The Tastiest Vegan Meatball Sub

While I love being vegan, I don’t always love cooking a meal at the end of the day that involves a ton of work.

This is where the genius of the vegan meatball sub comes into play. It is a meal that tastes as if you took hours to make when, in reality, this will only take you about ten minutes.

I especially love this meatball sub for times when I’m craving a comfort meal.

There are a few different ways you can go about this recipe.

You can go the can route, as I will show you, or you can choose to make everything from scratch. This meal can be as straightforward or as complicated as you want it to be.

Ingredients

• Fresh baguette bread from the store
• Beyond Meatballs
• 1 can Prego marinara
• 1 package of baby Bella mushrooms
• 1 yellow onion
• 3 cloves of minced garlic
• Follow your heart: parmesan cheese
• Earth balance butter
• Few splashes of grapeseed oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Italian herbs
• Fennel
• Garlic salt
• 1 can basil, oregano diced tomatoes

If you want to be ambitious, you can do homemade meatballs, but subbing the Beyond ones that are premade makes this recipe easy breezy.

You can use any butter or oil you want; these are just my favorite ones to cook with! If you get “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” make sure it is the one labeled vegan because the original one isn’t vegan.

If you aren’t a fennel fan, you don’t need to use it. However, I prefer to use it with Italian dishes because it makes it seem more authentic.

Directions

1. Step one starts off much like any other recipe, and it is all about the prep work. Chop the onion and garlic, and slice the bread. Make sure to slice the loaf lengthwise just enough to put meatballs into it, you don’t want to actually slice it all the way through.
2. Pour a few splashes of grapeseed oil into a pan and sautee the onion, mushroom, and garlic until translucent. Make sure to season with salt and pepper during this process and keep on medium heat.
3. Pour the can of marinara and diced tomatoes into a pot and bring to a simmer.
4. Take your translucent onion, mushroom, and garlic and pour it into the marinara.
5. Season the pot with a pinch of all the seasonings (salt, pepper, garlic salt, fennel, and Italian herbs.)
6. Brush a bit of butter onto the loaf of bread and place in the oven for ten min at 350 degrees in the middle rack.
7. While the bread is baking take a pinch of your butter and grapeseed oil and pour it into the same pan you used to sautee the veggies. Take your meatballs and sautee each side until they have a nice crisp on them. This should only take about 2-3 minutes per side. Once they are crispy, remove on from heat.
8. Pull bread out of the oven and place to the side.
9. Once the bread has cooled enough to touch put it on a plate. Place a thin layer of sauce on the bread, followed by the meatballs and then more sauce. You can do as much or as little as you want.
10. Once you have the sauce and the balls on the loaf, top with as much or as little parmesan cheese as you wish.
11. Finish with one more splash of salt and pepper.