Thanksgiving isn’t hard to cook without meat or dairy. The hard part is the scheduling.
Almost every dish on a holiday table wants the oven, and it wants it at the same time as every other dish. Take the turkey out of the equation and that problem doesn’t go away, it just moves somewhere else. So this is the whole menu we cook from, every recipe on it ours and tested in our own kitchen, and we’ve arranged it the way you’ll need it in practice: what goes in the middle of the table, what goes around it, what to make days ahead, and what to do with all of it on the Saturday.
The short answer: Get the centerpiece ready the day before. Shape the chickpea meatloaf a day ahead and bake it on the day, and make the baked beans the day before, since they are better reheated. Once you know that, most of the scheduling problem goes away. Hummus and cashew cheese keep 3 days. Both pies can be made the day before. The cookies keep about 5 days in a tin and the truffles a week in the fridge. Keep the pumpkin pie in the fridge too.
On the day itself you should only be roasting potatoes, roasting cauliflower and reheating. If you’re cooking more than that at 3pm, something went in the wrong order, and there’s a full schedule further down to help with that.
The centerpiece
1. Chickpea Meatloaf
This is the one we put in the middle of the table. Three cups of chickpeas with carrot, onion and garlic, bound with chickpea flour and ground flax and finished with a ketchup glaze. It bakes in about 45 minutes and serves 8 to 10.
Best of all, it slices cleanly, and slicing is really the only thing a centerpiece has to do.
2. Red Lentil and Quinoa Stuffed Squash
The best-looking thing on this page. Red kuri or acorn squash, halved and filled with quinoa, red lentils, corn, peas and sun-dried tomato. Forty minutes, and it serves 2, so scale it by the number of halves you need. Each guest gets their own half, which solves the carving problem before it starts.
3. Spinach and Chickpea Pie
Phyllo over three cups of chickpeas and spinach, with a sauce made from ground almonds instead of cream. Fifty minutes, serves 4. Store-bought phyllo has a little oil in it, so use the rice paper option written into the recipe if you’re keeping the table fully oil-free.
4. Golden Chickpea and Veggie Bake
Four cups of chickpeas with carrot, peas and sweet corn, and turmeric for the color. It all goes into one dish and comes out looking like it took longer than it did. Forty minutes.
This is the easiest main here, and it’s the one we’d point you to if it’s your first time cooking for a whole table.
5. Rich Baked Beans in a Clay Pot
Dried white beans soaked overnight, then just over two hours in the oven with mint, savory and paprika. It’s the longest cook on this list and almost none of it is work, since the oven does it all while you get on with something else. Make it the day before: it’s better reheated, and it frees the oven on the day.
Potatoes, because there have to be potatoes
6. Oven Roasted Potatoes
Two and a half pounds of small gold potatoes with basil, dried onion, garlic powder and paprika, and no oil at any point. Forty minutes, 8 to 10 servings.
This is the dish that makes the plate look like a proper dinner, so don’t leave it off.
7. Creamy Garlic Potatoes in a Skillet
These are made on the stovetop rather than in the oven, and on the day that’s the entire reason to choose them. Thirty minutes, serves 2, with tahini and garlic doing the creaming.
8. Baked Mustard Potato Wedges
Wedges rather than roast potatoes, with mustard and paprika. Fifty minutes, and it serves 4. Good if you want something the kids will eat without any negotiation.
The vegetable dishes
9. Broccoli and Sweet Potato Casserole
This is our answer to the casserole that usually arrives from a can. Sweet potato and broccoli under a sauce blended from sunflower seeds and sun-dried tomatoes, and nothing in it is condensed or comes out of a box. Twenty-eight minutes, serves 4 to 6.
10. Oven Roasted Cauliflower
A pound of florets with smoked paprika, turmeric and garlic powder, and nothing wet on them at all. Thirty minutes, serves 4.
Give the florets room on the tray, because if they’re crowded they steam instead of roasting.
11. Curried Sweet Potato and Bean Bake
Sweet potato and beans with two leeks and a proper amount of curry powder. Forty-five minutes, serves 3 to 4. This is the dish for the person at the table who says they don’t like Thanksgiving food.
12. Bean Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
A side that works as a main for anyone at the table who isn’t eating what everyone else is eating. Fifty-five minutes, serves 3, and you can bake the potatoes alongside whatever else is already in the oven.
Something to start with
13. Parsnip and Squash Soup
Seven ingredients, one of which is water. A pound and a half of butternut squash with parsnip, potato and celeriac, and that’s about it. Twenty minutes, serves 5.
Make it the day before and reheat it, which is one fewer pan to worry about on the day.
14. The Easiest Butternut Squash Soup
Fresh turmeric root and fresh ginger rather than the ground versions, and that’s most of the recipe right there. Thirty minutes, serves 4. Half a cup of cashews goes in at the blending stage, so it needs no cream.
15. Cashew Cheese
This one sets firm enough to slice, which is what turns it into a cheese board rather than a dip, and a teaspoon of agar agar is what makes that happen. Ten minutes of work once the cashews have soaked.
Make it two days ahead; it only improves.
16. Cashew Stuffed Tomatoes
Thirty small tomatoes filled with blended cashews, lemon and nutritional yeast. Twenty minutes. Fill them on the day, but make the filling well before.
17. Easy Oil-Free Hummus
Seven ingredients, ten minutes and no oil. It keeps three days in the fridge.
Bread for the table
18. Whole Wheat Potato Focaccia
A boiled potato worked into the dough gives it the softness that focaccia usually buys with a great deal of olive oil. About 110 minutes from start to finish, serves 6, and it’s topped with cherry tomatoes and rosemary.
19. No-Knead Einkorn Bread
Five cups of whole grain einkorn with sunflower seeds through it, and no kneading anywhere. Eighty-five minutes, though most of that is the dough sitting there without you.
Dessert
20. Pumpkin Pie
A walnut and date crust under steamed pumpkin, with three tablespoons of maple syrup and no pastry to make. Twenty minutes of work, and it cuts into 8. We’d argue it’s the least difficult pie on the internet.
21. Sugar-Free Apple Pie
Oats, whole wheat flour and walnuts for the base, and a cup and a half of dates doing every bit of the sweetening, so no sugar goes in at all. Fifty-five minutes, and it cuts into 12.
Cardamom alongside the cinnamon is what makes it taste like more than just apple.
22. Pumpkin Dessert with Cashew Cream
Thick rounds of squash under a cashew and raisin cream, with raspberries over the top. Thirty minutes, serves 4. It’s the one to make if somebody has already claimed the pie.
23. Oat Pumpkin Cookies
Two cups of cooked pumpkin with ground walnuts, oats and dates, and orange juice instead of anything from a bottle. Forty minutes, and it makes 35 to 40 cookies.
Make these three days ahead and hide them.
24. Pumpkin Truffles
Five ingredients, ten minutes, twelve truffles. Steamed pumpkin, coconut flour, dates, cinnamon and cacao. These are what go on the table with the coffee, once nobody can face another slice of anything.
The oven problem, which is the real problem
Count the oven dishes on your menu before you commit to it. That’s the single most useful thing you can do a week out. Of everything above, these want the oven on the day: the meatloaf, the stuffed squash, the pie, the chickpea bake, the potatoes, the wedges, the cauliflower, the sweet potatoes and both breads. That’s more oven than anybody has.
What to move off it
A good number of the dishes here never need the oven at all. Both soups, the creamy garlic potatoes and the hummus are stovetop or blender jobs, and the pumpkin pie, the truffles and the cashew cheese never go near the oven. Build the menu so that at least a third of it never competes for a shelf, and the day stops being a negotiation with the oven.
When to cook each part
This is the order we use, and nothing on it is arbitrary. It’s sorted by how long each dish keeps and whether it improves on standing.
| When | What | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| 3 days before | Oat pumpkin cookies, pumpkin truffles | The cookies keep about 5 days in a tin and the truffles a week in the fridge, and they stop people opening the oven |
| 2 days before | Cashew cheese, hummus | The cheese needs time to set. Both keep 3 days |
| 2 days before | Soak the beans and the cashews | Nothing else needs planning this far out |
| The day before | Baked beans, both soups | All three are better reheated than fresh |
| The day before | Both pies, the bread | Frees the oven completely on the day |
| The day before | Shape the meatloaf, don’t bake it | It bakes in about 45 minutes, a little longer straight from the fridge |
| Morning | Roast and stuff the squash, fill the tomatoes, and keep both in the fridge | The squash goes back in the oven for 15 minutes before serving |
| Last 90 minutes | Meatloaf in, then potatoes, then cauliflower | Longest cook first, shortest last |
| Last 20 minutes | Reheat the soup and the beans on the stovetop | Keeps them off the oven shelves |
The leftovers, which is the part everyone plans badly
People go looking for leftover ideas in the days after Thanksgiving, not on the day. Almost every holiday menu you’ll read stops at the meal itself, and that’s why the Saturday always feels like a problem nobody prepared for. It doesn’t have to be one. Cooked beans, roasted vegetables and leftover potatoes are the start of four dinners, and these are the four we make.
25. Mashed Beans with Mushrooms
Five cups of cooked beans, mashed, with curried mushrooms over the top. Thirty-five minutes. This is where the leftover roast vegetables go, and nobody notices they’re leftovers.
26. Curry Mushrooms Over White Bean Mash
Twenty-five minutes, and the mash takes any cooked vegetable you have left stirred through it. There are four and a half cups of white beans in it, so it stretches a long way on the Saturday.
27. Easy Red Lentil Soup
Seventeen minutes. Red lentils collapse as they cook, so the soup thickens itself without any help from you. This is the pot that absorbs whatever is left in the vegetable drawer by Sunday.
28. Potato Salad, No Mayo
Twenty minutes, serves 4, and it’s the obvious home for the potatoes you roasted too many of. Mustard and green onion instead of mayonnaise.
If you’re not the one cooking
Most of the difficulty in a plant-based holiday isn’t the food. It’s being at somebody else’s table. Three things do most of the work, and none of them involve explaining yourself. Arrive fed, so you’re choosing rather than starving. Bring a dish, so there’s guaranteed to be one thing you can eat; take the roasted potatoes or the chickpea bake, because they travel well and everybody eats them. Decide your exception before you arrive rather than in the moment.
We’ve written the whole of that out in eating differently from the people around you, including the one conversation that’s worth having.
And then it’s one meal
We’re not going to end a holiday menu with advice about restraint. Your body responds to what you do most of the time, and one large meal inside a good year barely moves the long-term picture. Your body notices it for a few hours and then adjusts. The idea that it needs correcting in January is a marketing invention, and for a lot of people the correcting does more harm than the meal did.
There’s no reset required, no cleanse and no atonement. You cook the next ordinary meal, which we’ve written about here. So have the second slice of pie. It’s made of walnuts, dates and pumpkin.
And, always, seek health consciously.
