Michelin-star chef creates 'delicious' vegan foie gras

Introducing ‘faux gras’

As far as meat dishes go, few are as contentious as the French delicacy foie gras, which is traditionally made from the liver of a duck or goose that has been fattened by force-feeding.

While Peta has previously lambasted this process as “cruel” – it has even been banned in California – the animal welfare group has teamed up with French chef Alexis Gauthier to produce a vegan-friendly alternative.

In collaboration with plant-based chefs BOSH!, the Michelin-starred chef has produced a plant-based foie gras, aptly named “faux gras”.

“In France, people love foie gras,” Gauthier says in a short video which illustrates how he makes the dish.

“So I’ve developed a recipe where I will have the same kind of texture, sensation, and deliciousness of foie gras without killing any animals, so no abuse involved.”

The unique recipe consists of lentils, walnuts, shallots and mushrooms, which give the dish its meaty texture.

After these ingredients are blended together in a food processor to produce the pate texture, it’s topped with vegan butter.

“Oh, it’s delicious, if you serve that on toasted bread, it’s actually better than foie gras,” he continues.

The BOSH! founders hailed the dish as “one of the tastiest pates” they’d ever eaten.

Gauthier has been a chef since 1991, later heading up proceedings at Roussillon in London, earning a Michelin star for the restaurant, which it held from 2000 to 2011.

He left in 2010 to open up a new establishment in his own name, Gauthier Soho, which offers extensive vegan options that landed him an award for Best Vegan Menu at Peta’s Vegan Food Awards in 2016.

The respected chef, who has been a judge on two versions of MasterChef, revealed that experimenting with plant-based cooking is now one of his culinary priorities:

“I’ve been cooking with a lot of meat, fish, foie gras, everything you can think of, until the day I realised that wasn’t for me anymore,” he said.

“So I’m trying to rethink my entire food knowledge and rewrite all the rules of cooking and eating with a vegan perspective.”