Vegan Irish Stew

You might also enjoy these recipes for vegan beef stew and mushroom stew. Traveling vegan is not only easy in Ireland, it is practically a pleasure. This is a very vegan-friendly country, as I found out during out trip there, and the food I ate was nothing short of spectacular. But one thing I didn’t find on a restaurant menu was a hearty vegan stew made with Ireland’s favorite drink, Guinness. While beef and lamb Guinness stews are everywhere, the restaurants I went to had nothing resembling this Irish favorite in a vegan form. So as soon as I got back home, I stirred up the pot with my delicious and meatless vegan Irish Stew, a recipe I shared with you many years ago for St. Patrick’s Day. But this time I had a new appreciation of the ingredients – and particularly the dark Guinness stout – that goes into it. When I first posted this recipe, Guinness was not vegan, because the process of making this delicious brew involved filtering it through isinglass, or fish bladders. Fortunately, in 2017 Guinness began taking steps to make its brew vegan, and beginning 2018 all Guinness now on the market is divinely vegan. Which also made it easy to glug all the Guinness I wanted to when we visited the storehouse at St James Gate in Dublin where it all began. Even better, restaurants at the brewery (with spectacular views of the city) had great vegan and vegetarian options as well. Mine is a rather traditional stew, without the lamb, of course (wouldn’t you rather just cuddle one?) It’s also a one-pot dish with no more than 15 minutes of hands-on time needed. I used soy chunks, dredged in flour and seasoned with herbs and then stir-fried until golden-brown, to replace the meat, which is usually lamb. The soy, when cooked this way, gets a wonderful, chewy texture, and who needs the meat? You can – and perhaps should – make this stew a day earlier, because this is one of those dishes that tastes even better the next day, when the flavors have had a chance to meld together. Check to get new recipe updates by email.

Ingredients

Soy or TVP chunks (you can also use a vegan meat or seitan) Unbleached all purpose flour Onions Garlic Carrots Celery Crimini Mushrooms Herbs (I used a mix of rosemary, sage and thyme – use rosemary if you can only use one) Guinness stout Vegetable stock Vegetable oil Vegan butter