5 Fast, Healthy, and Easy Vegan Meals

Eating a plant-based diet doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complex. You can eat healthy, tasty, cruelty-free food even if you’re short on culinary skill and time.

Here are five fast and easy meatless meals that’ll have even omnivores cleaning their plates.

1) Spicy Lettuce Cups: 

img_20170301_100149_498

Spicy Lettuce Cups

Drizzle a bit of your preferred cooking oil in a pan and heat over medium-high heat. Add 4 chopped baby portobello mushrooms to the hot pan. Once the mushrooms start to sizzle, add 1/4 cup of prepared lentils, 1 chopped avocado, and the juice of 1 lemon. Sprinkle in garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper to taste. Finish with a liberal dose of crushed red pepper flakes. Once heated through, serve the warm mixture on leaves of freshly washed Boston lettuce.

2) Broccoli-Bean Soup

2017-03-12 12.21.35

Broccoli-Bean Soup

Drizzle you preffered cooking oil in a pan. Thaw 3 cups of frozen broccoli in a pan over medium-high heat. Once heated, add 1.5 cups of vegetable stock, 2 Tbl garlic powder, 1 Tbl onion powder, 1 tsp dried basil, 1/4 cup nutritional yeast, 1 tsp smoked paprika, a dash of liquid aminos (or soy sauce), and salt and pepper to taste. Add in 1 can of drained and rinsed butter beans. Turn off heat and carefully blend the soup with an immersion blender until it reaches your desired smoothness. Optional: sprinkle with crushed red pepper flakes.

3) Barbecue Beans:

2017-03-12 12.24.19

Barbecue Beans

Add 1 cup of frozen peas and carrots to a pan over medium-high heat. Cook until thawed. Stir in 1 can of drained and rinsed beans (pinto beans and kidney beans are our favorites), 1/3 cup of vegan barbecue sauce (such as Sweet Baby Ray’s Original Barbecue Sauce), 1 tsp cumin, and 1/2 tsp chili powder. Heat for 2 minutes then serve. It is great on its own, mixed into short-cut pasta, or as shown here served as a sandwich topped with vegan mayo.

4) Raw Nut-free Kale Pesto 

2017-03-12 12.22.56

Raw Nut-free Kale Pesto

Add 1 cup baby kale, 4 Tbl extra virgin olive oil, 3 Tbl raw unsalted hulled sunflower seeds, 1 Tbl nutritional yeast, 1/2 Tbl garlic powder to a blender and blend until smooth. Stir into cooked Banza (chickpea flour) pasta and top with 3 handfuls of sliced cherry tomatoes. Sprinkle with hemp hearts for an added nutrition punch.

5) Black Bean Bowl

2017-03-13 12.37.03

Black Bean Bowl

Place 1 bag of microwaveable brown rice into the microwave and cook per the package instructions. While the rice cooks, add 1/4 chopped sweet onion to a greased pan over medium-high heat. Cook for 1 minute then add 1 chopped red bell pepper to the pan. After the vegetables have cooked for 1 minute, add 1/4 cup of frozen sweet corn to the pan to heat through. Stir in 1 Tbl garlic powder, 1/2 Tbl cumin, 1/2 Tbl chili powder, 1/2 Tbl onion powder, and salt and pepper to taste (throw in a touch of cayenne if you like some heat.). Place the rice in a bowl, spoon the bean mixture over the rice, top with 1/4 sliced avocado, squeeze the juice of 1/2 lime over top, and garnish with fresh cilantro.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s