Rustic Hearty vegan Winter Stew
I have left the amounts very vague because they change every time I make it depending on what vegetables and flavours I fancy at the time. My mum taught me to cook and she is a very rustic 'handful of this' kind of cook. If she does measure anything it is in lbs on an old pair of balance scales, and it's always roughly the right amount. I find this style of cooking suits traditional bushcraft camping well. I usually use just one (or half) of each vegetable depending on its size and how many i'm cooking for. You can cut them up and bag them before the trip but I find it more satisfying peeling and chopping in camp on a split log smoothed over with an axe and crook knife. If I am solo camping though, I will bag them, as otherwise it is far too easy to make way too much food.
This is a pretty substantial meal with heavy ingredients so isn't well suited to multi day backpacking, but for a winter overnighter/basecamp meal its a goodun.
Ingredients:
Preferred vegetarian sausage (I like linda mcartneys, but quorn ones will do, and have more integrity so are easier to cook with camp cooksets)
A selection of favorite root vegetables, cut chunky, including:
Carrot
Swede
Butternut Squash
Potato
Celeriac (usually a smaller amount)
Turnip
any other root vegetable you have to hand
Onion/shallots
Garlic
Miso paste
Thyme/sage/bay leaf
Oil (olive/vegetable)
Flax seeds (if you want to thicken the stew. This also adds omega 3)
Method
In a sauce pan/billy can (I use an MSR stowaway, or if weight isn't an issue, a dutch oven) heat a little oil, and add chopped onions/shallots, minced garlic and minced miso paste.
Once the onions are clear, add the root vegetables, and herbs, and cover with water. If you can, raise the cooking pot, or shift it to a cooler spot on the fire/wood stove, so there is a more gentle heat for simmering.
A word of caution, if all vegetables are the same size and added at the same time, the potatoes will turn to mush before the carrots or turnip are cooked through.
One way to get around this is to cut the hard vegetables small and soft vegetables large. Small diced carrots and large diced potatoes will take the same amount of time to cook through.
The other method, and the one I prefer, because I like all my vegetables chunky, is to add the hard vegetables like carrot, turnip and celeriac first, then add the squash ten minutes later, and the potato 10 minutes later again.
Generally, cut the size I like, I find carrots take up to 40 minutes, and potatoes son more than 10. Other vegetables lie somewhere in between but experience will best tell you how long.
Sometimes, to thicken the stew, I like to add some of the potato a little early, so that it goes mushy.
Keep checking occasionally that its not boiling too fiercely and top up with water if it gets a bit dry. It should be on a gentle enough heat that it is only just bubbling.
About 10 minutes before the last of the vegetables will be softened, heat some more oil in a frying pan (I use a titanium plate wedged into a stick handle, but again, if weights not an issue use a cast iron skillet) and add the vegge sausages. Halfway through cooking, cut into 1-2cm thick slices, and fry until brown.
Add sausages to the stew, boil all together for the last 5 minutes. If you want a thicker stew, add ground flax seeds at this time too. Just a few tablespoons will make a watery stew quite thick.
Its a good idea at this point to give it a taste and add more herbs/seasoning to your preference.
Serve with fresh baked bannock, or bread if you're fancy. Eat with a wooden spoon that you whittled while you were waiting for it to cook.
