Serves: Butternut roast: 2; Stuffing: 6
Time: 1 hour prep and cook
Price €4.30 for the lot – not bad for your Christmas dinner!
This weeks’ Christmas main is a roasted butternut squash with homemade stuffing! In part, this is inspired by all the lovely looking roast butternut squash recipes all over pinterest, but also because I found a bargain of a cast-iron grill pan in Aldi the other day and was so excited to put char-marks on the butternut squash. For the stuffing I was aiming for a “meaty” kind of stuffing – everyone has their own idea of the perfect stuffing. In my family the stuffing normally had sausage meat in it, so obviously I wasn’t going to be using that. I thought about crumbling up Linda McCartney sausages, but then I realised they are pretty much just soy protein and palm oil! So in keeping with my aim to not cook with oil, and to try avoid palm oil, I decided to go it alone. This recipe uses a mix of soy chunks and soy mince in order to get “meaty” bites, and the flavour throughout. If you wanted to make this more wholefoods based, you could swap out the soy protein for green lentils, but I’d probably skip the flax egg in that case or it the stuffing would be too wet. Working it out, this is a pretty cheap main for a Christmas dinner – €4.30 for stuffed butternut squash for 2 and 6 servings of extra stuffing! Who doesn’t love extra stuffing, makes for great leftover sandwich filler on boxing day! I was pretty surprised at this price as I’m using “fancy” vegan substitutes, but it’s turning out pretty darn affordable.
You will need:
- 1 cup soy mince
- 1 cup soy chunks
- 2tsp mixed herbs
- 2tsp onion granules
- 2tsp garlic powder
- 4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 medium onions, diced
- 1 butternut squash
- 2tbsp ground flax seeds
- salt and pepper
How to make it:
The first step is to get the butternut squash in the oven. So half and deseed the squash and score it as best you can with a knife, seasoning with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven at 200c (fan), flesh side up for 30 minutes.
Next add the soy chunks and mince to a bowl along with 1tsp salt and the garlic powder, topping off with freshly boiled water. Cover and leave to sit for 10 minutes. While the soy is re-hydrating, mix up the flax egg by adding 6tbsp water to the ground flax and mixing well. Leave this to sit until ready to use. Prepare the rest of the onions and fresh garlic while the soy soaks.
It’s important to squish out all the excess water from the soy once it is finished soaking, as you don’t want too much liquid in the stuffing. Add the well drained soy, the breadcrumbs, onion, garlic, the onion granules, mixed herbs and the flax egg to a bowl and mix thoroughly until the mixture slighly clumps together. It should keep it’s shape with a firm press, but not be gooey – if it’s too wet you can add some more breadcrumbs.
When the butternut squash has been cooking for 30 minutes, remove from the oven and fill it’s belly with stuffing, pressing down well.
Fill a pie dish with the rest of the stuffing, squishing it well down (it will spring back up a bit). Cover both dishes and return to the oven. After 20 mins, remove the covering and allow to bake for another 10 minutes.
These are honestly UNREAL. I couldn’t believe how much like a “normal” stuffing this tastes, even the texture is spot on. Vegan Christmas food doesn’t have to be complicated at all with only 10 ingredients, and very minimal cooking abilities! This dish is surely going to impress your dinner guests around Christmas, so I hope you’ll give it a shot. Check back next week for more Vegan Christmas ideas and let me know if you have any vegan Christmas recipes I should try!
Hannah Finds Vegan 
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