Vegan Wellington Recipe - Six Hungry Feet (2024)

Our Vegan Wellington is a delicious and satisfying alternative to the classic Beef Wellington. Surprise your guests with this mouthwatering Vegan Wellington made with mushrooms and nuts filling. The flavors and textures of this festive main dish are simply perfect.

What is Vegan Wellington?

Vegan Wellington is a delicious and impressive plant-based take on the classic Beef Wellington. To make the filling for the Vegan Wellington, we replace the beef with a combination of mushrooms and nuts to create a "meaty", and flavorful dish that will please any crowd.

Luckily, most puff pastry brands are naturally vegan so you may be able to find plant-based puff pastry in your local supermarket to make this festive main dish.

The dish is sure to impress at dinner parties and holiday gatherings. More importantly, it's surprisingly easy to make, so we suggest you give this recipe a try!

Why does this recipe work?

• Flavorful filling that holds its shape. When you cut your Wellington, you want it to hold its shape. Our filling is flavorful and comes with the perfect texture. A combination of mushrooms, nuts, breadcrumbs, herbs, and stock make a perfect dough for your filling that is easy to shape, wrap, cook, and cut. We use the same filling to make our famous Nut Roast, which is made by many people every Christmas and has received so many great comments.
• Easy cooking process. We have two kids, and even for Christmas, we need easy recipes that can be prepared fast enough. The filling comes together in less than 25 minutes and once you wrap the Wellington, all you need to do is bake it.
• Cooks well. Our mixture for the filling is not watery, allowing the pastry to cook well. You don't want to cut the Wellington and find out that the pastry is not well-cooked.
• Easy-to-find ingredients. You can get all the ingredients in your local supermarket, and even if making a Wellington sounds like a lot, you just need a handful of ingredients to make our recipe.

Our Vegan Wellington is:

• A flavorful main dish
• Festive
• Perfect for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Sunday Roasts, and other special dinners.
• Kids-friendly
• Healthy
• Hearty
• Easy to prepare

How to make Vegan Wellington

Ingredients

Dried Mushrooms. Broken into small pieces and rehydrated, dried mushrooms will give your Wellington filling a deeper and richer flavor. Porcini-dried mushrooms are the ones we use, shiitake or other mushrooms will work perfectly too. If you are not adding dried mushrooms, you will need to add some vegetable broth (200ml)

Fresh Mushrooms. They are the main ingredient for our Wellington. Roughly chopped mushrooms will give the filling the right consistency and taste. We use cremini mushrooms but white button mushrooms can be used too.

Nuts and seeds. Every time we make this Wellington or our Nut Roast, we use a different nut mixture, just because we use what we have and we can tell you that everything works well! Combine your favorite nuts and seeds for this dish. Some suggestions are walnuts, cashews, brazil nuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, chestnuts, hazelnuts, etc.

Bread crumbs. You can use store-bought or homemade bread crumbs. Simply add dried bread (leftover bread) into a food processor and pulse a few times until you have fine bread crumbs.

Rosemary. Fresh Rosemary is such a nice herb to use during autumn and winter. It's really flavourful, we love adding it to our recipes. You can add other fresh herbs such as basil, oregano, or sage.

Soy sauce. Our filling contains a little bit of dark soy sauce to pack in some extra flavor. Alternatively, you can use red wine.

Onion and garlic. As in most of our dishes, we use white or red onion and garlic cloves to start the base of this dish.

Yeast Extract. Marmite or yeast extract is a savory spread widely used in the UK. My husband loves having it on toast so we always have a jar around. Adding a teaspoon of marmite gives the wellington a concentrated dose of umami flavor. If you are not in the UK, you can buy itonline, or substitute it for miso or tomato paste.

Dried fruit. Such a great idea to add some dried fruits to your filling. It adds sweetness and a great texture. We especially like raisins or dried apricots. Cranberries, dates, or other dried fruits will work fantastic as well.

Apple. We like adding some finely sliced apple before wrapping the wellington to add some sweetness. Another option would be using caramelized onion.

Puff pastry. Get a plant-based puff pastry for your Vegan Wellington. You can find it in supermarkets. If you buy frozen puff pastry, leave it in the fridge the night before.

How to make and shape the filling

1. Prepare the mushroom stock by breaking the dried mushrooms into small pieces and soaking them in boiling water.
2. Get the dry ingredients ready. In a food processor, add the nuts and ground them by pulsing until they have the desired consistency and set aside. If you are making homemade bread crumbs, add the bread to the food processor and pulse until you have fine bread crumbs.
3. Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan to medium heat and add finely chopped onion and garlic. Fry until translucent and add roughly chopped mushrooms and rosemary. Sauté for a couple of minutes and turn the heat off.
4. Add the ground nuts and bread crumbs and mix them together. Season with a pinch of salt and black pepper.
5. Pour the soy sauce and add the dried mushrooms stock, combine all the ingredients, and set aside to cool.
6. Shape the filling into a long and round dough. We recommend you let the mixture cool before shaping it. Place finely sliced apple on the bottom and then shape the mixture on top of the apple, to create a first caramelized layer.

How to wrap and score the Wellington

1. Roll the puff pastry sheet using a rolling pin and once the filling is shaped, place it on the puff pastry. Close one side of the pastry, covering the filling dough. If you are using a frozen sheet, it will need to be completely thawed before using. You can leave it the night before in the fridge or at room temperature in winter.
2. Wrap the other side, so the filling is all covered. Cut the excess pastry. If you leave the pastry too long, the Wellington will come out too thick and won't cook properly.
3. Fold both sides.
4. Flip the Wellington carefully so it doesn't lose its shape.
5. Before scoring the Wellington, you can add some vegan egg wash such as plant-based milk or vegan butter with a pastry brush on top of the Wellington to give the outer layer a nice brown color.
6. Create a pattern. We recommend creating an easy pattern if this is your first time such as lines (like the picture). If you like working with pastry, go ahead and create a beautiful pattern!

Cooking the Wellington

Place the Wellington on a baking sheet or parchment paper on a baking tray and bake at 200C (400F) for about 45 minutes or until the pastry is fully cooked and golden brown. Leave it to cool for about 10-15 minutes before you start serving it.

Variations to our Vegan Wellington Recipe

• Make it gluten-free. If you want to make your Vegan Wellington gluten-free, you can do so by substituting the regular puff pastry with a gluten-free version. Most store-bought gluten-free puff pastry sheets will work well for this recipe. Just remember to read the label to ensure it's entirely gluten-free. For the filling, simply substitute the regular bread crumbs forgluten-free bread crumbs. It might be a bit difficult to find gluten-free breadcrumbs, but we normally put toast some gluten-free bread slices and ground them using a food processor. Substitute the soy sauce fortamari(gluten-free soy sauce).
• Add pulses. Incorporating pulses like lentils into the Vegan Wellington's filling is a fantastic idea for added protein and nutrition. For example, you can mix cooked lentils with your mushrooms to create a more robust and filling dish. Lentils also give the dish a "meatier" texture to your dish.
• Use different types of mushrooms. You can use other mushrooms for your vegan mushroom Wellington such as shiitake, portobello mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, or your favorite mushroom mixture. Each mushroom brings its unique taste and texture, allowing you to customize and create a dish that suits your taste.
• Use different types of nuts. You can experiment with different types of nuts such as walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, or pecans. Don't be afraid to mix and match your favorites to create a unique and rich-tasting filling for your Vegan Wellington. All the combinations we've tried always work great!

Serving Suggestions

This hearty Vegan Wellington calls for some festive side dishes. Depending on the occasion you are serving this dish for, we suggest different side dishes:

• Holiday meal. If you want to serve this Mushroom Wellington for Christmas or Thanksgiving, these Festive Roasted Veggies are a fantastic choice. To add something green to the dish, we recommend sauteeing some green beans with vegan butter and garnishing them with almonds and lemon zest. This festive menu will be a winner for your special occasion. Check out our favorite Christmas recipes for this year.

• Sunday meal. Our Vegan Wellington can be served as an alternative to the Meaty Sunday Roast. You can bake some potatoes, and serve the meal with a fresh salad.

• Weekday lunch. Something easy to make for a weekday meal would be mashed potatoes or mashed sweet potatoes, and a leafy green salad. You can make vegan mashed potatoes simply by using plant-based milk and vegan butter.

Don't forget the sauces when serving your Vegan Wellington. Our favorite choices for this meal are vegan gravy or cranberry sauce. Both options are great and will enhance the flavor of the meal. We especially love this Vegan Gravy Recipe from Nora Cooks.

Store and Reheat

If you want to freeze the Wellington, we recommend freezing it before cooking. Make sure you are using fresh pastry and not frozen if you want to freeze the meal.

If you have some leftovers, you can keep them in an airtight container for 3-4 days, and reheat using the air fryer (reheat setting), or oven. You can as well, use the microwave but the pastry may get soggy.

FAQ and Tips

More Festive Recipes:

• Festive Roasted Veggies
• Vegan Moussaka
• Maple Roasted Pumpkin
• Vegan Apple Crumble
• Vegan Cauliflower Casserole
• Beetroot Salad with Vegan Feta