Here are seventeen recipes for someone cooking their first few plant-based meals. We’ve put the quick dinners and soups first and saved the baking for the end, because that’s the order most people want them in.
Nothing on this page needs an ingredient you’d have to go looking for, and nothing needs a technique you haven’t already used. Three of the recipes are ours, and the rest come from cooks we read.
1. Almost Instant Miso Noodle Soup
Five minutes, serves four. It’s instant ramen noodles with the seasoning packet thrown away and a spoonful of miso in its place, which makes it the simplest thing on this page.
It’s also a good demonstration that one jar of miso changes what you’re able to make on a weeknight.
Get the recipe from Foodess.
2. Easy Hummus
This one’s ours, and it’s the first thing we’d tell anyone to make. Five ingredients and a food processor, and that’s the whole recipe.
One tip: use the liquid from the can rather than water and it comes out noticeably smoother.
3. Brain Booster Smoothie
Blueberries, walnuts and spinach. Five minutes, makes two at 285 calories. Walnuts in a smoothie are unusual, and they’re what turn this from a drink into something that keeps you full.
Get the recipe from Mandi of the Mountains.
4. Red Thai Curry Gnocchi
Store-bought gnocchi goes straight into a red curry and coconut milk sauce. Fifteen minutes, serves four at 282 calories.
We’ve found that curry paste and coconut milk together will make almost anything taste like you tried harder than you did, and this is a good example of it.
Get the recipe from Kitchen Gone Rogue.
5. Vegan Sloppy Joes with Chickpeas
Mashed chickpeas in a smoky tomato sauce, piled into a bun. Twenty minutes, serves four at 378 calories. Mash the chickpeas roughly rather than smooth, so there’s still something to bite into.
Get the recipe from Champagne Tastes.
6. Spring Roll Salad with Peanut Dressing
Everything that goes inside a spring roll, in a bowl, with none of the rolling. Twenty minutes, serves four.
Rice paper is the part that defeats most people, and this skips it entirely, which is exactly why it belongs on a beginners list.
Get the recipe from The All Natural Vegan.
7. Vegan Masala French Toast
Savory French toast rather than sweet, with chili, turmeric and onion in the batter. Twenty minutes, serves four at 307 calories.
Chickpea flour does what the egg would normally do here, and once you’ve made it you realize the eggs were never really the point.
Get the recipe from Chocolates and Chai.
8. Vegan Thai Basil Fried Rice
Twenty-five minutes, serves four at 246 calories. The chili, garlic and shallots get pounded down first, and that’s where most of the flavor comes from.
Use day-old rice. Fresh rice steams and clumps in the pan, and in our experience that’s the only way this dish goes wrong.
Get the recipe from Nuts and Twigs.
9. Creamy Fresh Vegan Tomato Soup
Cashews blended in for the cream. Twenty-five minutes, and it makes six bowls at 97 calories each, which makes it the lightest thing on this page.
It’s also the recipe that teaches you the cashew trick, and once you know it you’ll find yourself using it everywhere.
Get the recipe from Veg Buffet.
10. Chickpea Curry Soup
Two cans of chickpeas with curry powder, ginger and coconut milk. Thirty minutes, serves four at 390 calories, and each bowl carries twenty-five grams of protein, which is more than most people expect from a soup.
Get the recipe from Vegan Huggs.
11. Easy Red Lentil Soup
Another of our own. Red lentils collapse as they cook, so the soup thickens itself without you adding anything to it.
It’s almost impossible to get wrong, and that’s the reason it’s on a beginners list.
12. Lebanese Lentil Soup
Lentils with cumin and a lot of lemon at the end. Forty-five minutes, makes six at 204 calories.
The lemon goes in off the heat. If you boil it, it dulls the whole pot.
Get the recipe from A Cedar Spoon.
13. Easy Vegan Baked Beans
Fifty minutes, serves five at 186 calories, and almost all of that time is the oven working while you do something else.
Store-bought baked beans usually don’t contain anything objectionable, but these taste considerably better and cost less to make.
Get the recipe from Eat Your Beets.
Then the baking
Vegan baking is where most people expect trouble and then don’t find any. Flax, applesauce and mashed banana can all stand in for eggs, and none of the four recipes below asks for anything harder than that.
14. 3-Ingredient Coconut Cookies
The shortest recipe we’ve ever published, and it’s one of ours. Three ingredients, and that’s it.
If you’re nervous about vegan baking, start here, because there’s nothing in it that can go wrong.
15. Easy Date Muffins
Nut-free, with no refined sugar, and sweetened by the dates alone. Forty minutes, makes eight at 347 calories. If your dates have gone hard in the cupboard, soak them in hot water first and they’ll blend in without any trouble.
Get the recipe from Addicted to Dates.
16. Vegan Blueberry Muffins
Forty minutes and it makes twelve at 246 calories. This is the classic blueberry muffin, done without eggs or butter.
Toss the blueberries in a spoonful of the flour before they go into the batter, or they’ll all sink to the bottom.
Get the recipe from Rainbow Nourishments.
17. Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
Forty-five minutes, makes twelve at 331 calories. These are gluten-free and egg-free at the same time, which is the harder combination to pull off.
They’re cupcakes, and we’re not going to dress them up as anything else. Make them for a birthday.
Get the recipe from Right at Home.
The four things worth buying first
A jar of miso, a jar of red curry paste, a bag of red lentils and a tub of tahini. Between them they’ll get you through most of this page and most of what comes after it, so if you’re building a plant-based pantry from nothing, that’s where we’d start.
We wrote more about the pantry staples worth keeping, if you want the full list.
And, always, seek health consciously.
