An easy, utterly flavorful recipe for slow-cooked Lentil Bolognese sauce to serve over pasta. French puy lentils add peppery deliciousness. Vegan, nut-free, soy-free.
Pasta and legumes are made for each other. Together they are perfectly nutritious and delicious vegan eats because they pack a huge protein and fiber wallop. They also offer a perfect opportunity to create pasta dishes that are low-fat or even fat-free and utterly flavorful.
Recipes like lentil pasta sauce and lentil marinara are great examples of how well this combination works. Also here's my Slow Cooker Lentil Bolognese recipe - a pasta sauce that's meaty, delicious, healthy and, best of all, so easy.
This is a versatile sauce - you can also spoon it over quinoa or brown rice. I have a fat-free option for you in the recipe, but keep in mind that you are using just one teaspoon of oil for a recipe that makes eight servings, which means you get no more than 5 calories per serving from the fat.
To serve the bolognese, use a pasta that's either broad-- like pappardelle-- or a shaped pasta like penne rigate, elbows, or shell pasta. You want something that's wide enough to serve as a vehicle for the bolognese, or shaped so it will suck in and hold the sauce. The bolognese is gluten-free, so  if you are gluten-free you can make it with gluten-free pasta.
Recipe card
Vegan Slow Cooker Lentil Bolognese
Ingredients
- 1 cup dried French puy lentils (Brown lentils or whole masoor are a perfectly delicious substitute)
- 2 carrots, chopped into 1-cm pieces
- 3 sticks of celery, chopped into 1-cm pieces
- 1 ½ cups tomato puree,
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 2 cups vegetable stock (use water if you don't have this)
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
- 1 chipotle chili in adobo sauce, minced
- Salt to taste
- parsley
Instructions
- Soak the lentils in enough water to cover and set aside.
- Meanwhile, in a crockpot turned to the high setting, combine the oil, onion, garlic, carrots and celery. Add ½ teaspoon salt and half of the ground black pepper. Give it all a good stir, cover with the lid, and walk away from it for 30 minutes. (You can make this dish fat-free by adding a couple of tablespoons of stock instead of the oil). I find this first extra step of "sweating" the mirepoix of onions, carrots and celery really helps build the flavor.
- After 30 minutes, take off the lid, give everything a good stir, and add the lentils, tomatoes, vegetable stock, dry herbs, chipotle chili, remaining black pepper and salt to taste.
- Mix well and cover the crockpot again. Let the bolognese sauce cook for two hours on the high setting or until the lentils are tender. The carrots will still have some bite, which is wonderful. Check salt and add more if needed.
- Cook the pasta according to package directions. Add to the crockpot and give everything a good stir. Add some of the pasta cooking liquid if the pasta is too dry.
- Garnish with fresh parsley and serve hot.
Nutrition Information
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Liz says
I'm thinking of making this for a potluck and using a 3-1/2 quart crockpot. Do you know if this recipe fill up a crockpot of that size pretty well? Thank you!
Vaishali says
It should work, I would guess, although I haven't made this in a 3 1/2 quart crockpot before. I'd advise eyeballing the ingredients and the fact that the lentils will bulk up after cooking.