Vegan Meal Ideas

 

Having a diet focussed entirely on vegan meals used to be considered a dreary deprivation, but loads of new vegan meal ideas means it’s now much more a delicious indulgence! More and more of us have embraced a vegan diet, currently nearly 4% of the British population, and with easy vegan recipes to make at home, you can see why it’s becoming more and more popular. The compelling environmental, health and ethical benefits aside, at the end of the day, we should all be working more vegetables into our diets; and it’s never been easier with quick and easy vegan meals that you can make yourself! With meals for 1 all the way up to meals for 8, there’s no reason why going vegan has to mean sacrificing on delicious dinners!

So, we’ve spoken to Theo, one of our lovely and brilliant chefs at COOK, and he’s given us a couple of easy vegan recipes that all the family can enjoy. You don’t need loads of quirky ingredients, either!

 

Sweet Potato and Peanut Butter Curry Recipe

Serves 4

 

 Ingredients:

 

    • 1 tbsp rapeseed oil, or any cooking oil
    • 1 large onion, chopped
    • 2 garlic cloves, grated or finely chopped
    • Thumb-size piece fresh ginger, grated
    • 3 tbsp Thai red curry paste (check the label to make sure it’s vegetarian/vegan)
    • 1 tbsp peanut butter, or another nut butter eg cashew
    • 500g sweet potato, peeled and cut into chunks
    • 400ml can coconut milk
    • 200ml water
    • 200g bag spinach or kale
    • 1 lime, juiced

 

Method: 

 

1. Add 1 tbsp rapeseed oil to a saucepan over a medium heat. Rapeseed oil has a very delicate flavour which doesn’t bleed out during the cooking process, so it is a good, neutral fat, but to be honest any cooking oil is fine. Soften the chopped onion for 5 mins, then add the garlic and ginger and cook for another minute.

2. Stir in the curry paste and peanut butter. Add the sweet potatoes, then the coconut milk and water. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 25-30 mins or until the sweet potato is soft.

3. Stir through the spinach and lime juice and season well.

 

Serving Suggesion:

To be honest, it’s delicious and filling enough on its own, but to make it go further you could serve with rice. A sprinkling of dry roasted peanuts or cashews on top is a good garnish.

 

Q&A with Theo

 

Q. Theo, what makes this vegan meal idea a dinner winner?

 

A. It’s quick, easy, tastes delicious, and it’s packed full of veg. Sweet potato is particularly good for your microbiome and immune system. Plus, kids love the nut butter in the sauce, so it’s a great easy vegan recipe for dinner that suits the whole family.

 

Q. Any watch outs when cooking this vegan meal recipe?

 

A. Obviously check on any nut allergies, but also make sure you fully cook the potatoes. You can cook them according to your taste, super soft or with a light bite.

 

Note: very few utensils are used, so it’s not a messy affair. If it’s your turn to do the washing up, you struck gold with this nice and easy vegan meal idea!

If you’re a regular eater of plant-based meals, then it can be worth cooking a large batch of something, so our recipes for quick and easy vegan meals are a great way to go about this! If you’re going to do so though, make sure you love the recipe before you XXL it. Making a huge vat of something that doesn’t totally tickle your fancy and then storing it in the freezer to eat for days on end will definitely erode your enthusiasm for the notion of batch-cooking!

Our next easy vegan recipe for dinner is very popular with our customers, so could be a good one to go big on:

“Roasted Vegetable and Chickpea Curry…absolutely fantastic.” Tracey Dance 5* Trustpilot

 

 

Roasted Vegetable & Chickpea Curry

Curries can be time-consuming, so this is an 8-portion recipe to give you the option of freezing whatever’s not eaten on the day. This is one of our favourite easy vegan meals, and it’s great to have ready in the freezer for whenever you fancy it!

 

 

 Ingredients:

 

    • 1 cauliflower
    • 200g red lentils
    • 3 red bell peppers
    • 4 white onions
    • 4 cloves of garlic
    • 1 tin of chickpeas, drained and washed
    • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
    • 100g baby spinach, washed
    • 200g tomato purée (or 100g Double Concentrated)
    • Fresh ginger, about an inch
    • 2tsp madras powder (a good curry powder will do)
    • 1tsp turmeric
    • 1tsp ground coriander
    • 1tsp ground cumin
    • ½tsp garam masala
    • Pinch chilli powder
    • 4 cinnamon sticks
    • 1 bay leaf
    • 2tsp granulated sugar
    • 3tsp salt
    • Rapeseed oil
    • Bunch of coriander

 

Method: 

 

1. Soak the red lentils in 200g of water overnight.

2. Dice the red peppers into 1 or 2cm squares. Chop the cauliflower into small florets, ideally no bigger than 3cm. Then chop the onions and garlic very finely, grate the ginger.

3. Heat 95g of oil and fry the garlic until brown, around 1 minute. Then add the chopped onions, salt, cinnamon sticks and bay leaf, and cook. Once the onions are nice and soft, add the ginger, all the spices and chopped tomatoes. Cook on a low-to-medium heat for at least 30 minutes, until the oil is rising to the service, which should look like lots of tiny volcanoes erupting! You’ll need to stir regularly during this crucial stage to stop it sticking.

4. Heat your oven to 220c (200c fan). Toss the diced red peppers in a little oil and roast for 15-20 minutes. Once roasted put to one side.

5. Once the base of the curry is at the volcano stage described above, add 650ml of water, the tomato puree, sugar, cauliflower and soaked red lentils, and simmer for around 15 minutes, until the lentils are soft and the cauliflower has a slight bite. If the sauce has over thickened add a splash more water. Then finish with the drained chickpeas, roasted red peppers and baby spinach. Bring back up to the boil, stir in the chopped coriander and season if required.

6. Serve with rice and naan. Or just as is.

Cooking time: 90mins (plus soaking lentils overnight).

For those days when the batches of deliciousness have all been devoured and you don’t have the time or energy to rustle up anything too extravagant, it’s still possible to enjoy a quick and easy vegan meal. Simply roast a load of veg in olive oil for half an hour or so, then pour over some tinned tomatoes and pop back in the oven for another 10 mins whilst you cook the pasta to serve with it, making for a delicious vegan meal idea! Or easier still, grab something from our COOK freezers – our vegan range is growing all the time so there’s an increasingly good variety to choose from. We’ve got chillies, curries, savoury tarts, sweet tortes… you name it, we have the perfect cheap and easy vegan meals for you!

However which way you do it, the important thing is to find a way to just eat more veg because vegetables are the foods that do us the most good and our planet the least harm. As a general rule, we should aim for 5 to 10 a day, and ‘eating the rainbow’ (a variety of colourful fruits and veg) is an easy way to get the complete range of nutrients your body needs to thrive - and we’re sure that these delicious and easy vegan recipes for lunch are a great way to get these in! We’ll finish with a few words from food writer, Michael Pollan, who sums it up really rather nicely:

"Eat food, mainly plants, not too much.”

 

Discover our Vegan Meals

 

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