Name: Lentil and Walnut Ragù
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 1 h 10 min
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 3 tbsp olive oil; 1 large onion, finely diced; 2 carrots, finely diced; 2 celery sticks, finely diced; 4 garlic cloves, crushed; 80 g walnuts, toasted and chopped; 3 tbsp tomato purée; 200 ml red wine; 250 g brown or Puy lentils; 400 g tin chopped tomatoes; 700 ml vegetable stock; 2 bay leaves; 1 tbsp dried oregano; 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt; ½ tsp black pepper; 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Lentil and Walnut Ragù

Brown lentils and toasted walnuts cooked down with soffritto, tomato and a long simmer into something with the depth of a meat ragù and none of the meat.

1 hr 25 min to 1 hr 30 min total 1 hr 25 min to 1 hr 30 min start to finish Serves 4 servings Medium

Storing and Planning Ahead

Refrigerate up to 5 days and freeze 3 months. It thickens hard in the fridge; loosen with stock or pasta water rather than plain water.

How to Make Lentil and Walnut Ragù

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Toast the walnuts in a dry pan for 4 minutes until they smell nutty, then chop them roughly.
Heat the oil in a heavy pot and cook the onion, carrot and celery over medium-low for 20 minutes, stirring now and then, until sweet and beginning to colour. This is where the flavour comes from and it cannot be hurried.
Add the garlic and cook 1 minute.
Add the tomato purée and fry it, stirring, for 3 minutes until it darkens from red to brick.
Pour in the wine and let it bubble away almost completely, scraping the base of the pot.
Add the lentils, tomatoes, stock, bay, oregano, salt, pepper and the walnuts.
Simmer uncovered 40 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are soft and the sauce holds its shape on a spoon.
Stir in the balsamic off the heat, taste for salt, and fish out the bay leaves.

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Tips for Success

Twenty minutes on the soffritto. Five gives you a sauce that tastes of tinned tomato and nothing else.
Puy lentils hold their shape; brown lentils break down and thicken the sauce. Either works, and they give quite different results.
It is better the next day, which is true of most ragùs and truer of this one.

Why the Method Is What It Is

Meatless ragùs usually fail on two counts: no fat to carry flavour and no browning to build it. Toasted walnuts fix the first, and taking the soffritto much further than feels comfortable — twenty minutes, not five — fixes the second. Tomato purée fried in the pan until it darkens is the third piece, and it is the one most often skipped.

Good Alongside

Rigatoni or pappardelle · A robust Sangiovese · Grated Parmesan, to serve, if not vegan

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Focaccia Genovese, Rosemary Focaccia, Creamy Parmesan Polenta.

Common Substitutions & Variations

An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Fresh herbs work in place of the dried oregano at roughly three times the quantity — a teaspoon of dried is about a tablespoon of fresh, chopped.