Vegan Stew and Dumplings

Why We Love This Recipe

• Warm and comforting: This stew is absolutely perfect for a chilly evening. It's warming, cozy, and oh so delicious.
• Packed with vegetables: Celery, carrot, onion, mushrooms, green beans and peas come together to make this hearty stew, so you're sure to get more than a few servings of your daily veggies.
• Easy to customize: You can tweak this recipe by changing up the vegetables, beans, herbs, etc. based on what you already have in your fridge.
• Easy enough for a weeknight meal: This vegan stew with dumplings takes about an hour to make, but it's mostly hands off. It's packed with nutritious ingredients you most likely already have in your kitchen. Doesn't get much easier for a healthy, hearty dinner!

Ingredients

Here's what you'll need to make this vegan stew and dumplings:

Ingredient Notes

• Poultry seasoning: Poultry seasoning adds extra depth of flavor to this vegan stew and dumplings. If you don't have any, you can substitute with a mix of thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary & black pepper.
• Navy Beans: You can substitute with another white bean of choice, like cannellini, Great Northern or lima beans.
• Mushrooms: You can really use any mushroom variety you'd like. We chose button because they're easy to find and affordable! Cremini or baby bellas are also a great choice.
• Salt: We use Diamond brand kosher salt.  If you choose to use fine grain sea salt or table salt, they are a finer grain so you will most likely want to start with a little less salt and then taste and adjust the recipe if needed.
• Vegetable broth: Use a low sodium vegetable broth so that you can better control the salt content in the soup. If you'd like, you can also try this recipe to make homemade vegetable broth from leftover veggie scraps! If you're not vegan/vegetarian, feel free to sub with chicken broth.
• Peas: Feel free to use fresh or frozen. Fresh can be difficult to find, so we almost always use frozen.
• Green beans: Fresh or frozen both work fine in this recipe. We use frozen – it's more cost effective, unless you have other plans for the rest of the bag of fresh beans!
• Vinegar: A small amount of white wine vinegar goes a long way in balancing the flavors of this stew. If you don't have any, you can substitute with red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar or even lemon juice.

Instructions

(1) Add oil to a large soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and sauté for 5-6 minutes. Add garlic and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes. 

(2) Stir in celery, carrot, mushrooms, tomato paste, poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper and cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally.

(3) Add in peas, green beans, bay leaves, vinegar and broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

(4) While the soup is simmering, make the dumplings. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder and salt.

Add the butter to the flour mixture, using your hands to cut the butter into the flour until no big lumps remain. (Don't overwork the dough – the butter doesn't have to be completely incorporated.)

Add in the warm water and continue mixing the dumpling mixture by hand until it comes together.

(5) Roll the dough into small balls (1- 1 ½ teaspoon in size) and drop them into the stew. Increase the heat to medium and cook for 20 minutes, until the dumplings are still soft on the outside and chewy on the inside. (Note: the dumplings will expand, so smaller is best.)

Stir the soup every 5 minutes or so while the dumplings are cooking to make sure they cook evenly.

(6) Stir in navy beans and parsley and continue cooking for 2-3 minutes. Serve warm. 

Tips and FAQs

• Add a protein: For more protein, you could add some sliced vegan sausage or bratwurst to the stew. Our poultry seasoned tofu from this recipe would also be a delicious choice!
• Serving suggestions: We recommend serving this with warm bread (try our homemade cornbread or garlic bread!) and a light side salad (like our Italian chopped salad or our Apple Pecan Salad).
• Hands on: It's much easier to use your hands to make the dough for the dumplings. This makes it much easier to break up any big pieces of butter and create a smooth dough. It's also best to use your hands for adding the dumplings to the stew. The dough is pretty sticky, so it will stick to any utensils.
• Change up the vegetables: Feel free to substitute in other vegetables of choice, like spinach, broccoli, corn, cauliflower, etc.
• Storage: Let the stew cool to room temperature, then transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate for 5 days. Reheat in a small saucepan over medium heat.
• Freezer storage: Let the stew cool completely, then transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze for up to 6 months. To reheat, let the stew thaw in the refrigerator overnight before gently reheating on the stove. We don't suggest microwaving/trying to cook the soup straight from the freezer, as the heat will cause the dumplings to disintegrate.

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