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55 Best Vegetarian Meals

~ These vegetarian meals are the very best, most wildly popular, healthy vegetarian recipes from 100s of food writers, all across the Internet. They’re ideal for Meatless Monday … or any day! Easy vegetarian recipes that’ll even keep meat-lovers happy – perfect for the whole family! When someone asks me what are the absolute best vegetarian recipes, this is the post I refer them to! ~

Pinnable collage of 5 of the recipe photos, with text overlay reading "All-Time Best Vegetarian Recipes".

How We Picked the BEST Vegetarian Dinner Ideas

Way back in 2016, we polled hundreds of other food writers and bloggers, asking them to share the one – just one! – absolutely, positively most popular healthy recipe from their entire site. 

We sorted through those submissions to choose the most outstanding of all for our very first collection of 13 Best Healthy Vegetarian Meals.

But 2016 was a long time ago (at least in the Internet world), and soooooo many other amazing vegetarian recipes have popped up since then!

Search Our Site for MORE Healthy Vegetarian Recipe Ideas! Here’s How …

 

So, more than 4 years later, we reached out again – to hundreds and hundreds of food writers and blogging friends, asking them to share their ONE (and only ONE!) most popular vegetarian main dish. The very best vegetarian dinner recipe they had. 

The response was overwhelming! But once again, we’ve narrowed it down to the very best of the best, and added about 40 new, inspiring, easy, healthy vegetarian recipes to our lineup.

And we think you’ll agree … there’s absolutely no doubt why all these recipes are so incredibly popular! 

The Very Best Vegetarian Meals

Two Healthy Kitchens’ Favorite Vegetarian Meals

While we’re talking healthy vegetarian recipes and veggie-centric meal ideas, check out a few of our own personal favorites here at THK. These are all recipes I make again and again for my own family that we just love … and I’m pretty sure your family will love, too!

The Vegetarian Meal Trend

The current meatless trend is undeniable: even non-vegetarians are embracing the benefits of subbing out at least one meat-focused meal each week, in exchange for a vegetarian dinner.

Meatless Monday? Yup! It’s totally a thing! Everybody’s getting more excited about easy vegetarian dinner recipes.

And for good reason – vegetarian meals can be a great way to work more nutritious ingredients into your weekly dinner rotations.

But they’ve gotta taste amazing, right? So amazing that your family (even those meat lovers!) won’t care one bit about leaving out the meat and trying a vegetarian recipe instead.

Well, if all those recipes above aren’t inspiration enough … we’ve also got some tips that can make truly delicious, ultra-satisfying veg meals completely do-able!

Making Healthy Vegetarian Meals Satisfying

If you aren’t eating a lot of meatless meals yet (and you’re sort of in a “beginner vegetarian” phase) … or if you’re a vegetarian who’s looking for ideas that your non-vegetarian friends will like, too … you might keep stumbling against this question: What are some strategies for making healthy vegetarian recipes that taste just as delicious and satisfying as meals that include meat?

As you’ll see from our lineup of recipes above, there are lots of different ways to achieve this! 

• Some “all veggie meals” directly swap the meat for protein-rich “meat substitutes” like soy crumbles, tofu hot dogs or sausages, and other plant-based meat “look alikes” (think of  examples like Boca Burgers, Beyond Burgers or Impossible Burgers).

• Other recipes don’t really attempt to fake you out by tricking you into thinking you’re eating meat. They simply focus on high-protein ingredients like quinoa (one of the only plants that has all the amino acids needed to be a complete protein), or legumes such a beans and lentils.

• And some recipes basically just skip the meat altogether, focusing instead on satisfying grains, pastas, and loads of flavorful veggies.

Pinnable collage of 5 recipe photos with text overlay reading "Best Healthy Vegetarian Meals".

Whichever path you choose, I would argue that the most important goal is to make sure there are interesting textures and, especially, to make sure those vegetarian diet recipes are hugely flavorful – so nobody’s taste buds miss having some meat on the plate.

• You might focus, for example, on coaxing lots of flavors out of your veggies by grilling or roasting them (one of my favorite techniques!). The caramelization that happens yields big flavor!

• Or, layer on lots of flavors with terrific sauces and condiments. Maybe you’re shooting for rich, cheesy, homey flavors … or bright, citrusy, summer notes … or spicy Mexican or Latin flair … or … well, you get the idea! Huge, totally vegetarian flavor can come through your sauces and condiments and make your dish, ultimately, very delicious and satisfying (with or without meat).

• One of the things many vegetarian-based meals miss out on is the umami flavor profile found in meat. But, that umami flavor profile can also be achieved through things like mushrooms, soy sauce, cheese and tomatoes.

Lots of little techniques to try, along with so many great new recipe ideas!

Oh … and to keep that veggie-momentum cranking all year long, we’ve even got specific collections of vegetarian and vegan meals just for the holidays:

And don’t miss all the other super-popular recipes in our “Very Best Healthy Recipes” series!

(Originally published August 18, 2016; fully updated with many new recipes, photos, and additional tips.)

Pinnable collage of 5 recipe photos from the original 13 recipes featured in this post, with text overlay of the title.

50 Comments

    1. Hi, Lizzy! Yay for you finding all these yummy, healthy recipes — and picking such a great place to start! 😉 The cauliflower wraps are totally delicious, and full of great flavor. I can’t wait for you to try them!
      ~Amy

  1. I love these 13 Healthy Vegetarian recipes! They all look so delicious especially the Vegan Jambalaya. It’s mouth watering!

    1. Thanks so much for the sweet comment! The Jambalaya is as good as it looks, I promise. 😉 I’ve started cooking a lot more vegetarian and vegan dishes lately — it started out because I have some vegan friends, and wanted to make stuff they could eat. Now that I’ve discovered how many yummy dishes are out there, I do a lot of it just for me!
      ~Amy

    1. Hey, Olivia! 🙂 That’s a good point, and super useful for our readers who are vegetarian to note! As we discuss in all of our recipes calling for Parmesan, you’re right that authentic, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (made only in a specific region of Italy) is not vegetarian. (You probably already know, but for our curious readers: that’s because in authentic Parmesan cheese, the process of milk coagulation is facilitated by a grouping of enzymes called rennet which is produced in mammalian stomachs.) However, outside of Europe, “Parmesan” is often applied generically to many similar cheeses. Many of these cheeses, especially those made in America by large commercial brands, use a microbial enzyme as a substitute for animal rennet — making them suitable for a vegetarian diet! (A serious win for cheese lovers!) So if you’re vegetarian or cooking for someone who is, don’t shy away from recipes calling for Parmesan — just be sure to check the ingredient list of your preferred brand for rennet. Or, if you’d rather not worry about it, you can find some great vegan Parmesan alternatives!

      I hope this was helpful! And thanks again for bringing up such a great point — I’m sure many other readers have the same concerns, or weren’t even aware until now of this complication! 🙂 ~Amy

    1. Hi, Ashley! I know exactly what you mean about being excited to try these! I sifted through sooooo many recipe ideas for this series of posts, to come up with the ones I was the very most excited to share (and to try myself!). Even though we’re not specifically vegetarian at my house, I do try to offer plenty of meatless, vegetarian meal options – both at my table and on the blog. And yeah … your flatbreads?!? Totally drool-worthy! Next time you make ’em … how about dropping a couple in the FedEx for me?? 😉 ~Shelley

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