Recipe of the Day: Vegan Portobello Stroganoff with Curly Noodles

Traditional Beef Stroganoff is a heavy winter dish of sauteed beef in a flavored sauce of butter, flour, and sour cream that would keep you warm on a Siberian night. Created by a French chef who worked for Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov, who settled part of Siberia, this dish won a cooking contest back in 1891, and it traveled the world, getting altered slightly by chefs as it went global. Here, we transformed it into an entirely vegan masterpiece using portabello mushrooms for a meaty texture, in a sauce made with non-dairy ingredients.

Stroganoff can be healthy when you remove the dairy and animal products and keep all the flavor. Serve this vegan version on a summer evening to cap a day of outdoor activities, and serve up all the warmth and taste without heaviness. Here, the beef is removed, and instead, we use hearty portobello mushrooms that have a similar texture to meat and taste richer for the stroganoff sauce on curly noodles.

Swap the dairy out for vegan butter, plant-based yogurt, and nutritional yeast for a satisfyingly cheesy taste. This spin on a classic dish is the perfect way to get your meat-loving friend to try a vegan recipe and by skipping the dairy, everyone will be back on the trails or tennis court without any of the usual inflammation triggered by eating dairy.

Vegan Portobello Stroganoff

Serves 4

Ingredients

Stroganoff:

• 2 tbsp (30 ml) good olive oil
• 2 tbsp (28 g) vegan butter
• 4 portobello mushrooms, stems and gills removed and chopped into big chunks
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced into quarter moons
• 2 cloves garlic, pressed 2 tsp (5 g) paprika
• 1 tbsp (15 ml) tamari
• 1 tbsp (5 g) nutritional yeast
• ½ cup (120 ml) vegan white wine
• ½ cup (120 ml) plain unsweetened vegan yogurt
• 2 tsp (10 ml) grainy mustard

Noodles

• ½ lb (227 g) curly noodles

To Serve

• Fresh parsley, chopped
• Fresh chives, chopped

Instructions

1. Heat a cast-iron or nonstick skillet over medium-low heat. Add the oil and butter and melt them together. Add the mushrooms, onions, garlic, and paprika. Cook, mixing around occasionally, until the mushrooms have released their moisture and have significantly reduced in size and the onions are soft, about 10 minutes. Season with tamari and nutritional yeast.
2. Deglaze the pan with the white wine and cook until the wine is mostly absorbed about 2 minutes. Add the yogurt and mustard and mix until the sauce is uniformly creamy.
3. In the meantime, prepare the noodles. Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil and cook the noodles according to the package instructions. Drain the noodles and put them back into the pot.
4. Serve the noodles topped with stroganoff and a sprinkle of parsley and chives.

Reprinted with permission from The Vegan ABCs Cookbook by Lisa Dawn Angerame, Page Street Publishing Co. 2021. Photo credit: Alexandra Shytsman