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Easy Vegan Dinner Recipes (Healthy & Delicious!) #vegancooking
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May 3, 2024
In this video, I'm cooking up three easy, healthy, delicious vegan dinners for those busy weeknights when your time and energy are in shorter supply. The recipes in this video are actually much closer to how I really cook on a day-to-day basis, with easy and flexible recipes. The first recipe is for chickpea tacos, seasoned with a cumin seasoning blend, and topped with cilantro lime sauce, red cabbage, and broccoli sprouts. The next recipe is a tofu and rice bowl which uses purple (aka black or forbidden) rice, fried tofu, roasted cauliflower and sweet potato, and black beans. It's also topped off with our cilantro lime sauce, red cabbage, and broccoli sprouts. Finally, we'll go into a pasta dish with creamy cashew-tomato sauce. This dish also has lentils, roasted red peppers, and steamed broccoli. Let me know in the comments which one is your favorite! I don't have blog posts for these recipes (at least not yet), so here are some basic written instructions: 1. Cilantro Lime Yogurt Sauce 1 1/2 cups vegan unsweetened Greek yogurt (Kite Hill is a good brand in the US) 30 g. bunch of cilantro, chopped juice from 1/2 lime 2 tsp. maple syrup salt & pepper to taste Blend together in a blender until smooth. Adjust seasonings as needed to taste
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hello and welcome back. If you are new here, I am Steph and today we are going to make
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three easy, delicious, and nutritious vegan dinners. So let's get right into it. We are
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going to start with some chickpea tacos and we're going to start the tacos with our sauce
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which is a cilantro lime yogurt sauce. So I'm starting off with two jars of vegan Greek
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yogurt. These jars are 180 grams or about 3 quarters of a cup, so one and a half cups
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in total. Next I am just chopping up a small bunch of cilantro to make it a little easier
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on my basic blender here. This bunch is about 30 grams, but you could use more or less depending
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on your taste. And if you don't love cilantro, you could use another herb here like parsley
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dill, basil. Now I'm going to squeeze the juice from half of a lime in there. You could
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use a juicer if you want. I'm just kind of using my hands to filter out the seeds. And
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I will also add a little bit of maple syrup just to take the edge off the acidity from
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the lime and the yogurt. I'm probably going to want to add some salt and pepper here too
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but I will blend it up first and see how it tastes before I add anything else. And with
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the texture of the Greek yogurt, you might find that you have to stop here and there to scrape down the sides, but eventually it will all get mixed together. Alright, so it's
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looking pretty good, but I do want to give it a taste. I really added very light seasonings
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to begin with, so let's taste it and see what it needs. Alright, so we've definitely got
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some sour going on there. We've got the cilantro taste. I do want to add some salt and pepper
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though. And I'll just add a little for now and add more if I need it. Alright, let's
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try it again. I think I want to add just a tiny little bit more of maple syrup to balance
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out that acidity, but other than that, I think we're almost there. That was a little much
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Perfect. Okay, next I'm just chopping up some red cabbage, which will go on top of our tacos
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for some color and crunch. It's also a good source of vitamins A, C, and K. And if you
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can't get red cabbage or you don't like it, you can use any other crunchy veggies like
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carrots or radishes or whatever you want. Next up, I am preparing the chickpeas. I have
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drained them, and of course I saved the liquid, also known as aquafaba. And I'm just going
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to heat these over medium heat, add a little bit of oil. These are already cooked, but
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I want to warm them up. I want to add some seasoning and just fry them up a little bit
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I'll start off with some salt and then I'll sprinkle on some garlic powder. And I'm also
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going to add some of this cumin seasoning blend. I'm in Taiwan, so if you're somewhere else
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you probably won't find this exact blend. So I'll list the spices on the screen that are in this
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blend if you do want to look for something similar or mix up your own blend. I have to
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say this is a pretty delicious spice blend, but you can really use any seasoning that you like
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And I'm just going to stir them and let them cook for a few minutes. After I tasted these
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chickpeas, I felt like they could really benefit from a touch of cinnamon here, so I'm just
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sprinkling that on, stir it up, give it a few minutes more, a little taste here, and perfect
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All right, so we're almost done here. It's just about ready to put everything all together. And
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our last piece is our tortillas. I'm using a soft flour tortilla. These are actually homemade
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but feel free to use store-bought if you want. I'm just going to heat them up over the pan to
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kind of soften them up a little bit, and then we will put it all together. So let's do it
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So I've got my pan on low heat here, and I'm just going to warm up the tortillas one at a
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time until they're soft. And the way I'm checking whether they're soft enough is by kind of using
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the spatula here to fold them up until they are really easy to fold. All right, so let's put this
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all together now, starting with about a quarter of the chickpeas and then adding some red cabbage on
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top, drizzle some sauce on there. And finally, we're going to top it all off with some broccoli
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sprouts for some extra texture and vitamins. And there it is. I will put the nutrition info on the
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screen here. And if you want to eat it with a lettuce wrap or out of a bowl in order to cut
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some carbs, I will also put the nutrition info here without the tortilla. All right, now it's
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time to taste test them. So let's see how they turned out. I feel like this is a little bit messy
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of a thing to eat on camera. I mean, I've got all these little chickpeas that might roll out here
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I'm just going to fold up the end here a little bit. All right, let's see
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Wow, this really turned out better than I expected. The chickpeas are just full of flavor
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And then you've got the cilantro yogurt sauce, which is really nice and fresh with some lime
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juice in there. And then you've got the cabbage and the greens, which are giving it just this
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little bit of crunch. I love this because it is delicious. It is satisfying and it's healthy. So
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definitely something you're going to want to add into your rotation for some easy, healthy vegan
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dinner. All right, let's get into our next recipe, which is a beautiful, colorful, delicious bowl
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And for this bowl, we are going to use our cilantro lime yogurt sauce again, which is why I made so
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much of it in the beginning. We're also going to put some sweet potatoes in there, some cauliflower
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some tofu, black beans, and purple rice. So let's get into it. So for my green bowl, I am using
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which translates to purple rice. But if you're in the U.S., you'll probably find it as black rice
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or forbidden rice. I have never tried this rice before I came to Taiwan, and I really had no idea
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what I was missing. I always knew that I should eat brown rice because it was healthier than white
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rice, but I just never liked brown rice and I couldn't get myself to eat it. But this purple
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rice is absolutely delicious and it has more protein, more fiber, and more iron than brown
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rice does. So if you can find it in your area, maybe at an Asian grocery store or maybe online
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I highly recommend that you try it. And of course it's your bowl, so you can use whatever rice you
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like or even another grain like quinoa. Anyway, I will just bring that to a boil and let it simmer
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until the water is all absorbed. In the meantime, I'm going to wrap up a block of firm tofu in my
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kitchen towel and I'm going to put it under some light weights to press out some of the water
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Next, I'm going to chop up some sweet potatoes. I have two potatoes and I'm just cutting them
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into bite-sized pieces. In addition to the sweet potatoes, I'm going to chop up some cauliflower
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here as well. This is going to get roasted together with the sweet potatoes. You could
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make this whole bowl even easier by baking the tofu together at the same time with these veggies
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too, but my oven is ridiculously small, so I'm going to fry the tofu, which does produce crispier
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tofu anyway. Next, I will slice up my tofu into short little strips and I'm going to put them in
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a wide bowl so that they can soak up my marinade. And I will put some low-sodium soy sauce and rice
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vinegar in here and toss the tofu around a bit to get it coated. I'm just going to set it aside
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to soak while I season my veggies. And at this point, you can start preheating your oven to 400
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degrees Fahrenheit. And I will add my sweet potatoes to a large bowl here and I'm just
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going to toss in some olive oil, some salt, some pepper. Sweet potatoes are already full of flavor
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on their own, so we don't need to do too much here as far as seasoning. And I've got a parchment-lined
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baking tray that I'm just going to spread these potatoes on top of. You want to make sure they're
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in a single layer so that they get evenly cooked. Now I'm going to season the cauliflower. So we've
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got the same olive oil, salt, pepper, but I am going to add some of that cumin seasoning blend
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that we used on the chickpeas in the last recipe. And there's a little garlic powder. Give it a
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little toss and we're just going to add that to the baking tray. And you can kind of tell the size of
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my oven from this baking tray. This baking tray is the size of the entire oven and all the veggies
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don't even fit on this little tray, let alone the tofu, but no problem. I will roast it in batches
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And this is going to go in the oven for about 30 minutes. You'll want to turn the veggies halfway
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through and exactly the same for the tofu if you're going to bake it. All right, back to the tofu
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because we are not done there. I have cleaned out this big bowl and I'm going to use it for coating
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the tofu with some cornstarch. And the marinade, you don't have to toss it. You can save it and use
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it again in the future. But the cornstarch is really the key to getting crispy tofu. So I'm
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starting by sprinkling some of this cornstarch all over, but then I'm going to go back and make sure
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each piece is fully coated before I fry it. And if you're baking the tofu, you can put it in the oven
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just like this, coated with the cornstarch. Now I'm going to fry these pieces in just a little bit
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of sunflower oil in a wide bottom nonstick pan. Tofu is very sticky when you cook it, so I highly
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recommend using a nonstick pan if you can. If you can't or you don't want to, then you're going to
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want to cook it in more oil so that it doesn't stick to the pan. So I am just dropping these
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pieces in my pan. I'm trying to be careful, make sure they don't touch because otherwise they will
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just kind of melt together. And when they are nice and golden brown on one side, you can use
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some chopsticks or tongs to flip them. You want to make sure the pieces get nice and crispy on all
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sides. And no matter how firm your tofu is, sometimes it will break. So don't stress about it
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You can still toss it in the pan and cook it up. All right, our bowl is finally ready for the final
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step. We're just going to put it all together. So I am starting with my rice. I'm going to kind of
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build my bowl in sections, but you can assemble it any way you want. You could mix it all up
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you could put it in layers, however you like it. All right, so next I'm adding some tofu
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followed by my sweet potato chunks. And I've also got some black beans here for a little more
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protein. These are canned, so they are already cooked. I just drain them and I am adding them
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straight to the bowl. And the last part of the base of my bowl is my roasted cauliflower. And I
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want to get some color and crunch and vitamins in there too, so I'm adding some of that red cabbage
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and then my broccoli sprouts. And finally, I am topping it all off with a couple spoonfuls of my
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cilantro lime yogurt sauce. And again, I will put the nutrition information on the screen here. As
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you can see, there's plenty of protein in this bowl. And if you wanted to add some healthy fats
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you could also add some avocado, olive oil, or some nuts and seeds. Let's give it a try
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Mmm. My first bite was just the rice, the tofu, with the sauce
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but already absolutely delicious. Let me try the rest. Mmm. Wow. So every part of this dish is just so good. I mean, the rice, first of all
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it's my favorite rice, so you can't go wrong there. You've got the tofu here, which is
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nicely crisped up. The soy sauce just really balances out the lightness of that cilantro
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lime sauce. And then of course, you've got the sweet potatoes, you've got the beans
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you've got this cauliflower, which is so tenderly roasted, but beautifully seasoned. And then you've
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got this cabbage and the greens for a little bit of crunch. Just really, really delicious. And
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honestly, this is like so super filling. This is two meals for me. Really, really delicious
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Definitely worth adding to your lineup. I'm going to have a little bit more of this, but in the
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meantime, let's move right on to our last easy dinner, which is a penne pasta in a creamy tomato
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sauce with some lentils, some broccoli, some roasted red peppers. It is one of my favorite
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things to make, so let's get into it. So I'm going to start with my creamy tomato sauce by
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blending up some cashews and water. You're going to want to pre-soak your cashews in water for
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two hours, but if you didn't plan in advance, you could just boil them for 10 minutes. I'm using
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three quarters of a cup of cashews and three quarters of a cup of water that's fresh water
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not the same water that it was soaked in. And I will just let that blend up until it's nice
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and smooth. It does take a few minutes, so be patient. All right, so now I'm just adding some
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whole peeled tomatoes. I've got two of them in there now, so I'll blend it up and see if I need
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more. I usually just judge by the color, honestly, and I'm going to add one more. And yeah, the juice
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just splashed on my shirt. So yeah, if you see that my shirt is not the same one a little later
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now you know why. All right, that is all blended up, so I will just give it a taste here
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At this point, the flavor is still pretty mild, so we're going to add some seasonings, starting with
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a little salt and a bunch of garlic powder, some pepper. If you have nutritional yeast at home
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definitely add it. I would start with maybe half a tablespoon and add more to taste
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Here in Taiwan, that's a specialty store thing, and since this is an easy recipe video
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I really wanted to stick to buying what I can get within walking distance. Anyway, I will give it a
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little taste here. Yeah, it needs a little more salt, a little more garlic powder. You could also
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add some dried basil, oregano, or whatever else you like. And that's it. Our sauce is done. Okay
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so next I'm just going to chop up some broccoli into florets. If you can get them pre-cut, you
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will save yourself a step, but this is what I could get here, so I need to chop them up into
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bite-sized pieces first. And I like to cook my pasta and broccoli at the same time to save some
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work. Since it's just me here and I'm not a fan of reheating pasta, I'm using a small pot. But of
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course, if you're cooking for more people, you're going to want to use a bigger pot than what I have
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here. So I'm going to cook the pasta based on the package's al dente instructions, which is to boil
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for 10 minutes. And I'm going to put some of my broccoli in a large mesh strainer and then rest
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it on top of the pot of boiling pasta and cover all of that with a lid. That's going to let the
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broccoli steam up beautifully. You just need a few minutes for each batch of broccoli until it's
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tender and bright green. You don't want to overcook it. You also want to stir your pasta regularly so
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that it doesn't stick together. I just typically give it a little stir when I'm swapping out the
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broccoli batches. Okay, now I'm just going to warm up my sauce and everything else in a large pan
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starting with some lentils. I'm just kind of eyeballing the amount of lentils based on the
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amount of sauce that I have. I want the lentils to really be distributed throughout the sauce
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Oh, and I'm on medium heat here, by the way. I've also got some strips of roasted red peppers here
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They're not exactly the same roasted red peppers you can buy in the U.S., but I think these are a
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close relative. And again, I'm just adding these in by eyeballing the amount. And then I'm adding
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some broccoli as well. I am not using all of the broccoli. I am going to save some broccoli and
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peppers to use to garnish my pasta later. So now I'm just going to pour in my sauce and mix it up
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until everything is nice and warm. You really need to be careful to keep stirring the sauce
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and don't let it get too hot because the cashews in the sauce can burn and it'll stick to the
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bottom of the pan. And it looks like the sauce can hold some more lentils, so I'm just going to add
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some more of them in there. So I have tossed the pasta and the sauce together. It's in my bowl
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here, and I'm just going to add some color with the broccoli pieces and peppers on top. And there
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you go. All right, well, here it is. It is time for the last taste test today. Let's see how this
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turned out. This is another great, easy dish. You just have that creamy tomato sauce with the
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lentils and then the broccoli is fresh, still got a little bit of crunch to it, nice and green. And
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then your red peppers are really bringing in a lot of flavor. The lentils are giving you a little
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bit of meatiness. Really, really delicious, easy and nutritious dish. Definitely one to add in for
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those busy weeknights when you don't have a lot of time to cook. All right, guys, that is it for this
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one. Let me know what you think of this new format. Do you like having three recipes in one video
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Would you prefer just to have the one recipe in each video? Let me know what you think. You can
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leave a comment, like, dislike, whatever. And if you like this kind of format, we'll keep doing it
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Thank you so much for watching, and I hopefully will see you in the next one
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