Mushroom Bourguignon

Dinner

Mushroom Bourguignon is a delicious vegetarian twist on the classic French beef stew from Burgundy. It swaps tender beef for earthy champignons de Paris mushrooms, slow-cooked in rich red wine and aromatic herbs to create a deeply flavorful, comforting dish. Perfect for cosy evenings, this recipe captures all the warmth and soul of the original without any meat!

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Servings 4

Ingredients 

1x2x3x?

• 500 gr white button mushrooms
• 500 gr brown chestnut mushrooms
• 3 carrots
• 3 shallots
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 25 gr unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 1½ tbsp plain flour
• 300 ml red wine preferably Burgundy Pinot Noir like for example the "Mme. Claude Parmentier Pinot Noir"
• 500 ml vegetable stock
• 2 bay leaf
• 2 sprigs thyme
• 2 sprigs rosemary
• salt and black pepper
• 1 handful parsley fresh chopped to garnish

Equipment

1 dutch oven

1 wooden spoon

1 knife

1 chopping board

1 measuring jug

Instructions

1. Prepare the vegetables

• Prepare the vegetables and mushrooms. Slice the carrots and shallots thinly. Clean the mushrooms and cut them into bite-sized pieces. and mince the garlic.

2. Brown the mushrooms

• Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven over medium heat. Add the mushrooms in batches to avoid overcrowding and sauté until they are golden and their juices evaporate. Remove and set aside. This step develops deep mushroom flavour through caramelisation.

3. Cook shallots, carrots, and garlic

• In the same pan, melt the butter. Add the shallots, carrots, and garlic and gently cook for 5-7 minutes until softened and beginning to caramelise. This soft sweetness forms the flavour base of the dish.

4. Add tomato paste and flour

• Stir in the tomato paste and plain flour, cooking for a minute to get rid of the raw flour taste. This thickens the sauce and adds richness.

5. Deglaze with wine and add broth and herbs

• Slowly pour in the red wine while stirring and scraping up browned bits from the pan. Add vegetable broth, bay leaves, thyme, and rosemary. Return the mushrooms to the pan. This creates the classic bourguignon sauce.

6. Simmer gently

• Bring the mixture to a simmer, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Let it cook slowly for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens and the carrots are tender. This slow cooking melds all the flavours beautifully.

7. Final seasoning and garnish

• Remove the bay leaves and herb sprigs. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley before serving to add a fresh note!

Notes

• You can serve this Mushroom Bourguignon over creamy mashed potatoes, fresh egg noodles, or polenta to enjoy every drop of the luscious sauce!

About this recipe

Boeuf Bourguignon is one of the great dishes of French cooking, and also one of the most imitated. The combination of slow-cooked meat, Burgundy wine, mushrooms, pearl onions, and aromatic herbs has been replicated in kitchens worldwide for decades. This mushroom bourguignon recipe keeps everything that makes the original worth making and removes only the beef.

Where boeuf bourguignon comes from

The dish comes from Burgundy, the region in eastern France that gives it its name. Burgundy is defined by three things: its exceptional red wine, its Charolais cattle, and a cooking tradition built around combining the two. The earliest versions of this vegetarian boeuf bourguignon’s ancestor were practical peasant food. Tough, cheap cuts of beef needed long, slow cooking to become tender, and the local wine was an obvious braising liquid. The aromatics, thyme, bay leaves, and pearl onions, stretched the meal and added depth.

The dish moved from peasant tables to aristocratic ones. Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy was reportedly serving it at his 14th-century banquets. By the 19th century, bourguignon had become shorthand for any dish cooked with Burgundy wine, mushrooms, and onions, and the first recorded recipes appeared in Pierre Larousse’s 1867 publication. Auguste Escoffier refined it further in the early 20th century, and from there it spread across French restaurants and eventually into kitchens worldwide.

From beef to mushrooms

The vegetarian beef burgundy version works because mushrooms are structurally well-suited to long, slow braising. They absorb the wine and the aromatics as they cook, developing a depth of flavour that short cooking never achieves. They also release their own liquid into the braise, which enriches the sauce in the same way that beef does.

A good mushroom bourguignon uses a variety of mushrooms rather than a single type. Champignons de Paris provide the base. Chestnut mushrooms add more flavour and hold their texture better through the long cooking time. Porcini, dried and rehydrated, add an umami depth that brings the sauce closer to the meatiness of the original vegetarian boeuf bourguignon. The soaking liquid from the porcini, strained carefully to remove any grit, goes into the braise for additional depth.

The wine

A vegetarian bourguignon lives or dies by the quality of the wine. Use a Burgundy if you can, or any decent Pinot Noir. Avoid anything you would not drink: the wine concentrates significantly during the long braise, and off-flavours that are barely perceptible in a glass become prominent in the finished sauce. The same principle applies here as anywhere wine goes into cooking: if it is not good enough to drink, it is not good enough to cook with.

The wine reduces during cooking and loses its alcohol, leaving behind the fruit, the tannins, and the structure that give the sauce its characteristic depth. That reduction is where the flavour of a mushroom bourguignon recipe is built.

The aromatics

The aromatic base of a vegetarian beef burgundy is the same as the original French herbs: thyme, bay leaves, garlic, pearl onions, and lardons in the traditional version. This vegetarian bourguignon replaces the lardons with smoked paprika and a small amount of tomato paste, which provide the smokiness and the savoury depth that the pork would otherwise contribute. Neither is an exact substitute, but together they do the job.

The pearl onions need to be added halfway through cooking rather than at the start. Added too early they dissolve entirely. Added at the right moment they soften and absorb the wine without losing their shape, which gives the finished dish a variety of textures rather than a uniform stew.

The right pot

A mushroom bourguignon recipe needs a pot that holds heat steadily through a long braise, allows a gentle simmer without catching, and goes from hob to oven without issue. I use my Staub cocotte for this. The cast iron maintains an even temperature throughout the cooking process, which is what a slow braise requires. The heavy lid keeps the moisture in during the oven stage, basting the mushrooms as the steam condenses and falls back into the sauce. The result is a vegetarian boeuf bourguignon with a sauce that is glossy, rich, and deeply flavoured. It goes straight from oven to table, which for a dish this generous is the right way to serve it.