A meat-less take on a classic for St. Paddy’s Day

I was in Ireland for St. Patrick’s Day and after a small parade in the small village of Kilcar in County Donegal, I wanted to make something traditional for the holiday so I tried my hand at Irish stew sans the lamb or beef it traditionally requires. It came out great. Here were my ingredients:

• Potatoes. I steamed these prior to tossing in the stew.
• Carrots (I roasted these in the oven)
• Onions (I cut up into big chunks and roasted with the carrots)
• Parsnips (I had these frozen from making broth)
• Aquifaba (This is the broth that comes from boiling chick peas –I had in the freezer from having made hummus but you could use vegetable broth.)
• Barley
• Mushrooms (I used a mixture of shitake, oyster and king trumpet, but any will do)
• A cup of cream of mushroom soup (I used a local brand –not Campbells! –but you could just use more mushrooms, broth and onions)
• Vegetarian sausage cut up in chunks and broiled.
• Sage
• Thyme
• Salt and pepper
• A dab of marmite (my secret ingredient)
• Some soy sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Some miso

I actually had some leftover mushroom barley soup so I tossed that in — that accounted for the barley, but I added more mushrooms. I think the roasting the carrots and onions added a flavor punch. I used a lot of pepper. The broiling the sausage gave it a bit of heft so that they didn’t melt away in the stew as some veggie sausage tends to do. The barley and potatoes made it nice and thick.

Seriously it came out so good you wouldn’t know it had no meat in it.