Tender carrots, meltingly soft butter beans, and fragrant herbs and spices make this warming vegan tagine into a delicious, comforting main dish for all the family.
Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. Autumn’s here all right. Soggy leaves, grey sky, the house under siege by MASSIVE spiders, and all the ‘seasonal’ germs rearing their ugly heads again. Ugh.
Having spent the entire day trapped indoors with a very snotty small person (At what age do they learn to blow their own noses? Tell me it’s soon…) I needed something easy, warming, and very, very comforting.
Old family recipe
This yummy vegan tagine was based on my Mum’s carrot and butter-bean soup recipe, which has been a fixture on family menus for as long as I can remember. I took the basic flavours, tinkered a bit, and left it lovely and chunky to spoon over hot buttery couscous.
Mum usually blends her soup version into a thick, smooth and comforting liquid.
Tagine or not tagine?
It’s debatable whether or not this dish can really call itself a tagine. I didn’t use a special North African cooking pot, and it doesn’t have any fruit in it, or even the traditional spices.
But, it was allowed to cook on a very low simmer for a longish amount of time, and we did eat it with couscous. So you be the judge. Is it a tagine? Or merely a vegetable stew with delusions of North African grandeur?
Vegan tagine – Tasty and tender
Whatever it’s called, it hit the spot on a grim and grotty day. The carrots were tender and fragrant. The beans were melting deliciously into the broth. The soupy liquid was sweet with slow-cooked onions, rich with tomato, and zingy with pepper and allspice.
My daughter Kipper scoffed down her couscous but had to be induced to try the tagine. “Are the butter-beans more buttery, or more beany?” I asked. She tried one, then had to try the rest to be certain.
Keep ’em guessing…
Encouraging her to work out what herbs and spices had flavoured the carrots got her to see those off too. Gratifyingly, she correctly identified the presence of thyme (Proud Mum Moment).
Even DH yummed down a big bowl of this vegan tagine, and commented appreciatively about it. And he generally moans about vegan dishes with beans in. Maybe I’m winning him round, at last…
Don’t wait for grim weather to make this – you can enjoy it any time!
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Carrot and butter-bean tagine
Ingredients
- 2 medium onions
- 3-4 tablespoon olive oil
- 500 g carrots
- 2 teaspoon dried thyme
- ½-1 teaspoon ground allspice
- 300 ml vegetable stock
- 1½ tablespoon tomato puree
- 400 g tin/carton butter-beans, drained
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 300-400 g cooked couscous, to serve
Instructions
- Peel and slice the onions. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and cook the sliced onions over a low-medium heat for 8-10 minutes until very soft and just starting to brown.
- Peel the carrots and cut into 8-9mm (approx. ⅓ inch) slices. Add the carrots, thyme, and allspice to the onions in the pan and mix well. Continue to cook for another 3-4 minutes.
- Add the stock and tomato puree to the pan, stir well, then cover and simmer over a low heat for 15-20 minutes until the carrots are very tender.
- Add the drained butter-beans to the carrot mixture in the pan. Bring back to a simmer and cook for 5-10 minutes to allow the flavours to mingle. Taste and season with salt and pepper as desired.
- Serve at once, with hot cooked couscous.
Notes
Nutrition
More tasty dishes to serve with couscous
Other dishes which are delicious with couscous include secret ingredient baked garlic mushrooms, delicious vegan cauliflower and chickpea curry, and baked fish with hawaij spices and rainbow peppers.
Angela
Hi, I will definitely make this again.
I tweaked it as I’m not crazy about dried thyme. I added several chopped garlic cloves with about 3 mins of onion-cooking time, and added 2.5 tsps cumin seeds, 1 tsp ground coriander and 1 tsp paprika with the thyme and ground allspice. I found I needed to simmer the carrots for around 30 mins to get them really tender. Thank you for the basis of a very good dish !
Helen
Your spices sound delicious Angela! I can never follow a recipe exactly so it’s good to know that other people use my recipes as a springboard for their own culinary adventures too. I’m glad it was a success 🙂