Vegan
3072 recipes found
One-Pot Roasted Squash Soup
You could make pumpkin or squash soup by roasting the pumpkin on a sheet tray while sautéing onions, carrots and ginger on the stovetop before combining it all with stock and blending it. But it’s tedious compared with tossing everything into an oven-safe pot, roasting it all, then blending it directly in the same pot. The onions cook a little unevenly using this method, and that’s a good thing: Some slices sweeten gently while others deeply caramelize as they roast, giving the soup more complexity. For a little sweetness, some apples or pears are added to the roast as well, but you can omit them if you prefer a more savory soup.
Smoky Stir-Fried Greens
Wok hei, or the “breath of a wok,” is the elusive smokiness found in restaurant-style dishes that rely on high-powered burners and a skilled hand to achieve it. To create a similar flavor at home, I rely on a hand-held blowtorch, which I use here for simple stir-fried greens. I recommend using either a butane canister with a high-output torch head or a propane canister with a trigger-start head. If you do not have a wok, a heavy cast-iron or stainless-steel skillet can be used instead.
Vegetable Maafé
A great maafé effortlessly balances sweet, savory, earthy and spicy. Maafé is often called West African peanut stew, but that’s an oversimplification. Across the region, there are many versions that feature peanuts as a base, and all are greatly nuanced: For example, there’s akitiwa in Togo, nkatenkwan in Ghana and miyan taushe across northern Nigeria. This highly adaptable stew can be made with any assortment of meat, poultry, seafood and seasonal vegetables you have on hand (see Tip), but this one goes all in on produce. Keeping the Scotch bonnet whole in the sauce controls the heat: cook to soften, then break it open to dissolve seeds in the sauce for more heat, or cook and remove the softened whole chile from the sauce for less heat. Serve it all over steamed rice, millet or fonio, with some lime slices for squeezing. Maafé can be made ahead, refrigerated and reheated for a warm, comforting meal whenever you need — its rich flavor only improves with time.
Spaghetti Aglio e Olio e Fried Shallot
Adding homemade or store-bought fried shallots to classic garlic spaghetti gives it extra caramelized sweetness and depth of flavor, along with crunch. Add the shallots in two stages so that some of them soften and give their flavor to the sauce, and the rest remain crispy. Cooking the spaghetti in a relatively small amount of water concentrates its starch, making it easier to form a creamy, emulsified sauce. If you can’t have your pasta without cheese, feel free to grate some Parm or pecorino on top at the table.
Coconut-Caramel Braised Tofu
In this quick vegan meal, versatile tofu takes on a flavorful coconut-caramel glaze with minimal effort. It’s simmered in a fragrant braising liquid of rich coconut milk, savory miso and aromatic ginger and garlic until the liquid reduces into a rich, sweet caramel sauce. Lightly charred green beans add subtle smoky notes, but broccoli or cauliflower florets would also work great. A final shower of fresh scallions and tart lime juice balances and brightens the sweet sauce; other herbs like basil or cilantro would also light up the dish in a lovely way. Leftovers can be reheated and tossed with noodles for lunch the next day.
Squash and Spinach Salad With Sesame Vinaigrette
This vibrant squash salad can stand on its own as a main salad or as a side to accompany all sorts of roasted meats or fish. Kabocha squash can be cooked with its skin on, and a simple roast results in supersweet, creamy flesh. The triple-sesame vinaigrette combines sesame seeds for crunch, tahini for smooth texture and toasted sesame oil for rich, nutty flavor. Equally tasty warm or at room temperature, this salad is super adaptable. (Delicata or acorn squash also have edible skins and are great alternatives.) It makes a terrific lunch, with the addition of beans or soft-boiled eggs for extra protein.
Braised Peppers and Onions
This base of slowly stewed peppers and onions can serve as the foundation for a wide variety of dishes: Add seared flank steak or pork butt, capers, olives, raisins and canned tomatoes, and simmer it into deliciously shreddable Cuban ropa vieja, to enjoy with black beans, rice and braised greens. Slice Italian sausage, sear it along with chicken legs, then add 1/2 cup each of brown sugar and apple cider vinegar, plus a couple of cups of these peppers and onions, and cook until the sauce reduces to a sweet-tart glaze as the meat slowly braises. (Try that on top of boiled yellow potatoes.) Bloom freshly ground ancho, pasilla or other dried chile in oil, then add this sauté, a few cups of cooked black beans and chickpeas, plenty of Mexican oregano and some canned tomatoes to simmer into a rich vegan chili, garnished with roasted sweet potato. But for the simplest use, just slather these peppers on top of a hot dog in a buttered, toasted bun.
Fried Tagliatelle With Chickpeas and Smoky Tomatoes
Two pantry staples, chickpeas and pasta, come together to give you this hearty vegan main. (Do check the ingredient list on the packaging for your tagliatelle, as some may contain egg.) Frying the pasta nests before cooking them provides plenty of texture, even as the pasta softens and releases its starches into the chickpeas and their cooking water. Feel free to play around with the smoky tomato oil, adding different chiles or spices, such as cumin or coriander seeds. And be sure to start the night before by soaking your chickpeas. However, if you’re running low on time, you can also use two drained 14-ounce cans of chickpeas, adjusting liquid levels as necessary.
Red Enchilada Sauce
Cooks at El Cholo in Los Angeles spend four hours, three times a week, to make each 35-gallon batch of sauce for their enchiladas. “Without the enchilada, we wouldn’t have survived,” said Ron Salisbury, the third-generation owner. Adapted from “A Taste of History: With Authentic El Cholo Recipes” by Ron Salisbury (2020), this sauce was created for El Cholo’s Sonora-Style Enchiladas but can be used for any enchilada recipe. The mild California chiles, despite their name, come from Mexico, where they are dried in kilns. (Years ago they were sun-dried in fields, giving them a richer flavor, but exposure to birds ended that practice.)
Roasted Eggplant Salad
In Morocco — and similarly throughout the Middle East — the most delicious salads are made with seasoned, cooked vegetables, not leafy greens. This dish, smoky eggplant salad with cilantro, infused with cumin, hot pepper and a generous amount of olive oil, is a winning combination. For the perfect flavor, you want to seriously blacken the eggplant. Choose very firm eggplants, which will have fewer seeds. The salad will keep, refrigerated, for several days.
Simple Slaw
Clean and simple. Eight ingredients — apple cider, cider vinegar, cabbage, mustard seeds, celery seeds, sugar, salt and pepper to taste — combine into what ought to be a staple of your repertoire. You’ll need to cook the cider down by half before using it, but everything else goes in raw, and the combination matures over the course of a few hours into a side dish that can accompany just about anything grilled or roasted, pulled or hacked.
Roasted White Bean and Tomato Pasta
With a flavor profile inspired by pasta e fagioli, this weeknight pasta recipe coaxes rich flavor out of simple ingredients while enlisting the oven to create a luscious sauce from roasted tomatoes and white beans. Essentially, the dish requires just three steps: Boil pasta, roast your sauce ingredients, then stir together until the pasta is glossy. When roasted in the oven, the beans become crispy, like croutons, and break down in a way that helps thicken the sauce. Though a flurry of freshly grated cheese would be welcome on top, this otherwise-vegan dish doesn’t need it: The roasted tomato sauce is rich and luscious, fortified by starchy pasta water, roasted beans and a good glug of extra-virgin olive oil.
Vegan Creamy Leek Pasta
This four-ingredient leek pasta coaxes as much flavor and texture as possible out of a few leeks, a box of pasta, some olive oil and lemon (plus salt and pepper). Though it doesn’t take long, this recipe is not fast — it’s even a little bit fussy. You’ll julienne and fry the leek whites to create a crispy garnish, then blend the resulting leek oil with boiled leek greens to create a silky sauce. You could absolutely make this dish on a weeknight, but since the recipe revolves around technique, it’s best not to rush. It’s about enjoying the process as much as the results.
Watercress, Pistachio and Orange-Blossom Salad
Tarragon, basil, dill and cilantro are elevated from garnish to the centerpiece of this dish from Yotam Ottolenghi.
Beans Marbella
This recipe started as a wisp of an idea in The Veggie, our weekly newsletter about vegetarian home cooking, inspired by that iconic dish chicken Marbella, made famous in “The Silver Palate Cookbook.” Instead of chicken, a pot of thin-skinned, creamy beans and their rich cooking liquid form the base, which are then added to a pan of fried garlic and reduced red wine with plenty of olive oil, prunes and olives. They’re then topped with a simple roasted potato salad, dressed with vinegar-soaked shallots, capers and parsley. It’s not an exact replica of chicken Marbella, but it’s a beautiful and satisfying way to enjoy its familiar flavors — the tangy, briny sharpness of vinegar, capers and olives, set against the sweetness of prunes. You can serve the dish as is, but it’s even more luxurious with some thickly sliced and toasted bread, brushed with olive oil and garlic.
Sweet Plantain Fries
Like maduros or dodo, these feature ripe plantains, but the cut here gives even more room for crisp, caramelized outsides and sweet, tender insides. You want very ripe plantains, which are high in sugars that will caramelize in the hot oil. For some brightness, you could also finish this with citrus salt, or take a cue from dodo and squeeze lime juice over. Pair these with something light and spicy, like jerk salmon or a citrusy roast chicken, or something light off the grill, like a salmon or turkey burger.
Roasted Mushrooms With Smoky Pomegranate Sauce
For the very best roasted mushrooms, this recipe employs a steam-roast method, which allows the mushrooms to caramelize and crisp while retaining a surprising amount of moisture. They’re tossed on a sheet pan with olive oil, poultry seasoning and granulated onion for flavor, then covered tightly with foil and set in the oven to steam in their own juices until tender. Finally, they’re broiled just until their edges crisp, and their natural essence becomes more concentrated with deep nutty notes. An easy pan sauce made with pomegranate juice, peppercorns and ancho chile provides a burst of tanginess and brilliant color — and it is easily made vegan with the use of vegan butter.
Savory Thai Noodles With Seared Brussels Sprouts
Isa Chandra Moskowitz runs a vegan restaurant in Omaha, Neb., so she knows how to make plant-based food that meat-eaters will also like. This one-pot noodle dish, loosely based on pad Thai, has lively textures (like shredded brussels sprouts and chewy rice noodles) and super-satisfying flavors.
Quick Pickles
Keep this easy recipe in your back pocket for when you want to add crunchy, zingy punch to whatever you're serving. The flavor of the rice vinegar creates a pickle that goes particularly well with Asian dishes.
Tofu With Sizzling Scallion Oil
This refreshing weeknight meal comes together in less than 15 minutes and barely requires turning on the stove. Aromatic garlic, ginger and scallions are gently heated in oil until they sizzle and infuse it, turning into a fragrant, lively sauce for mild silken tofu. Peppery arugula and a final drizzle of tangy cilantro sauce brighten the dish. Enjoy with steamed rice for a heftier meal, or top with fried eggs. Leftover tofu can be stored in the scallion oil and refrigerated; it will have absorbed even more flavor the next day.
Braised Mustard Greens
Mustard greens are a delectable option for the simplest weeknight meal or the grandest holiday table. Though they’re from the same plant family as collard greens, mustard greens are more peppery and the cooked leaves are more tender. (They also cook down a lot more, so it takes a lot of mustard greens to make a decent serving amount!) This recipe is generous with the liquid, because as it cooks it becomes something just as delicious as the greens themselves: pot likker. Smoked meats are often used for their flavor, but a small amount of liquid smoke keeps this recipe meat-free. Be sure to serve your greens in a bowl, so you can slurp up the resulting pot likker afterward.
Pan-Fried Okra
As one of the most respected cooks in America’s Lowcountry region, Emily Meggett knows a thing or two about taking humble ingredients and transforming them into an irresistible plate of food. Such is the case for the matriarch’s pan-fried okra, from her cookbook “Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes From the Matriarch of Edisto Island” (Abrams, 2022), a book that I co-wrote. Her recipe is constructed around the use of fresh, seasonal okra pods. Mrs. Meggett dismisses what she views as the excessive use of dairy-based cornmeal batters in restaurant versions of fried okra; instead, she lightly coats her okra, allowing the beauty and taste of the vegetable to shine in each mouthful.
Quick-Pickled Okra
Quartering the okra significantly cuts down pickling time in this recipe: The vegetable pickles more quickly because its insides are exposed. Most picklers have their own special way of seasoning the love-it or leave-it vegetable. “Pickled okra had to grow on me,” Kenneth Garrett, a lifelong New Orleans resident and avid pickler, said. Now, he eagerly awaits okra’s growing season, and he makes pickled okra with basil and oregano, all from his garden. He serves it alongside fried chicken or as a snack. Mr. Garrett adds Creole seasoning, but this recipe uses whole peppercorns instead. Feel free to be creative with spices here. This recipe is ready in hours, but you can minimize okra’s characteristic gooeyness by refrigerating the pickles for two weeks before enjoying. Lastly, whenever preserving or canning, even for a “quick” job like this, it’s important to maintain a sterile environment. Wash the jars, lids and rims with hot, soapy water and dry them with clean towels.
Sabudana Khichdi (Maharashtrian Tapioca Pilaf)
Sabudana khichdi, which loosely translates to “tapioca mixture,” is a delightfully chewy Maharashtrian pilaf studded with the crunch of toasted peanuts, creamy bits of potato, and the occasional cumin seed. A hit of sweetness is balanced with salt, lemon and the alternating flames of ginger and green chile, and then everything is showered with a generous amount of chopped cilantro. The result is seductive in both texture and flavor. The key to this simple dish is to thoroughly soak the sabudana, or medium-sized tapioca pearls, until you can easily smash one between your thumb and forefinger. Then, use a microwave to cook the sabudana, stopping to check for doneness in 15-second increments. As soon as the pearls are translucent and chewy, they’re done.