Bethany's Vegan Kitchen

Meaty mock meat mince along with onion and garlic, in a rich tomato sauce. This really meaty spaghetti bolognese has all the flavours and textures of the meat version, but is completely plant based. I used a very realistic plant based mince from Naked Glory but other meat free mince will work for this too

Yield; Four servings Cook time; 35 minutes

You’ll need;

1. One tablespoon of oil
2. Two cloves of garlic, minced
3. One small brown onion, finely diced
4. One red pepper, deseeded and finely diced
5. One pack of meat free mince
6. One 400g tin of plum tomatoes, blended (see method)
7. 200g passata
8. One tablespoon of tomato puree
9. One tablespoon of soy sauce
10. One tablespoon of Henderson’s relish
11. One teaspoon of both dried oregano and dried basil
12. Salt and black pepper to taste
13. 300g (dry weight) spaghetti

Method;

• As I mentioned, I’m using meat free mince by Naked Glory
  
  It’s very similar to meat, both before you cook it and afterwards too. There are other mince products available that are similar, both Naturli and Meatless farms have mince that’s similar to this. I’ve never cooked with the meat version, but apparently it’s quite similar. If the appearance of this is off putting (which I can completely understand!), feel free to swap this for 260g of other meat free mince
• Start by heating the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for a minute or two, until the garlic becomes fragrant
  
• Now you can add the onion and pepper. I include a red pepper to add a little natural sweetness to the bolognese. Give it another five minutes to cook
  
• Next, crumble the mince into the frying pan. Allow the mince to cook for another five to ten minutes, stirring occasionally
  
• Now we can move on to the sauce. Add the rest of the ingredients (apart from the spaghetti) into the frying pan, so that’s the plum tomatoes, passata, soy sauce, Henderson’s relish and the herbs. Before adding the plum tomatoes you’ll want to blend them. I just use a stick blender and blend them until smooth. This along with finely dicing the onion and pepper will give you a lovely smooth sauce that coats the pasta beautifully
  
• Once you’ve added those, give it a good mix to fully combine everything. You can now leave this to cook on a medium heat, uncovered, for another 10-15 minutes to allow it to thicken
• At this point it will be ready to serve. Boil the pasta as per the instructions on the packet, drain it well (do not rinse it though!) then add the pasta into the bolognese. Give it a few good stirs to ensure the sauce coats the pasta well, then you can serve
• Alternatively, if you have more time on your hands I like to cover the bolognese with a lid and leave it to cook on low for another hour or so. This just gives more time for the flavours to develop, you just need to give it a stir every now and then, and scrape down the sauce from the sides
  

How I Serve Spaghetti

I always add the pasta into the sauce before I serve it, this allows the sauce to fully coat the pasta. I also like to let the sauce thicken over time, this prevents the sauce from being wateryTo serve the spaghetti in nests like this you just need a couple of things. Either a pair of tongs/a carving fork/or other large fork, and some sort of spoon or ladle. Take a large forkful of spaghetti and put it into the spoon/ladle, then twist the fork a few times to create the nest. Then just carefully slide the spaghetti onto your plate. It’s an easy but neat way to serve spaghetti, you can choose to make the nests as small or large as you like