This Nut Roast recipe is packed with a deliciously sweet and savory blend of nuts, veggies, lentils, dried fruit and fresh herbs. Easy to prep in advance, and delicious served with cranberry sauce and/or gravy! Friends, have you ever tried making a nut roast before? I was admittedly unfamiliar with this traditional vegetarian dish until […]
This Nut Roast recipe is packed with a deliciously sweet and savory blend of nuts, veggies, lentils, dried fruit and fresh herbs. Easy to prep in advance, and delicious served with cranberry sauce and/or gravy!

Friends, have you ever tried making a nut roast before?
I was admittedly unfamiliar with this traditional vegetarian dish until my British friend, Catherine, served us her famous nut roast for dinner a few months ago…and everyone around the table could not stop raving about how delicious it was! We seriously could not get enough of this sweet, savory, hearty, and flavor-packed vegetarian “roast”! ♡
My first question to Catherine, of course, was what sorts of delicious ingredients were hiding in her beautiful confetti-ed loaf. As she explained, there are about a million ways to make British-style nut roasts, but they are traditionally made with a base of chopped nuts, veggies and lots of herbs, plus sort of hearty ingredient added in to give the loaf some texture (such as lentils, rice, grains, oats, torn bread, or various types of flour blends), as well as whatever extra dried fruits or fun seasonings the cook feels like adding in. The best nut roasts seem to strike the perfect balance between sweet and savory. And when served with cranberry sauce (a must, according to Catherine) and/or some savory vegetarian gravy, I’m telling you, this dish will be a showstopper with vegetarians and meat-eaters alike!
The brilliance of nut roasts is that they are also easy to make ahead of time and require very little oven space. So since they happen to be a traditional holiday food in the UK, and so many of us were already planning to cook smaller holiday meals this year, I thought that this would be the perfect week to share this recipe.
Catherine’s favorite nut roast is based off of a recipe from Deliciously Ella, made with lots of fresh sage, rosemary, mushrooms and dried apricots, which my husband and I absolutely loved. We’ve since tinkered around with the recipe a bit and added in some lentils for extra protein, as well as a generous hint of orange juice and zest, which pairs deliciously with the other ingredients and tastes extra-festive this time of year. I’ve also kept this recipe gluten-free, and given the option to use either traditional eggs or flax eggs as a binder, if you would like to make the recipe vegan. As I explain below, the types of nuts/seeds, veggies and legumes here are also quite flexible, so please feel free to tinker around with the ingredients and make this nut roast recipe your own.
Bottom line, my husband and I can’t believe that it took us this long to be introduced to nut roasts. But we are now full-on fans, and look forward to making them a tradition in our house for the occasional “Sunday roasts” and the holiday dinners. Big thanks to Catherine and some of our other British friends here in Barcelona for all of the great tips and inspiration for this recipe. I really think you all are going to love it!
(more…)