarian dish you will love! Let me know in the comments how you liked it!
Vegetarian Cassoulet
Ingredients
- 1 pound dried Cannellini Beans or Great Northern beans
- 1/2 onion diced
- 4 cloves garlic smashed and diced
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
- 1/2 stems of fresh rosemary
- 5 cups of vegetable broth and 5 cups water
- 2 ribs celery diced
- 2 carrots diced
- 1/4 cup of red wine
- 1 cup of hydrated porcini mushrooms chopped into bite size pieces
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1 14 oz can of diced tomatoes
- good quality french baguette or similar bread
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees.
- In a large, heavy Dutch oven (with tight fitting lid) add olive oil over medium heat and stir in celery, carrots, and onion. Season with salt.
- Cook and stir vegetables in the olive oil about 10 minutes until they are softened.
- While this is cooking, put your porcini mushrooms (they come dried) in a bowl of boiling water and let them sit for 10 minutes to soak up the water.
- Once your veggies are nice and softened, go ahead and add your red wine and cook out the alcohol, about 5 minutes. Once the alcohol is cooked off, add your canned tomatoes, your dried beans, all your broth and then enough water to cover the beans by about 3 inches and mix it all together.
- Add a good pinch of salt and your fresh herbs to the pot and mix that in.
- Bring your pot of beans up to a boil.
- Once it is boiling, stir well and cover with a tight fitting lid and place in the oven.
- The beans will slow cook in the oven for a while.
- I like to check my beans every hour while they are cooking to make sure the liquid is not getting to low before the beans are done cooking.
- If your beans are not soft and ready and the pot is looking dry just go ahead and add enough water to your pot to come to the level of the beans.
- Keep doing this each time you check your beans until your beans are cooked all the way through and soft, about 3-4 hours (depending on the dryness of your beans).
- When it is ready, make sure to serve it with bread and enjoy!
