Best vegetarian recipes for non-vegetarians?

zzzLazyDaisy

This is a turkish dish called yesil mersimak (green lentils). It is yummy and honestly I bet a lot of carnivores won't even know they are not eating meat!

One mug green lentils (rinsed)
3 Mugs water
Veggie spice cube if liked

Onions
tin tomatoes
tomato paste
mixed herbs (or whatever)
garlic

Gently simmer lentils until the water is all absorbed and they look a bit like porrige (about 40 mins) you can do this in advance or even the day before.

Sweat down the onions.

Mix thecooked lentils with the rest of the ingredients, and simmer gently for about 20 mins. Serve with rice. Serve either wedges of lemon (traditional) or natural yogurt to accompany.

You can vary this recipe by adding soya sauce and ginger to spice it up, I also sometimes add finely chopped courgettes.

Or Top it with mash potato, or mash swede and carrots, and some grated cheese, and bang it in the oven for a tasty sheperds pie.

Also on a similar subject, Asda meat free mince (freezer section) is much tastier than quorn imho.

Daisy

Bettie

killmymortgage wrote: »

I'm not veggie, but my family enjoy vegetable crumble.

Thanks for reminding me. I used to have this a lot when I had little time to cook. I used to buy a tin of mixed veg in tomato sauce and empty that in a dish, add crumble topping, grill and have a lovely hot meal on the table in ten minutes.
I haven't been able to find that same tin of mixed veg so maybe it's discontinued but I will make a batch up later for tea and keep some spare in the freezer for another time.

Butterfly_Brain

This is a good source for vegetarian recipes it is from Allegra McEvedy who was one of the presenters on Economy Gastronomy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/allegramcevedy

champys

OK. Here's a topper. Make this - it's FUN, kids love it and so does my DH. It doesn't really have a name, but let's call it 'Mystery Boules' for now.

It involves a pack of ready-made puff pastry, hard boiled eggs, frozen spinach, cheddar cheese and breadcrumbs. For 4 people:

1 lb frozen leaf spinach - thawed, drained and the liquid pressed out
mix with: 100g mature cheddar, grated and 50g breadcrumbs. Add some pepper and maybe a little nutmeg - salt usually not needed depending on how strong your cheese is.

Cut 8 rounds out of the puff pastry, place 4 of them on a baking sheet.

Take 4 hard boiled eggs, peel them. Divide the spinach mixture into 4 portions. Now it gets fun. Take a portion of spinach in one hand, flatten it a bit, then take a hard boiled egg and place it on top. Sculpt the spinach mix around the egg to form a nice, round green ball with the egg in the middle. It really works. Place the ball on a round of pastry. Follow same procedure with the other eggs. Moisten the edges of the pastry circles with water, place the remaining 4 pastry circles over the spinach balls and crimp the pastry edges together with your fingers and then flatten them a bit all around to retain the ball shape. You now have 4 pastry 'mystery boules'.

Bake them first for 10 minutes in a 200° oven, then lower the temperature to 170° and leave them for another 30 minutes until brown and crisp.

Serve it with a tomato salad for colour effect. DH must have ketchup with it, of course.

This really is a hit because it has all the macho-ness of a pork pie, but is really veggie and a real surprise when you make it for the first time (and nobody has seen you preparing it).

I have some other good ones - if I have time will post another one in this thread. Good luck!

Vaila

i guess meat alternatives , quorn has a broad and very tasty range and is a lot less pricey than the real thing, my meat eating brother loves the quorn burgers, actually more so than beef etc

misfire

Quorn gets my vote big style!!! we switched to it for dieting reasons (fab source of low fat protein) but it really helped as I don't like beef oh loves chilli - now I do Quorn Chilli we can both eat - he says now he can't tell the difference. It is fab as you can get pieces, mince, strips in different 'styles', fillets etc... so easy to cook - we just flavour it well. I prefer the Quorn sausages to real ones! its often on offer (and is always brill value in farm foods) and you can freeze it etc.. We do alot of things like chilli, sweet n sour, cook in sauces etc...

Joy of Quorn doing burgers, sausages, grills, and ready meal cottage pie and curry - is if you needed just to do a veg option for 1 person its very easy - you can still eat the same meal just in a veggie and non vegie way IYSWIM.

I find it alot cheaper using Quorn to - its a definite hit in our house (should point out my husband is SOOOO fussy with food and he loves it!)

kunekune

My daughter eats fish but not meat, and my son doesn't really like meat very much because he's not good at chewing. I couldn't live without meat. Our approach varies from day to day.

Some days I do separate meals: we always used to do that on curry/chilli night anyway, because the children don't like chilli yet. The children both like cauldron burgers and sausages, and also frozen glamorgan sausages. They like vegetarian frankfurters made with tofu sliced into baked beans. Those nights, they eat every scrap!

Some days I cook something we can all eat, such as macaroni cheese, veg lasagne or a veg soup with hm scones.

Some days I cook something which is adaptable, eg, pizzas with each person having their own topping, or a meat dish with a veg side dish that would be nice just by itself. A good one recently was lamb chops served with couscous and courgettes stuffed with mushrooms & chickpeas. If I'm doing carbonara, I make it without the bacon and serve that on the side, with bolognese I cook the sauce separately for a bit before adding it to the mince, so I can remove some.

Pablosmummy

Hi

I'm not sure where you shop but Asda have vegetarian dried mixes for burgers, sausages, nut roast and falafels etc. We've tried to falafels and sausages so far and we love them. I think they are about 80p so not to expensive and they are really easy to make, you just add water, leave for 5 mins and cook! Might be an easy option if you are cooking meat for the rest of the family??

They are underneath the lentils in my local shop if you want to find them

NiceGuyEddie_2

Afternoon all

I've noticed that it's fairly popular on here to have 'meat free days' as a way of keeping the costs down, but I wondered what you tend to have - as someone who would probably live on meat alone if it was healthy to do so, I'm finding it difficult to gain ideas for filling, tasty and healthy meals without meat.

I'm sure there's plenty of scrummy dishes out there, but after eliminating things I don't eat (chiefly nuts, cheese in any great quantity, beans of any variety, peas, aubergine, kale and cabbage) and trying to have more protein and less starchy carbs, I can't see much further than stuffed peppers, frittata, mushroom burgers, falafel and mild veg curries

So, what do you guys have and could anyone share suggestions for someone as fussy as me?

littleredhen

omelettes
quiche - home made are nice
soups
souffles