How to Make Our Super Savory Meatless "Meat" Sauce

[Music] when I first heard that we were developing a recipe for a meatless meat sauce for pasta I was pretty surprised I mean I'd never heard of such a thing before but today Becky is gonna introduce it to us that's right our viewers have been asking for this recipe for more vegetarian options that's right and this is so good I promise you won't even miss the meat okay so this is a vegetarian version of sort of a weeknight Bolognese you got it so we're starting with five tablespoons of olive oil something a lot it is a lot we're not using any meat so we want to replace some of that richness some of that fat that you would get if you were making a traditional meat sauce okay so start with a lot of olive oil that's right medium-high heat we'll let that heat up while we move on over here to some mushrooms ah I see so it's a meaty tasting ingredient you're gonna put into a vegetarian sauce that's right mushrooms have a lot of umami flavor they're cell walls are also made up of something called chitin chitin doesn't break down over heat so the mushrooms are gonna maintain that nice chewy texture you know most vegetables you cook them long enough there they turn to mush complete mush not mushrooms so they're good texturally so we have 10 ounces we're gonna put them in the food processor here we'll do half at a time do them in two batches you're gonna break them down to a fine sort of brown meat texture yeah kind of a pebbly texture quarter of an inch eighth of an inch we'll pulse them about seven to ten times that looks pretty good so we're using cremini mushrooms they're relatively neutral tasting we didn't want anything too earthy like porcini or shiitake and we're not using a ton of mushrooms this isn't a mushroom sauce we just want them to add that nice texture and that mild flavor that we're talking about let's do the second batch here yeah it looks good so we'll get our mushrooms into the oil here and then goes a teaspoon of salt all that liquid has to come out so they can get nice and brown and develop all that savory flavor that we're talking about so we're gonna let these cook for about eight minutes while these mushrooms cook we'll move over to the onions I have one onion chopped up here and so you're gonna mince it live the processor that's right same thing as the mushroom seven to ten pulses just to break it down so what the mushrooms go for eight minutes and then we'll add the onion sounds good it's looking good in there yeah they've really cooked down yeah right so that's been eight minutes look at the onions in the pot you want the onions to start to soften we'll let them cook for five minutes we'll continue alright so it's been about five minutes I can tell you like how it smells really good yeah and instead of browning the meat you're browning the vegetables to get that flavor that's right and you can see there's little bits of fun starting to develop on the bottom of the pot that means lots of flavor so let's add a quarter cup of tomato paste which has a lot of those umami compounds I was talking about earlier so I want this to start to brown I want it to turn rust colored in the bottom of the pot that's a signal with the sugars have started to caramelize and they taste even better so let this go for a minute or two here so I have one more tablespoon of olive oil five garlic cloves minced up one quarter teaspoons of dried oregano and just a quarter teaspoon of pepper flakes just a little kick yeah not enough to make it spicy but enough to give it a little zing I'm mixing this with some oil I'm trying to co all the little pieces of garlic with oil so they'll start to sizzle right when they go into the pot makes sense look at that nice rust color yeah you can see that color of the tomato paste really did Brown yeah it looks great I'm just gonna turn the heat down to medium here pass the baton back to you thank you so I'm gonna make a clearing in the center of the pot here that's a little garlic can start to cook right away it can have direct access to the bottom of the pot so we'll let this cook for about 30 seconds what a smoke good it does I have 28 ounces of crushed tomatoes that's gonna go into the pot and then I have 2 cups of vegetable broth well just let this simmer for five minutes then we'll come back alright so our sauce has been simmering for five minutes it smells really good yeah it doesn't move I can tell by your face you're gonna like it I don't have a poker face at all now we're gonna try and bulk it up a little bit give it some nice hardiness and make it really satisfying ultimately we landed on chickpeas so I have one can of chickpeas here that I drained then a really nice tender texture when they cook up and they give that nice bulk that we're looking for we're gonna put them right in the food processor and we're just gonna pulse these just like everything else seven to ten times break them down to a four inch size all right we want to rinse these off they have some starch in them and if we don't rinse them then our sauce might get too thick you can see it's kind of cloudy that's all the starch coming off now we'll put this into our pot and we'll let this cook for 15 more minutes so the total simmering time here because there's not a lot of meat it's pretty short it is very short so this needs to simmer for 15 minutes so while that cooks we'll drop the pasta all right so I have two spaghetti here today this is such a thick hearty sauce you could use any shape that you like so tablespoon of salt our usual we'll put the pasta in we'll cook that till it's just al dente and then we'll combine it with the sauce they'll be time to eat all right so I think our pastas done if you want to give it a quick cha only one way to see if your pastas done and that is not to throw it at the wall that's to taste it mmm we're good perfectly al dente awesome so I'm gonna drain the pasta and save a little bit of the cooking water yeah just in case we need to thin the sauce out a little bit you always want to save some of your pasta water that's right here in the Test Kitchen we test everything including whether or not you should shake the colander as you drain pasta and the result is no don't shake the colander leave some of that water in there because that'll help loosen up the sauce that looks great let's finish our sauce here I just have two tablespoons of fresh basil that'll give it a little bit of freshness a little bit of color now I haven't told you one of the best parts of this recipe we actually made a double batch nice yeah so you could put half of it in the freezer you could put in the fridge for a couple days I like recipes like this me too gold in the bank cuz I like to yes that's right so this is an 8 ounce ladle so I'm gonna take 3 cups 3 ladlefuls and we'll mix it with the pasta looks delicious you can see it has some really nice texture to it so you can freeze that extra sauce for up to two months I love it you want to give me a little bit of that pasta water loosen things up a little bit it's nice and starchy has a little bit of salt in it my stomachs growling did you hear that let me service up here all right good that looks very good what's had a tiny bit more song I'm with you are you or twirler I am a twirler how about yourself yes mm-hmm it has a really meaty flavor even though there's no meat in it mm-hmm party I told you I could do it you did you nailed it to make this sauce pulse cremini mushrooms and chickpeas in the food processor build a hearty tomato sauce with sauteed aromatics ham tomatoes on the vegetable broth and finished with fresh basil from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen and changing recipe for meatless Nitze you can get this recipe and all the recipes from the season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website America's Test Kitchen calm thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make 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Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 80,371

Rating: 4.9065905 out of 5

Keywords: vegetarian recipes, meatless meat sauce, vegetarian pasta, meatless meat sauce cooks illustrated, meatless meat sauce recipe, vegan recipes, vegetarian, healthy recipes, pasta recipes, pasta recipe, cooking, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen, recipes

Id: gwJlMnvxskc

Length: 7min 11sec (431 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019