This recipe shows you how easy it is, to create a tasty vegan gravy. It needs only 7 ingredients, which can be found in any supermarket, and 30 minutes to create a brown sauce that you’ll want to dive into. And to be honest, a good sauce makes almost every dish better. Thinks Andi. But thinks especially Lisa, who always wants some extra sauce. But back to the topic. Particularly now in the winter and pre-Christmas period our cravings for hearty, dark sauces with a thick consistency are extra strong. Do you feel the same way? This easy vegan gravy is the perfect answer to these cravings.

The vegan brown sauce convinces even meat-eaters with its great taste and goes perfectly with all kinds of roasts, rouladen, potato or bread dumplings and other hearty treats. It is not only fully plant-based, but also non-alcoholic and (when using tamari soya sauce) gluten-free, because it needs no flour for thickening. And nevertheless (or just because of that?) it tastes mega nice. Triple jackpot!

Are you in a terrible hurry, because your meal is almost ready and you just realised, that you forgot all about the sauce? No worries. Here are our ultimate personal tips: 1. The cooking time can be reduced, if you don’t add all of the vegetable broth at once but little by little. So you just add a little bit of broth instead of the full litre, allow it to reduce, add some more broth, allow it to reduce again, etc. 2. In addition you can turn up the temperature again when boiling the gravy down. But please always have an eye on it, so it doesn’t burn. Or you won’t have any sauce in the end and we wouldn’t wish a sad, dry meal on anyone.

EASY VEGAN GRAVY

Ingredients for 3-4 servings of gravy (about  1,25 Euros in total):

• 1 large onion
• 2 medium-sized carrots
• 4 medium-sized brown mushrooms
• 1 litre vegetable broth
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tsp soya sauce
• 2-3 tbsp vegetable oil

Preparation
1. Clean the carrots and brown mushrooms. Peel the onion. Chop the vegetables roughly.

2. Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan on high heat. Fry the vegetable chunks a couple of minutes. Stir them from time to time. When they are browned from all sides, add tomato purée and keep on frying while stirring constantly.

3. Lower the the temperature to medium heat and deglaze with balsamic vinegar and soya sauce. Add vegetable broth and let it all cook for about 30 minutes. Stir every now and then. If the sauce thickens too much, just add a little bit of water. Is the sauce still too thin, just raise the temperature and let it thicken down a bit. Just before serving, pour through a sieve. You can reuse the vegetables later oder just serve them directly as a side dish.

Andi

Fried onion fanatic, DJ and citizen of the world