August 2026 Recipe: Lentil Mushroom Loaf

Keeping up with my 2026 Bingo Card, I'm making one new recipe each month. I hate that I keep putting this off until the last day of the month, and I could make a thousand excuses as to why, but there isn't a good one. I've had this on the backlog for a couple of weeks and kept putting it off. This recipe was sent to me by my lil sis, and she was really excited to try it. We were going to make it together, but something came up, and I had to do it alone.

I'd like to say this is the most complex thing I've ever made, but it was mostly just exhausting. The number of things I had to grate and chop up and keep track of was just too much for something so simple. I ended up making a ton of tiny mistakes. I undercooked the lentils. While draining the water from the quinoa, I used a strainer too big and a lot of it fell out. I mixed all the vegetables together in the wrong order, forcing me to separate them by hand. I didn't get enough water out of the entire mixture. So many things went wrong that my lil sis is usually there to help me not mess up, but you know how it is. We carry on; this whole project is about learning how to cook. I need to slow down and think about what I'm doing and fully read over the instructions. This has been the biggest takeaway I'm learning from this challenge for myself.

Ingredients

The Loaf

The Flavour

Tools Needed

Preparation

  1. Cut and dice all your vegetables and put them to the side.

Cooking

  1. Add 2 1/2 cups of water and your lentils to your medium pot. Bring to a boil.
  2. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer. Cook for 15 minutes.
  3. Add your quinoa. Cook for another 10 minutes, or until mushy.
  4. Drain any remaining liquid with your sieve.
  5. Return to the pot, mash until somewhat mushy, then set aside.
  6. Sauté your onions until translucent. Then add your garlic for ~4 minutes. After, add your mushrooms and sauté for 4 minutes. Finally, add your carrots and celery and sauté until soft, usually 4 minutes.
  7. Add your sautéd mixture to your sieve and press as much water out as you can.
  8. Combine the two mixtures.
  9. Add everything else I didn't mention (3 eggs and below). Mix until you think it's mixed enough.
  10. Line your loaf tin with parchment paper, then add your mixture.
  11. Top with as much ketchup as you think you're going to want and spread it around like a glaze.
  12. Bake at 350 F for 35 minutes.

Serve it hot with a side of ketchup or whatever else you want.

Final Results

I know this looks like an insane amount of work, and that's because it is. You're going to have a ton of dishes to do for ultimately very little payoff, but I will save that for my thoughts at the end. While you're making this, I strongly recommend you keep an eye on your wet to dry ratio. It can effortlessly be too wet, but if you go too hard, it'll dry out and burn.

My partner's thoughts: It's very savoury and hearty. The veggies and lentils are firmer and larger than I would like. It's kind of giving black bean burger. The recipe is a good selection of veggies, it's hard to completely mess this one up. If I had to change it, I would do less/no celery and put half the glaze in the loaf instead of just on top. The quinoa flavour is dominating, but it's not unpleasant and I normally hate quinoa. Potato would be a nice inclusion.

My friend Nia's thoughts: I liked the lentil mushroom loaf, but a few things stuck out to me as I was eating.

The loaf tasted okay on its own. I much preferred it with the ketchup topping and especially with a barbecue dip, as it added a slightly spicier depth to the flavour of the blander loaf. As a vegan recipe I wasn't expecting this to be a replacement for a meatloaf, and I liked that being comprised entirely of veggies it avoided being dry like meatloaf can occasionally be, yet at times it felt more like I was eating a warm, slightly binded veggie salad than anything else.

While there were multiple veggies in the loaf, I couldn't really distinguish between anything other than the lentils, quinoa, carrots, and onion. I only found out the full name and ingredients list of the dish after I'd already eaten it, nor was I involved in making the loaf. I was surprised to find mushrooms such an integral part of the dish that it was in the name, yet I didn't realize they were even in there; they felt very muted in comparison.

Regardless, I did like the loaf and I would probably eat it again with a well-accompanied sauce, or potentially with more variety in its seasoning choices for a vegetable-based dish.

My thoughts: The amount of effort that it took me to make this ruined the pay-off for me. I was making so many little mistakes with the recipe, and it created so many dishes that by the time I had it in the oven, I wanted to go buy a pizza. If I need to cut up 200 different vegetables, it better be the best tasting thing on the planet. Unfortunately, this wasn't the best tasting thing on the planet. It was just okay. This dish hammers home the problem I have with vegan replacements for things that are specifically meat-based. The longer I'm plant-based, the more I'm getting sick of these "hey, let's make a vegan version of this very popular dish that overemphasizes meat". This would have been straight up disgusting if not for the ketchup. As usual, the quinoa overpowered the taste of everything, so much so that you'd think it was the only ingredient. There's no world where you could get me to make this again. It's expensive, a massive number of dishes, an extreme amount of work, and simply doesn't taste good as it's presented in this specific recipe.