This creamy one-pot vegan risotto is made with mushrooms, peas and leeks. Ready to enjoy in about 30 minutes, this easy and low-fat dinner recipe is incredibly satisfying and versatile!
Making risotto can be intimidating, but this vegan dinner idea is far from high maintenance!
One pot, 30 minutes, a couple of accessible pantry staples and some meditative stirring are all you need to make this creamy, starchy comfort meal.
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Vegan risotto can taste really similar to the non-vegan version if you use a couple of ingredients to make it rich in savory flavors!
Our recipe is luxuriously creamy, rich and oh-so-satisfying. Earthy mushrooms that perfectly soak up the deep herby flavor combined with bright spring peas, a touch of lemony zing plus a hint of cheesiness!
If you love vegan Italian food, be sure to try our gnocchi, lasagna and one-pot pasta marinara next.
Recipe overview
- Super creamy yet low in fat
- Undetectably vegan
- Ready in about 30 minutes
- One-pot beginner recipe
- Deliciously savory and satisfying
- Nutrient-packed and flavorful
- Budget-friendly & crowd-pleasing
This classic comfort food is fully whole food plant-based (oil-free), lower in calories and can easily be customized by using seasonal veggies.
Ingredients needed
- Rice — traditional risotto is made with arborio rice and we highly recommend using it!
- Mushrooms — our recipe calls for simple button mushrooms, but oyster, trumpet, cremini or shiitake also work.
- Peas — we like to use frozen peas for convenience but you can use any kind!
- Leek, Garlic, Onion — these add some depth and savory flavor to the vegan risotto.
- Vegetable Broth — our main cooking liquid.
- Soy Milk — creamy, protein-rich, healthy and you won’t even taste the soy.
- Lemon, Vinegar, Nutritional Yeast — our flavorful dream team!
The mushrooms add an earthy flavor and nice bite, while the peas pop with color and are slightly sweet — this makes such a lovely combination!
Since this is a one-pot recipe, all you need is one large pot or pan, a knife and cutting board and measuring equipment.
How to make vegan risotto
- Sauté onion and garlic in vegetable broth or oil over medium heat. Stir occasionally.
- Add mushrooms and leek and sauté for 3-4 minutes, adding more vegetable broth as needed.
- Add rice, soy milk, vinegar, spices and the rest of the vegetable broth to the pan.
- Cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until all the cooking liquid is soaked up. The rice should be tender and slightly chewy!
- Stir in peas, nutritional yeast and lemon juice. Turn off the heat and adjust to taste preferences, adding more salt, nutritional yeast, spices or vinegar.
- Serve warm and decorate with fresh herbs or vegan parmesan!
Make sure to stir regularly at the bottom of your pan so the risotto doesn’t burn!
Storage & serving suggestions
Enjoy your risotto warm and store any leftovers once cooled in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.
Reheat in a saucepan on the stove with an additional splash of vegetable broth or soy milk.
Serve vegan risotto on its own, with a good glass of wine or a fresh salad with balsamic dressing. Other ideas are steamed vegetables, fresh bread, cauliflower steaks and roasted vegetables.
Tips & adjustments
If you have some more time and patience, it would be best to stir your mushroom and pea risotto every 30-60 seconds with a wooden spoon. But be careful not to over-stir!
If you have some time, add warm vegetable broth step by step while letting the rice absorb the liquid slowly and evenly.
Ingredient swaps
- Rice: Carnaroli, Vialone, Nano, and Baldo can be used instead of Arborio
- Soy milk: coconut milk, almond cream or tahini
- Veggies: omit any of them or use asparagus, pumpkin, bell pepper, artichokes, tomatoes or spinach
- Leeks: yellow onion or shallots
- Nutritional yeast: use vegan parmesan instead
Is risotto vegan?
Traditional vegetable risotto is usually not vegan because it’s made with butter and cheese. It may even include some chicken broth and would therefore not even be vegetarian.
Some Italian restaurants may be able to prepare you a fully vegan risotto from scratch if you ask for it to be made with oil instead of butter, vegetable broth and no dairy cheese at all.
Add more richness
If you’re looking for a really rich mushroom and pea risotto that tastes exactly like the non-vegan version, add some vegan butter and parmesan!
Popular brands of dairy-free products include Earth Balance, Miyoko’s and Violife.
You can also create more richness by adding some white wine to your vegan risotto while cooking, but this might not be the most kid-friendly choice — hello, delicious date night dinner!
More vegan dinner ideas
Did you make our vegan risotto and like it? Let us know in the comments, leave a rating and Pin it here!
Vegan Risotto with Mushrooms & Peas
This creamy one-pot vegan risotto is made with mushrooms, peas and leeks. Ready to enjoy in about 30 minutes, this easy and low-fat dinner recipe is incredibly satisfying and versatile!
Ingredients
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 cups white button mushrooms, sliced (225 g)
- ½ cup leek, chopped (100 g)
- 1 cup Arborio rice (225 g)
- 2-3 cups vegetable broth (480-720 ml)
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 cup peas (160 g)
- 1 cup soy milk (240 ml)
- 1 tbsp white miso paste (optional)
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp Herbs de Provence
Instructions
- In a large pan, sauté onions, garlic and herbs in a splash of vegetable broth for a few minutes. Stir occasionally.
- Add the mushrooms and leek and cook for 3-4 minutes, adding more vegetable broth if needed.
- Now, add Arborio rice, soy milk, vinegar and 2 cups of veggie broth to the pan. Mix with a spoon and stir in miso paste if using any.
- Let it simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the cooking liquid is soaked up. Make sure to stir your risotto every few minutes at least!
- Once your risotto is all cooked, stir in the peas, nutritional yeast and lemon juice. Turn off the heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Adjust to taste preferences, then serve warm and decorate with fresh herbs such as mint, basil or parsley if desired.
Notes
- To create a beautiful creamy consistency, try to stir your vegan risotto every 30-60 seconds and scrape the sides.
- Warm vegetable stock can help cook the rice quicker and more evenly.
- For a cheesier mushroom and pea risotto, add more nutritional yeast or go for vegan parmesan!
- Cook until just “al dente” to avoid gummy risotto and simmer rather than boil it.
- Find more tips & ideas in the article above.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 2Amount Per Serving: Calories: 413Total Fat: 5gSaturated Fat: 1gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 1gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 3243mgCarbohydrates: 75gFiber: 14gSugar: 20gProtein: 22g
Alena Schowalter is a Certified Vegan Nutritionist who has been a vegetarian since childhood and vegan since 2012. Together with her husband, she founded nutriciously in 2015 and has been guiding thousands of people through different transition stages towards a healthy plant-based diet. She’s received training in the fields of nutrition, music therapy and social work. Alena enjoys discussions around vegan ethics, walks through nature and creating new recipes.
This looks amazing. I cannot wait to try it! HOWEVER…..I NEED to know where you got your bowls from?! They are rustic and gorgeous and I HAVE to have them. :)
Hey Leslie,
thanks so much for your wonderful feedback! Happy that you know the bowls – we do, too. Unfortunately, we don’t own them and you need to ask our lovely photographer, Amanda, who shot this recipe, about them. You can find her here: http://mygoodnesskitchen.com/
Best wishes!
Does this really only serve 2 people? 225g of rice is an awful lot. I would normally have said 75g per person was plenty.
Hey Vince,
thanks for your question. It’s always hard to tell how much food one person truly needs at one specific point in time :) as you can see, it’s 510 calories per portion which is usually a good amount to maintain or reach a healthy weight. Feel free to adjust to your hunger levels and personal goals!
Best wishes,
Alena
Hello. I am looking for a low or fat free version of risotto. But I fail to understand how can you “sauté” vegetables without any oil or butter? How do you achieve that result? Also, isn’t the step of frying the arborio in some oil, preferably olive oil, necessary for it to start it’s starch realeasing process?? I would love to have your views…
Hey Varuna,
admittedly, I’m not an Italian chef and cannot tell you how it’s traditionally done ;) This is just my personal, oil-free twist on it. We sauté our vegetables in some water or veggie broth usually. Find more on this here: http://nutriciously.com/plant-based-cooking-techniques/
Maybe you’ll still like the end result, even if we “cheated” a little!
Best wishes,
Alena
I can’t cook at all but I somehow managed to make this dish. It’s amazing! Quick, tasty and it’s hard to mess it up ;)
What’s the nutrition profile for this dish?
Hey Liz,
thanks for checking in and being interested in our recipe. We haven’t added any calories to most of our recipes so far because we don’t want to emphasize that anyone should count calories – rather, that it’s important to eat healthy food and listen to one’s own hunger signals. In the future, we might add more nutritional information to our recipes.
Hope this was a satisfying answer for now!
Best wishes
Can you use coconut or almond milk instead of soy. Thats usually what I have on hand
Hey Beth, sure you can use these plant-based milks instead! Let us know how it turns out :)
Where does all the sodium come from? Even if I don’t use the salt, I can’t eat this wonderful sounding dish. I would use low sodium broth or home made which will also bring it down. Other thoughts? ( Praying it is a typo)
thanks so much for asking! The nutritional information you see at the bottom of the recipe was automatically calculated by the recipe tool and I don’t know why it says that there’s so much sodium – maybe it thought some of the ingredients have added salt, i.e. the soy milk, veggie broth, perhaps nutritional yeast? I assume that if you omit the table salt and look for low-sodium broth then you should be fine :)
This looks so good! Is there a way to make it in the Instant Pot?
thanks, Janet! Actually, I’ve never made risotto in the Instant Pot but it’s certainly possible as other food bloggers show: https://www.veganricha.com/vegan-instant-pot-mushroom-risotto/
Let me know if you try it and how it turns out!
I want to try this but don’t want to buy a $6-7 pkg of risotto. What would work best that I have….quinoa, brown rice, Pearl barley, basmati brown rice? Thanks in advance!!!
all of these would work! most of the time, I make risotto with any kind of brown rice I have at home ;)
I made this with quinoa in lieu of rice. It turned out fine. BUT! This makes A LOT!! More on the lines of 4-6 servings! Since it has mushrooms I couldn’t freeze so got tired of it after 4 days! ;-). Because of that I probably won’t make this again!!
Hey Cindi,
thanks for the feedback — it’s sometimes difficult to make general statements like “this is 4 servings” because people have different needs. Some like to have 3 large meals per day, no snacks or desserts (that’s often me) while others prefer to graze. That’s why I often look at what my recipe calculator tells me is the amout of calories per recipe and then I adjust the servings to make sure one can enjoy an average of 400 calories or so per main meal.
Sorry that you had too much leftover, you can always just make half the recipe if you know that you don’t have a large appetite.
Best wishes
I had to raise my eyebrows at the suggestion that reheating mushrooms made them toxic. But I never knew how much arsenic was in rice, so I decided to search the web for some real science about this possibility. What I found is a plethora of sites that perpetuate this myth, but no where is there any science that supports the idea that reheating mushrooms is a problem. Dr. Weil did weigh in on the topic and he, too, is mystified by the urban legend.
As for me, I’ve been cooking and reheating mushrooms for 50 years and nary a tummy ache, and I plan to continue cooking, eating, reheating and eating again these amazing fungi. If you know of any real science on this topic, I’d love to read it.
thanks for the information, we’ll definitely look into this and update the article soon!
The “print” button doesn’t seem to work on this. I tried two different browsers, and neither would print. Just thought you’d want to know.
I’m making this recipe tonight.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention again, Janet! My husband just fixed this (technical) issue, could you please re-try it? :)