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 a very famous dish in French cooking. Long-cooked beef, good Burgundy, mushrooms, pearl onions, and herbs have been bubbling away together in home kitchens and restaurant pots for decades. This mushroom bourguignon keeps everything that makes the original so comforting, but leaves out the beef to make a super tatsy vegetarian beef burgundy.

Where boeuf bourguignon comes from

The dish was born in Burgundy, in eastern France, where almost everything in the kitchen seems to begin with two things: outstanding red wine and Charolais cattle. For a long time, early versions were just sensible farmhouse food. Tough, inexpensive cuts of beef needed time and patience to become tender, and the local wine was the obvious choice for a slow braise. Aromatics like thyme, bay, garlic, and pearl onions stretched the pot and deepened the flavour.

Over time, the dish climbed from farm tables to grand ones. Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy is said to have served it at his 14th‑century banquets. By the 19th century, “bourguignon” had become shorthand for anything cooked with Burgundy, mushrooms, and onions, and recipes began appearing in print. Auguste Escoffier polished it again in the early 20th century, and from there it spread through French restaurants and into home kitchens far beyond France.

From beef to mushrooms

The move from beef to mushrooms works exceptionally well. Mushrooms are naturally built for this kind of slow cooking. They soak up the wine and aromatics as they simmer, gaining a depth of flavour that quick frying never quite delivers, and they give off their own juices, which enrich the sauce in much the same way as meat.

The best versions of a vegetarian boeuf bourguignon use a mix of mushrooms, not just one. Plain white button mushrooms make a good base. Chestnut mushrooms add more flavour and keep their texture during a long braise and dried porcini, soaked and then added, bring a deep savouriness that nudges the sauce closer to the richness of the original. The soaking liquid, strained to catch any grit, is far too good to waste and goes straight into the pot.

The wine

With no beef to hide behind, the wine becomes even more important in this vegetarian bourguignon . If you can, use a Burgundy, or another Pinot Noir you’d happily drink. Skip anything harsh or dubious; the wine reduces and concentrates in the oven, and whatever is slightly off in the glass will be very noticeable on the plate. The usual rule applies: if you wouldn’t pour yourself a glass, don’t pour it into the pan.

As the mushroom bourguignon cooks, the alcohol cooks off and what remains is the fruit, gentle tannins, and structure that give the sauce its backbone. That slow reduction is where most of the flavour is built.

The aromatics

The aromatic base of French herbs in this mushroom bourguignon recipe stays faithful to the original: thyme, bay leaves, garlic, and pearl onions. Traditional versions also use lardons. Here they’re replaced with smoked paprika and a spoonful of tomato paste, which together bring the smokiness and savoury depth you’d otherwise get from the pork. They’re not perfect stand‑ins, but they get you surprisingly close.

Pearl onions like a bit of timing so don’t add them too early as they will melt away into the sauce. Drop them in halfway through instead, and they soften, soak up the wine, and still keep their shape. That gives you gentle bite and sweetness in among the mushrooms rather than one uniform texture.

The right pot

For this kind of slow, generous mushroom bourguignon dish, the pot matters. You want something that heats evenly, keeps a steady simmer, and moves easily from hob to oven. A heavy cast‑iron cocotte is ideal. It holds the heat, so the sauce bubbles quietly instead of catching, and the weighty lid keeps moisture inside during the oven stage, effectively basting the mushrooms as the steam rises, condenses, and falls back into the pot.

When your vegetarian beef burgundy is ready, you can carry the whole thing straight to the table. You will have a deep, glossy sauce, tender mushrooms, soft onions, and the smell of red wine and herbs drifting across your room: basically everything you want from a good bourguignon, just without the beef.