Here are twenty plant-based breakfasts, and we’ve ordered them by how much of the work happens the night before. The first few get made in a jar while you brush your teeth. The last few are for a Saturday, when there’s time to stand at the stove.
Fourteen of them are ours. The other six come from cooks we read, and the links take you straight to them.
One thing to know before you scroll. Oats cooked in water come in at only about 350 calories a pound, and that’s why a plain bowl of them leaves you hungry again by ten. The dates, the banana and the spoon of seeds aren’t decoration. They’re what turns a bowl of oats into a breakfast that lasts until lunch, so please don’t leave them out.
Made the night before
1. Easy Overnight Oats with Strawberries
This is ours, and it’s the one we make most often. It takes five minutes of work the night before: oats, plant milk and chia, sweetened with five chopped dates, and frozen strawberries that thaw into the jar while you sleep. Get our recipe.
2. Chocolate Overnight Oats
Same idea, chocolate version. Half a banana and two dates do the sweetening, cacao does the rest, and six hazelnuts on top give you something to bite on. Get our recipe.
3. Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding
Four ingredients, and one banana does all the sweetening. Most of the thirty-five minutes is the fridge doing the work while you do something else. 189 calories a serving. Get our recipe.
4. Baked Oats, No Banana
Applesauce instead of banana, which matters if you’re one of the people who can’t stand banana in their oats (we know a few). Blend everything, pour it into a ramekin and bake for twenty-five minutes. The original comes with five flavor variations, so it won’t get boring. Get the recipe from The Fruity Jem.
5. Baked Oatmeal with Blueberries
Our own recipe. It serves four and reheats well, so a tray baked on Sunday is breakfast on Monday and Tuesday as well. Banana and dates instead of sugar, as usual in our kitchen. Get our recipe.
6. Healthy Homemade Granola, Oil-Free
Freshly squeezed orange juice instead of oil, and that’s the whole trick. Oats, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, coconut and raisins go in, and it keeps in a jar for weeks. Get our recipe.
7. Almond Raspberry Snack Bars
Two cups of almonds and a cup and a half of raspberries turn into twelve bars. Make them on Sunday and they’re the breakfast you grab on the way out the door all week. Get our recipe.
Five minutes in the morning
8. Antioxidant-Rich Breakfast Oat Bowl
A whole cup of mixed berries goes into oats with banana and ground chia. Nothing gets cooked, and the berries go in straight from the freezer. Get our recipe.
9. Raspberry Banana Smoothie Bowl
Two and a quarter cups of frozen raspberries with a frozen banana and a spoonful of peanut butter, blended thick enough that you eat it with a spoon. Get our recipe.
10. Blueberry Delight Smoothie
Four things in a blender: a banana, a cup of blueberries, the juice of one orange and half a teaspoon of ground chia. The orange juice is the liquid, so you don’t need any plant milk. Get our recipe.
11. Quick Creamy Chocolate Oatmeal
A mashed overripe banana and three dates carry all the sweetness here. Five minutes on the stove, it serves two, and it comes to 322 calories a portion. Get our recipe.
12. Quick Brown Rice Pudding
This is what we do with last night’s rice. Warm it through with plant milk, a mashed banana, two dates and cinnamon, and ten minutes later it’s breakfast. Get our recipe.
13. Quick and Healthy Energy Breakfast
Banana, oats, a cup of frozen berries and two tablespoons of chia. Ten minutes, and it holds you until lunch. Get our recipe.
Savory mornings
14. Vegan Tofu and Spinach Scramble
This one’s ours, and it’s our weekday scramble. Firm tofu with mushrooms, spinach and green onion, and the nutritional yeast and paprika give it the savory depth an egg would have brought. Get our recipe.
15. Quick Curried Tofu Egg Scramble
The kala namak is what makes this taste of egg, and then the curry powder and turmeric take it somewhere else entirely. If you’ve never cooked with black salt, this is a good place to find out what the fuss is about. Get our recipe.
16. Avocado Chickpea Sandwich Spread
One avocado and a cup of chickpeas, mashed with garlic and herbs. It makes enough for four sandwiches, so one batch covers more than a single morning. Get our recipe.
17. Savory Quinoa Breakfast Bowl
Not everybody wants something sweet first thing in the morning. This is cooked quinoa with raw carrot, zucchini and red cabbage, plus avocado and a spoon of hummus on top. It takes ten minutes if the quinoa is already cooked, and plain cooked quinoa keeps for five days in the fridge, so it’s worth making a big pot. Get the recipe from Cooking Compass.
18. Mini Chickpea Flour Frittata Bites
Chickpea flour, nutritional yeast, mushrooms and peppers, baked in a muffin pan, with no eggs and no soy. It makes twenty-two, and that’s the point: bake once and breakfast is settled until Wednesday. They’re good cold, and they go into lunchboxes just as happily. Get the recipe from Strength and Sunshine.
For a Saturday
19. Healthy Whole Wheat Vegan Crepes
Our recipe, and about as simple as a crepe gets. Whole wheat flour and water, one date for sweetness, and you get ten crepes out of it. No eggs, and nothing in the pan. Get our recipe.
20. Smoky Vegan Tempeh Bacon
Tempeh sliced thin and marinated in soy sauce, maple syrup, smoked paprika and a little sriracha. It’s the salty, savory thing a big weekend breakfast usually wants, and we don’t have a recipe of our own that does the same job. The original uses sesame oil in the pan; swap it for a splash of the marinade instead. Get the recipe from Happy Kitchen.
If mornings are the part you keep losing
Breakfast is the cheapest habit in the day to change, because it’s the one meal nobody is attached to and nobody watches you eat. You can swap it without explaining yourself to anyone.
There’s also something you get for free. Oats and beans eaten in the morning flatten the blood sugar response to your next meal by 20 to 30 percent, an effect that was measured back in 1982 and has been known ever since as the second-meal effect. In other words, what you eat for breakfast has a say in how your afternoon goes.
We wrote about why that is, and what to do about it, if you want the longer version.
And, always, seek health consciously.
