Vegetarian
6901 recipes found
Lemony Pasta With Braised White Beans
Braising canned white beans with garlic, chile flakes and olive oil is a classic recipe — a speedy, meatless, very satisfying weeknight meal. This version turns the mix into a sauce for pasta, brightened by lemon juice and zest, and rounded out with fresh parsley or arugula and cherry tomatoes, a juicy contrast to the velvety beans. The pasta water also plays an important role here, keeping the beans from becoming pasty. Use the best olive oil you can, especially for drizzling at the end. That’s where you’ll really taste it, and a robust, herbal oil will add a lot of character to this simple dish.
Avocado, Radish and Iceberg Lettuce Salad
I’ve always liked this very simple salad that was served at La Taza de Oro, a now-defunct Puerto Rican diner in New York City.
Easy Crudités
A crudités platter can be as simple as a bunch of vegetables piled on a plate, or as composed as a work of art. Use a mix of raw and blanched vegetables, or just raw, keeping in mind that a variety of colors, shapes and textures will help create a beautiful platter and provide guests with more options. Keep the platter simple, or dress it up with additional snacks, such as marinated olives, artichokes, crackers and nuts, and add homemade or store-bought dips, such as hummus, tzatziki or ranch. This recipe easily scales up or down, just plan on about 1 cup vegetables total (blanched and raw) per person. Serve crudités alongside a charcuterie board for a more substantial spread.
Cheesy Pull-Apart Bread
If pulling apart slices of warm, cheesy, garlicky bread is your idea of a good time, do this: Slice crusty bread into a grid pattern, coat every nook and cranny with garlic butter, tuck in some shredded mozzarella and bake the whole thing. What was just a loaf of bread is now a worthy party centerpiece. You can prepare, wrap and refrigerate the loaf up to one day ahead. The format is adaptable, too: Season the butter with scallions, rosemary or other flavorings, or swap the mozzarella for Cheddar, pepper Jack or another melty cheese you’d use for a grilled cheese.
Quinoa
Quinoa is a small but mighty seed: Hearty, plump, protein-rich and gluten-free, use it as you might use rice or whole grains in salads and soups, or as a side. A ratio of one part quinoa to one-and-a-half parts water will create quinoa that’s fluffy with enough bite to maintain its shape. It’s important to rinse and dry the quinoa before cooking to remove its naturally occurring bitter, soapy coating. Optionally, you can also toast the quinoa — as with nuts or sesame seeds — to enhance the seeds’ nuttiness. Cooked and cooled quinoa will keep refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
Easy Parker House Rolls
Using prepared pizza dough makes these Parker House rolls a snap to put together, and brushing them with plenty of melted butter gives them the moist interior and richness you expect. The trick to a tender texture is to cover the pan of just-baked rolls with foil, allowing them to steam and soften as they cool. This prevents the rolls from developing a crunchy crust. Be sure to leave plenty of time for rising; different brands of pizza dough will vary. To ensure the lightest rolls, wait until they are very puffy and risen before popping them in the oven. Serve these on the same day they’re baked, preferably still warm from the oven. Leftovers can be split and toasted for breakfast the next morning.
Cheesy Spinach Bake
This baked spinach gratin is similar to creamed spinach but has even more going on. It’s rich but uses half-and-half, so it’s not too heavy, and it’s crunchy with crisp toasted bread crumbs. It tastes verdant from so much spinach, sweet with onion and garlic, and sharp and gooey from two aged cheeses. It’s great alongside turkey, steak or white beans. To prepare this dish in advance, refrigerate the spinach mixture and the bread crumb topping separately for up to 24 hours before assembling and baking. If cooking chilled ingredients straight from the fridge, you may need to increase the cook time by 5 to 10 minutes.
Spicy Roasted Mushrooms With Polenta
Packed full of umami, roasted mushrooms and tomatoes are coated in a fresh, fragrant Sichuan chile oil and served on top of creamy polenta in this midweek dinner hit. The oil can be made ahead, and will continue to develop in flavor. Make extra, as you’ll want to drizzle it over your eggs in the morning. Try using a variety of mushrooms — some oyster mushrooms torn into chunks, or portobellos cut into thick slices — but do make sure to slice them to the same thickness so that they cook evenly as they roast. The mixture is perched on a very simple polenta, but feel free to add butter, milk and cheese to it for a bit of extra indulgence.
Parker House Rolls With Black Pepper and Demerara Sugar
These tender, fluffy morsels are everything you want in a Parker House roll. The secret to their particularly moist interior is adding instant potato flakes to the dough, a technique adapted from King Arthur Baking Company. Softened butter, seasoned with black pepper and Demerara sugar, is brushed on top both before and after baking, giving these rolls a glossy, burnished crust that gets a little crisp at the edges where the sugar meets the pan. (For a more classic Parker House roll, skip the pepper and sugar.) Like all rolls, these are best served warm from the oven or on the same day they’re baked. Then split and toast any leftovers for breakfast the next morning.
Quinoa Salad
This bright, crunchy and hearty quinoa salad is inspired by the flavors and textures of tabbouleh and Greek salad. Quinoa, cucumbers, bell pepper, olives, lots of parsley and an assertive lemon-garlic dressing make it a filling and protein-rich vegan lunch, or a great side for grilled chicken, seared fish or spiced chickpeas. Feel free to add other briny, creamy, snappy or herbaceous ingredients, such as feta, avocado, torn romaine leaves or fresh mint. The salad will keep for up to 2 days refrigerated; refresh with salt and lemon juice before eating as flavors may become muted in the fridge.
Pumpkin Empanadas
During the fall, many Mexican American households and bakeries simmer winter squash with sugar and spices to make a purée then stuff it into disks of dough to make pumpkin empanadas. This recipe from Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack, a cookbook author and food blogger, is similar to her grandmother’s, but opts for convenience with canned pumpkin. When Ms. Marquez-Sharpnack was a child living in El Paso, her grandmother – from Chihuahua, Mexico – would cut up an old jack-o’-lantern and simmer it to make the filling, similar to ayote en miel. While Ms. Marquez-Sharpnack recommends making the dough from scratch, you could also use store-bought empanada disks for baking, which are less sweet and slightly firmer but incredibly easy to work with.
Caramelized Brussels Sprouts With Lemon
Separating the dark green outer leaves from the lighter green cores of brussels sprouts allows you to roast them so they’re both tender and crispy. Prep them ahead of time for an easy side dish. (Watch Claire make Thanksgiving dinner from start to finish on YouTube.)
Easy Herb Stuffing
This recipe makes a simple, versatile Thanksgiving stuffing, flavored with sautéed onions and celery, savory herbs and chicken broth. Almost any kind of bread will work, but choose a fluffy white bread, like a Pullman loaf or French bread, if you can. Even sliced sandwich bread works — and it provides a great shortcut for cubing the bread. Be sure to toast the bread cubes in the oven if you’re using a fresh loaf of bread; the cooked cubes should be dry and firm to the touch, like croutons. If you’re rationing oven space on Thanksgiving Day, you can assemble the stuffing and refrigerate it up to 12 hours before baking. The stuffing will be crisp on top and moist underneath. The longer you leave it in the oven without foil, the crispier the bread cubes on the top will be.
Baked Brie and Caramelized Vegetable Pie
A vegetarian centerpiece inspired by baked Brie, this caramelized vegetable pie cuddles creamy, earthy molten cheese with a bevy of autumnal vegetables: roasted butternut squash, seared mushrooms, herbed brussels sprouts and tangy red onions, and enrobes the whole mixture in store-bought puff pastry. It’s significantly less work than this mushroom Wellington, but has a similar ceremonial pomp, with a delightful big reveal. Developed with ease in mind, this savory pie benefits from being prepared in advance: Cook the individual components at your leisure, even a few days in advance, and you’ll need only to assemble the pie and bake it off before dinner. This pie is relatively easy to engineer but it does require some patience. You’ll want to let it rest 30 minutes to 1 hour before cutting, to allow the puff pastry to maintain its structure — and for the cheese to firm up a bit before carving.
Smooth and Creamy Mashed Potatoes
This recipe uses a masher and a mixer instead of a ricer or food mill to make smooth and creamy mashed potatoes. As long as you don’t mix excessively, the potatoes will come out light, not gummy. (Watch Claire make Thanksgiving dinner from start to finish on YouTube.)
Sweet Potato Hash With Tofu
Hash, which comes from the French word for “chop,” can be made of any number of meats and proteins that cook and crisp on the stovetop. One of the most common might be corned beef and potato hash, but this recipe is more hands-off: It cooks on a sheet pan. This vegan hash is sweet, smoky and spicy, with cubes of sweet potato, tofu, peppers and onions. The potatoes and tofu are spunky with chili powder and crisp from cornstarch. Serve the dish for breakfast or dinner, with vinegary red onions for crunch, plus your favorite hash toppings.
Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Galette
This savory galette has a secret layer of herbed goat cheese underneath a pile of sweet butternut squash, savory herbs and smoked paprika. The key is to slice the squash nice and thin, so it has time to bake through as the crust gets golden and crisp. Though you could use store-bought pie crust for this recipe (see Tip), the homemade crust is flakier and tastes much more delicious. If you are making your own crust, make sure to leave some time for it to chill and relax; it will be much easier to roll out and will bake up light and flaky. Serve the galette warm or at room temperature, with a green salad on the side.
Vegetable Stock
Vegetable stock doesn’t need the whole vegetable drawer to be savory and flavorful; browned onions, garlic and mushrooms achieve that here, boosted by caramelized tomato paste. The other key ingredient is salt, which transforms the liquid from flat to well-rounded, so if your stock seems watery, the answer might not be simmering more but rather adding salt. This stock tastes neutral enough to be used in any recipe that calls for vegetable stock, though you can shift its personality with additional ingredients; see Tip for some ideas.
Onion Bhajiya (Spicy Fritters)
On Diwali, people in India light up their homes, say prayers and go door-to-door exchanging boxes of snacks and sweets. In the northern part of the country, some people fry fresh onion bhajiya, or crispy onion fritters, as an appetizer or snack for visiting guests. Palak Patel, the author of “The Chutney Life: 100 Easy-to-Make, Indian-Inspired Recipes” (Abrams, 2023), included her mother’s recipe in her cookbook, which represents Ms. Patel’s life as an Indian American. Her mother is from Raipur, where the street food is dipped in cilantro chutney, but her children and husband like to dip the fritters in ketchup. Depending on the region, bhajiya can also be called pakora or bhaji. They’re often eaten as a snack during monsoons and served with masala chai.
Brown-Butter Mashed Potatoes
The simple act of browning butter takes this holiday mainstay from simple to superb in a matter of minutes. Russet potatoes are the perfect blank canvas for the toasty, nutty notes of the brown butter, which is lifted to a starring role as it permeates the potatoes and pools on top. Mashed potato purists may say that using a ricer or food mill is the only way to achieve a creamy texture, but a hand mixer or potato masher works just as well, as long as you don’t overmix and your potatoes stay hot. Make sure to create divots for the pools of brown butter that sit atop the dish, which make each spoonful feel extra luxe.
Hasselback Potatoes
With their signature accordion-like appearance, Hasselback potatoes are said to have been invented at Hasselbacken restaurant in Stockholm in the 1950s. The potatoes are thinly sliced, but kept intact at the base, making for crispy edges and tender insides. While this technique may look difficult to tackle, it requires only a pair of chopsticks or wooden spoon handles to prevent the knife blade from cutting all the way through the potato. Hasselback potatoes are a canvas for toppings of all kinds: A dollop of sour cream, or a sprinkle of Cheddar, bacon bits or chopped scallions would all be nice additions.
Cabbage Soup
Cabbage soup has been a staple in Eastern European cuisines as far back as the Middle Ages, when cabbage was one of the most readily available fresh vegetables. Even today, there is something undeniably comforting and restorative about this brothy yet hearty soup. While some variations call for chicken broth, this one is entirely vegan (though chicken broth certainly works if that’s what you have on hand). Cook the recipe as written, or make it your own by adding other vegetables from your fridge, or a can of rinsed white beans to make it more filling.
Tortellini Soup
Store-bought cheese tortellini make this easy vegetarian soup a breeze to put together at home. The stuffed pasta cooks in minutes and floats in a creamy, tomato-y broth that’s loaded with vegetables. A splash of vinegar enhances the tomato flavor and provides a bit more acidity, and chopped herbs, added at the end, offer some freshness. This soup works well with substitutions like swapping kale or other hearty greens for the spinach, for instance, so feel free to use whatever produce you have on hand. Whatever you do, don’t skimp on the grated Parmesan at the table.
Spicy Carrot-Ginger Soup
Let’s proceed on the theory that everyone likes soup, and some soups are better than others. You might think of squash for an autumn soup, but this bright soup of carrots, stewed with ginger and jalapeño and finished with a good squeeze of lime and a handful of chopped cilantro, is an example of how not to make the all-too familiar stodgy too-thick purée. Still, feel free to try it with kabocha or butternut squash. If the soup is not to be served immediately, cool after puréeing, and reheat just before serving — it will taste fresher.