Greek vegan pastitsio with béchamel made from almond milk and olive oil

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Pastitsio is a delicious traditional Greek dish. It's a unique food consisted of three layers: pasta, mince, and rich béchamel. It is almost impossible to find yourself in a Greek restaurant (especially in a tourist area) and not find it on the menu.

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While it's incredibly delectable, many people avoid cooking it because it looks complicated, time-consuming, high in calories, and without much nutritional value. In other words, it is a misunderstood food since:

1. Our vegan version, compared to the traditional Greek pastitsio, is much lower in calories, healthier, more nutritious and much higher in fiber as we use almond milk, lots of vegetables, olive oil, turmeric, but also flour, spaghetti and rusks whole grain
2. It needs only 50 minutes from us. A little more than the average time we spend cooking other meals. See the notes, below, for instructions on how to save time.
3. Overall, it is ready in an hour and a half from when we start the preparation, as it only takes 40 minutes to bake. So, the total time is not far from the time we spend preparing other daily meals.

Even though it may seem difficult, it's actually very simple! It takes 50 minutes of preparation, but the result is so rewarding! In just four steps you will have a really impressive meal:

1. Boil pasta.
2. We make the minced soy meat.
3. Prepare the béchamel and topping.
4. Bake and you're done!

Our minced meat needs a little taste to chop the vegetables that we will put in, but this way it will be very tasty and nutritious. Usually in vegan recipes for béchamel use soy milk. But because many people prefer almond milk or just have it available, our vegan Greek pastitsio is made with almond milk, which of course can be replaced with soy milk making the béchamel fluffier.

You can use any type of pasta you want. We recommend whole wheat penne, as they are high in fiber and the closest whole wheat pasta available (at least for now), to the thick spaghetti (bucatini) that are traditionally used.

When you make it, we look forward to reading your comments! 🙂

Greek vegan pastitsio with béchamel made from almond milk and olive oil

Our vegan pastitsio only needs 50 minutes of our time and, in addition to being delicious, it is very nutritious and high in fiber. With almond milk, lots of vegetables, olive oil, turmeric and whole wheat flour, spaghetti, and rusks.

4.96 from 25 votes

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Course: Main Dishes, Main Dish

Cuisine: Vegan, Greek, Greek / Vegan, Greek Traditional

Keywords: vegan, almond milk, soy milk, pasta, mince, soya mince, vegetables, spaghetti, pasta, béchamel, lenten, fasting, wholewheat, pastitsio, soy, recipes, recipe, fiber, vegetarian, plantbased

Prep Time: 50 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes minutes

Total Time: 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Servings: 12 portions

Calories: 217kcal

Author: Thodoris Tibilis

Ingredients

Pasta

• 500 gr whole wheat penne (1 pack/17.6 oz) or bucatini

For the vegan soya mince

• 170 gr organic soya mince (1 small package/5.9 oz)
• 3 grated tomatoes or blended or canned tomato juice (500 gr/ 17.6 oz)
• 1 large onion finely chopped
• 1 large carrot finely diced
• 1 medium zucchini (optional) finely diced
• ½ pepper chopped (preferably Florina pepper)
• 2 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp allspice
• ½ tsp clove
• ½ tsp curry
• ½ tsp sweet paprika
• ¼ tsp turmeric powder (optional)
• ¼ tsp smoked paprika (optional)
• 1 tsp unprocessed sugar or other vegan sweetener
• ¼ cup olive oil for sautéing
• salt and pepper

For the vegan béchamel

• 1 liter almond milk (33.8 oz) or soy milk
• 1 cup and 4 Τbsp whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour
• ½ cup olive oil
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• salt
• 3 Tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)

For vegan topping (optional)

• 1 large whole wheat rusk or 3 small ones or whole wheat toasted bread
• 3 Tbsp nutritional yeast (preferably reinforced with B12)
• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
• salt

Instructions

Preparation

• Soak the soya mince in hot water for 10 minutes to inflate and soften.
• While waiting, heat some water in a pot. When it boils, add the pasta and cook for two minutes less than indicated on the packaging instructions.
• After ten minutes, drain the minced meat in a fine strainer, rinse it under the tap and finally press it with your fist (inside the strainer) to remove excess liquid.

Vegan soya mince

• Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium to high heat.
• Once warm, add the onion and sauté for 2 minutes, stirring often.
• Then add the minced soy and spices. Raise the temperature a little and sauté for about 5 minutes, stirring often.
• Next, add the carrot, zucchini, and pepper and continue sautéing for another 5 minutes or until the soya mince starts to turn golden brown.
• Add the garlic and continue sautéing for another 2 minutes.
• Finally, add the tomatoes and sugar and as soon as it starts to boil, lower the temperature and simmer for another 10 minutes or until the sauce thickens.

Vegan béchamel

• Heat the olive oil in a pot over medium to high heat.
• Gradually, add the flour, stirring constantly. If it sticks, lower the temperature a bit.
• Once the flour is slightly cooked (that is, as soon as it gets slightly darker in color and starts to smell, in about 5 minutes), add the almond milk, nutmeg and salt and mix for another 7 minutes or until it thickens and becomes like a liquid cream . We don't want it to be too wet. If you want, just before it thickens, add the nutritional yeast and mix well.

Vegan topping

• Crush all the ingredients for the topping in the mortar (or lightly blend them), retaining larger pieces of rusks or toast to make it crispy.

Prepare and bake the pastitsio

• Preheat oven to 200°C/ 392°F.
• In a medium pan (about 35x27x5 cm) spread the spaghetti on the bottom, spread the minced meat on top, then spread the béchamel on top and finally sprinkle it (optional) with the topping. Bake on the middle grill for 40 minutes or until the béchamel turns a nice golden color.

Notes

1. To save time:
   • Put two pots of water at the same time to heat them up. One for the soy mince and one for the spaghetti. If we have a kettle, we speed up the process even more.
   • While the pasta is boiling, prepare the vegetables for the mince.
   • Heat the olive oil in the pan, two minutes before you finish preparing the vegetables.
   • While the mince is been cooked, prepare the topping.
   • Preheat the oven when starting the béchamel. That way, when the béchamel is ready, you will put the pastitsio in the oven to bake right away.
2. Instead of almond milk you can use soy milk. So, you will have a fluffier béchamel.
3. To drain the soya mince well and give it a better texture, place the strainer with the soya mince on a large plate and press it with your fist as if kneading it. If the dish is filled with water, empty it and continue pressing with your fist until it is relatively dry. That is, until you press it and little or no water comes out.
4. Cut the carrot and zucchini firstly lengthwise (not slices) about half a centimeter (0.2 in) thick. Then cut into strips, also half a centimeter (0.2 in), and finally each strip into pieces also half a centimeter (0.2 in). The goal is to have small cubes to give texture in the mince.
5. Our pasta :
   • You can boil it in vegetable broth for extra flavor and nutrients.
   • You can boil it in water, adding ½ tsp turmeric powder and 2 bay leaves. That way the pasta will have a light aroma and at the same time you take advantage of the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant action of turmeric.
   • When we put them in the pan, we can mix them with 4 tbsp. from our minced meat, olive oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg and nutritional yeast for extra flavor.
6. The topping is optional. We recommend it, as it creates a crust giving a wonderful texture and rich flavor. Alternatively, you can use:
   • Ground nuts.
   • Vegan topping: Beat in the multi (or blender) κά cashew cup, 2 tbsp. nutritional yeast, salt and pepper and from ¼ etc. onion powder, garlic powder and sweet paprika.

Nutrition

Calories: 217kcal | Carbohydrates: 36g | Protein: 10g | Fat: 3g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 65mg | Potassium: 185mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 2g | Vitamin A: 466IU | Vitamin C: 11mg | Calcium: 9mg | Iron: 1mg

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