Vegetarian Recipes

With plenty of flavors and textures, this one-bowl meal from F&W’s Kay Chun is the perfect simple lunch or supper.

This supersimple vegetarian dish from F&W’s Kay Chun is hearty, spicy and delicious with a glass of Chenin Blanc.

This veggie-packed burger is made with chickpeas, artichokes, olives, asparagus and quinoa, then topped with melted cheese and marinated mushrooms.

Bloggers Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley mix quinoa with grated cauliflower, salty halloumi cheese and chickpea flour to make crisp, fluffy little balls to serve as an hors d’oeuvre or with tomato sauce as a main course. Soaking the quinoa overnight before cooking makes it more digestible.

The recipe here is based on a dish created by chef Josef Centeno’s great-grandmother, who raised 12 kids. Because meat was expensive, she often made enchiladas using only vegetables, like carrots and potatoes. For his enchiladas, Centeno makes a sofrito, cooking carrots low and slow in olive oil with garlic and tomatoes.

This outrageously rich sauce, flavored with salty, nutty Manchego, gets poured on sautéed cauliflower and baked until it's golden and bubbling.

Chef Missy Robbins of Brooklyn's Lilia restaurant swaps chickpeas for pasta in her riff on spicy pomodoro. She finishes the dish with a shower of fresh herbs and salty pecorino cheese.

Eating quinoa is a great way for vegetarians to get protein. Jeremy Fox tosses nutty-tasting quinoa with crunchy shaved vegetables for a refreshing salad loaded with vitamins and minerals.

In traditional ratatouille, vegetables simmer together until they're falling-apart tender. Here, Melissa Clark cooks them quickly in batches, so they retain their flavor and texture.

This salad from F&W’s Grace Parisi brilliantly combines some of the most exciting food trends of 2013 into one amazing recipe—pickled vegetables, uncommon produce, ancient grains and a cross-cultural dressing that includes miso and chipotle chile in adobo. If ingredients like lime radishes and baby orange cauliflower aren’t available at your farmers’ market, use equal quantities of similar vegetables.

Chef Alex Raij made this big, impressive pie, which she calls pastel de parra, to snack on throughout the weekend; a big slice is also satisfying as a meal.

"At every gathering these days, there will be a vegetarian," says Renato Poliafito. Baker Stefania Rubicondo brought these wonderful individual pies, filled with a mix of sweet celery root, brussels sprouts and parsnips in a sage-infused cream sauce and topped with tender biscuits made with roasted sweet potato.

Drinking wine with eggs at lunch always feels so French to Kristin Donnelly, likely thanks to Elizabeth David's famous essay, "An Omelette and a Glass of Wine."

Depending on the size of the appetites around your house, this substantial pizza with its meaty portobello mushrooms serves two very hungry people or four if it's accompanied by a big salad. If you don't have fresh basil, stir some pesto into the peppers and mushrooms before putting them on the pizza.

Spicy chili seasonings work wonders for the bland flavor of tofu. For a more substantial, spicy chili, use the same weight of tempeh in place of the tofu. Since tempeh is not packed in water, there is no need to pat it dry before sautéing, but stir in up to one extra cup of water in Step 4 when adding the beans.

Arugula pesto is peppery and bright. The trick is to blanch the arugula and squeeze it dry, so when you blend it with the pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and cheese, the resulting pesto isn't too wet.

A generous portion of bay leaves in the steaming liquid here permeates the artichoke leaves and hearts with flavor and provides an enticing aroma as you serve the dish. The scallion vinaigrette balances the sweetness of the artichokes.

Top Chef finalist Sarah Grueneberg created a vegetarian version of Bolognese that’s as rich and delicious as the meat version.

These tender gnudi, adapted from Nancy Silverton's Mozza Cookbook, are delicious with buttery chanterelles.

The Baker Creek catalog includes lots of seeds for Asian greens, including some that Jere Gettle found on his travels in Thailand. Here, a blend of mild bok choy with spicy mustard greens and oniony Chinese chives fills puffy, savory buns.

About 15 slender baby carrots—grilled until charred, then tightly rolled inside a tortilla with poblano-spiked sour cream—make for a superb vegetable wrap.

Golden eggplant slices sandwich tangy, melting cheese, all set off by a fast tomato sauce flavored with the unusually complementary tarragon.

Jenn Louis (an F&W Best New Chef 2012) found these intense beet gnocchi in northwestern Italy. They are sweet and earthy and so delicious, they barely need a sauce. When the beet greens are fresh enough, Louis adds them to the walnut-sage butter.

Chef Hiroki Yoshitake cleverly uses grapefruit oil to boost the flavor in his chilled four-ingredient soup. Lemon olive oil is a terrific alternative, and easier to find in the US. The citrus oil is used in two different ways: for sautéing fennel before pureeing it with grapefruit juice, and for garnishing the soup before serving.

Fresh lima beans are only available for about eight weeks a year. Here they appear in a buttery gratin.

David Bouley serves eggs en cocotte with three purees—fennel, sunchoke and polenta—plus Comté foam. Home cooks can pair baked eggs with cheese polenta, evoking Bouley's Comté foam with polenta puree.

This grilled-vegetable version of eggplant Parmesan, like the one Grace Parisi’s Calabrian grandmother used to make, is much lighter than the fried kind.

This superb version of tabbouleh has chopped asparagus as well as traditional bulgur, tomato, parsley and mint.

To make this simple side dish, chef Michael White simmers garlic in milk, which mellows its flavor. Then he purees the garlic and, just before serving, adds it to the sautéed chard.

During her stay in Bangladesh, Naomi Duguid fell in love with dals (soupy lentil dishes) known as tok dal, or tart dal. "They all have an intriguing balance of tartness from tamarind and lime, and sweetness from slow-cooked onions." While asparagus isn't a traditional ingredient, Duguid was inspired to add it because Bangladesh is so fertile, and many green vegetables grow there.

Hear the name ravioli nudi—literally, naked ravioli—and you may envision little sauceless pasta packets, but in fact it's not the sauce that's missing, but the pasta itself. Ravioli filling, in this case spinach and ricotta, is simmered like tender little dumplings. To save time, buy precleaned spinach from the salad bar.

Stacked high with slices of tomato, onion, cucumber, avocado, and provolone cheese, this is a vegetable sandwich that even confirmed carnivores will love. You can add or substitute other fresh vegetables; radishes, spinach, or grated carrot go particularly well here. When you can't get good tomatoes, don't buy lousy, cotttony ones; use twice the amount of lettuce instead.

A dinner of Brussels sprouts, turnips, carrots, and lentils may sound more like a punishment than a treat, but believe us—the combination is delicious. In fact, the general effect is actually rather delicate.