When it comes to your best vegan dinner options, you’ve got endless possibilities. To discover the multitude of vegan-friendly restaurant options, take a look at our dining out advice. And if you want to figure out what to cook at home, just read on.
Making a Fantastic Vegan Dinner at Home
You’ve got all sorts of delicious yet easy vegan dinner options. In fact, you don’t even need a cookbook. Some of the easiest and healthiest vegan meals don’t even need recipes. So let’s begin with a quick look at some dishes you can cook from scratch that only require a few minutes of prep time.
Easy Main Courses
Some vegan dinner ideas are so basic that they hardly need recipes. Here are a few vegan-friendly dishes you probably already love:
- Sandwiches. An unimaginably easy yet filling meal that you can make in thousands of variations.
- Soup with a slice or two of whole grain bread. There are several vegan cookbooks devoted to soups and slow-cooker recipes.
- Stir-fried veggies, served over brown rice.
- A dinner salad. Note that salads can be quite filling—as long as they include protein-rich foods like chopped nuts, tofu, beans, or seeds.
- Roasted vegetables. This is a delicious and healthful option that typically requires only a few minutes to rinse and coarsely chop your vegetables.
- Spaghetti with marinara sauce. Possible garnishes: nutritional yeast, roasted peppers, or vegan sausage.
- Beans and rice, perhaps with some guacamole on the side. Try making black beans with plenty of garlic & cilantro.
- Baked yams or sweet potatoes—I saved the easiest item on this list for last!
Recommended Cookbooks
If you’re looking for quick and easy vegan dinner recipes, 30-Minute Vegan Dinners is the perfect cookbook choice. But that’s only the start of your options, since most cookbooks are dominated by dinner recipes.
Vegan Everything is dominated by easy recipes exploring a wide diversity of foods. Bish Bash Bosh is another popular all-vegan choice, and this title doesn’t skimp when it comes to offering up delicious side-dishes and desserts. Also check out our guide to vegan-friendly cuisines if there’s a particular style of cooking that you crave.
Once you’ve purchased one or two cookbooks that cover your favorite niches, consider also buying a huge reference-style cookbook. That way, you’ll be covered for just about any style of cooking you wish to explore. Robin Robertson’s 1000 Vegan Recipes is definitely the biggest such offering, and certainly among the best. Veganimocon is another solid choice, and one that’s as famous for its desserts as its entrees.
The only difficulty you’ll have in selecting a cookbook is dealing with the overwhelming number of possibilities—there are hundreds of vegan cookbooks in print. So how can you begin to choose? Just visit our vegan cookbooks page, which features the very best titles from every niche.
Canned or Frozen Vegan Dinners
Even if you only have a few minutes prepare dinner, you have some excellent options when it comes to packaged foods. Here are some possibilities:
- Frozen vegan pizzas (Tofutti, Daiya, and Amy’s)
- Boxed or frozen vegan mac & cheese
- Frozen vegan burritos or enchiladas (Amy’s, Trader Joe’s)
- Canned vegan chili, served over microwavable frozen brown rice
- Veggie burgers
- Microwaveable chick pea curry
- Frozen veggies, sautéed with garlic or ginger, served over microwavable frozen brown rice
Accompaniments
Round out your dinner with these easy vegan options:
- Baked potatoes or sweet potatoes
- Roasted vegetables
- Salads (We highly recommend Follow Your Heart’s Organic Vegan Caesar or Annie’s Goddess Dressing)
- Sauerkraut or kimchi
- Sautéed greens with ginger or garlic
- Peanut sauce (made from peanut butter, coconut milk, and sautéed garlic & ginger)
- Bread with hummus
Garnishes
Want to take your meal from good to great? The right garnish can make all the difference—adding crunch, tang, color or just the right intangible quality. So don’t hesitate to try out one of these garnishes the next time you cook:
- Nutritional yeast
- Gomasio
- Minced parsley
- Hemp seeds
- Dulse flakes
- A wedge of lemon or lime
- Fresh coarsely-ground pepper
Endless Vegan Dinner Possibilities
By now, you’ve seen with some of the best easy ideas for supper. In order to dive deeper into the subject, see our Vegan Cooking Guide. Just a little time spent learning the basics of vegan cooking will lay the groundwork for an endless variety of amazing vegan dinners.
