I have made it my mission this year to include more plant based meals in my diet – and doing meatless Monday every week really makes this quite easy.
I decided to challenge myself with a meatless Bolognese and boy oh boy, was it delicious! Not to mention, that it tasted so meaty – just like a real Nona’s Bolognese sauce.
Substituting the mincemeat with lentils is such a clever option. It is full of fibre, low in fat and high in protein, it was certainly a much lighter option on the stomach! I highly recommend trying this one out!
You can use any pasta as your base. I chose to do a low carb zucchini noodle, but you can always try out a higher protein option like a chickpea pasta, or a high fibre option like whole wheat pasta too.
This recipe serves 4.
Ingredients
- 1 cup brown lentils, dry
- 2 cups water
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ finely grated onion
- 1 celery stalk, minced
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 1 tsp minced garlic
- 1 can of tomato and herbs
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried sweet basil
Method
- Place 2 cups of water in a pot, and bring to the boil. Once boiling add 1 cup of brown lentils and allow to boil for 20 minutes (or until soft). Drain.
- In a separate pot, place the onion and olive oil on a medium heat and allow to sweat until translucent.
- Add the garlic, celery and pepper to the onions and cook for a further 3 minutes.
- Add in the can of tomato and herbs and allow to simmer for 5 minutes, gently mashing the tomato with a fork.
- Add in the lentils, salt, oregano and sweet basil. Allow to simmer for 10 minutes.
- Serve with pasta of your choice.
If you try this recipe out, please post a picture of it on Facebook or Instagram and tag us in it. We would love to hear what you think of the recipe – because we seriously loved it!
Shani
x
