Skip to main content

6 Best Family Vegetarian Recipes

So you know that to help the planet, your health, and your wallet, it's best not to have meat for dinner every day.  But you have a family to feed.  And it just gets complicated trying to find vegetarian recipes that your kids will actually eat.

Well, I know your kids will probably have a completely different set of preferences to mine.  Occasionally I read one of those family recipe books where they will say, "This dish disappears in a flash in our house," and I read it and think, "My children wouldn't touch that!".  They don't like most beans, soup, or tomato sauces, and Toby doesn't like eggs.  They do like things with lots of toppings that they can add, baked beans, refried beans, and cheese.

So I don't present this as the complete answer to your dinnertime woes.  But here are some of the veggie dishes that work best for us.

(Most of the links are to Monthly Munch posts; scroll down to find the recipe at the end)

1. Black bean burrito bowl


This is nice and easy to make and eat.  The boys love heaping up the toppings.  We often don’t have the avocado, even though it’s nice, but we usually have cheese, yoghurt and chilli sauce in the house, and I try and remember to get the tortilla chips to add some crunch.  You can always add some extra vegetables (sweetcorn is good) or more beans to make it go further.

200ml rice
1 tbsp olive oil
1 smallish onion, finely diced
1 celery stick, finely diced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 red pepper, finely diced
1 x 400g can black beans, drained and rinsed
250ml vegetable stock
1 ripe avocado, thinly sliced
crumbled feta or grated Cheddar
natural yoghurt
chilli sauce
tortilla chips

Put the rice in a pan with 400ml boiling salted water.  Bring to the boil, turn the heat right down and cook for 15 minutes with the lid on.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large frying pan.  Cook the onion and celery until softened, then add the garlic, paprika and cumin.  Stir for a minute.  Add the red pepper, black beans and vegetable stock and simmer for 10 minutes.  Add seasoning to taste.

Scoop the rice into bowls and ladle the bean mixture over the top.  Put all the extra bits on the table so that people can add whatever they like.  Serves 4.

2. Easiest ever vegetarian lasagna


This is the only way I make lasagna any more, because it's a doddle to put together and the only thing I need to remember to buy is a tub of cottage cheese.  When spinach is whizzed up to make the sauce, it apparently doesn't count as the normally-disdained green leafy stuff.
Vegetarian lasagna

3. Carrot cornbread

This stuff is very delicious.  I usually make it to go with vegetable chilli (which the boys won't eat, so they get baked beans and cheese or whatever useful leftovers are lying around).  Using pure cornmeal makes it very crumbly; if you're not avoiding gluten you can substitute in some plain flour to hold it together better.  This makes plenty, but it freezes well and can be eaten for breakfast (with butter and syrup, like pancakes), lunch or dinner.
Carrot cornbread

 4.  Home made pizza

Yeah, I know.  This one does require you to be around a few hours in advance of the meal.  But Theo loves helping to roll out the dough, and it fits the lots-of-toppings requirement perfectly.  Grated cheddar, tomatoes, peppers and olives are what we have to have - anything extra is a bonus.  Try dollops of pesto, mushrooms, sweetcorn, or an egg cracked on top.

Home made pizza

5. Fajitas

These are somewhere between fajitas and tacos, and would be scorned by any self-respecting Mexican.  But we love them anyway.  I make the seasoning mix up in bulk and keep it in a jar, so I don't have to mess around making it every time.  It works for the black bean burrito bowl too.  I use mild chilli powder and leave out the cayenne, but to be honest, the boys mostly just have beans, cheese and salad in their tortillas.


1 heaped tbsp Taco Potion #19 (or similar fajita seasoning)
1 large onion, chopped
2 peppers, chopped
mushrooms / sweetcorn / cooked diced squash if you like
about 200g frozen Quorn mince or chicken-type pieces
4 large flour tortillas / wraps
grated cheese
1 can refried beans
plain yoghurt or sour cream
salsa
chopped tomatoes / cucumber / lettuce / fresh coriander

In a large frying pan, heat some oil and fry the onion and peppers (and any other raw veg) until just softening.  Add the seasoning and a splash (50-100ml) of water and give it a good stir.  Add the Quorn mince along with frozen sweetcorn and any cooked veg.  Make sure there's a bit of liquid in the bottom so it doesn't all stick, but you want the finished mixture fairly dry, so don't put too much water in.  Put a lid on and leave it to cook for 15 min or so, stirring once in a while.

Meanwhile, grate the cheese, chop the salad, clear the kids' homework off the table, and all that stuff.  When you're about ready, heat up the refried beans in the microwave, and give the tortillas a few seconds in there to warm up too.

Put the frying pan on the table along with all the other bits and pieces, and let everyone make their own fajitas.

6. Pasta with roasted vegetables

This recipe comes from a 20-year-old book called the Oxo book of food and cooking.  Every single dish contains Oxo cubes of some description, most of which I've never seen in the shops.  The dressing is a kind of nutty pesto; it adds lots of flavour, but substitute bought pesto if you need to.
 Pasta with roasted vegetables

 I hope that gives you some new ideas!  If you have any favourites in your family, let me know - I'd love to hear about them.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Supercars and Selfies on the South Coast

We drove south on a wet, wet Saturday in August. The windscreen wipers swished endlessly back and forth, as we debated whether it was worth stopping anywhere except for the overcrowded motorway services. By the time we reached Winchester, the wipers had subsided to an occasional flick across the screen. We decided to stop. Of course, as soon as we left the car park there was a brief shower, but we ducked into the City Mill, now a National Trust property. There was a large room full of the usual kind of displays about flour milling; a recently renovated garden; and downstairs, the mill race running at full tilt. The mill is built right across the River Itchen. Winchester City Mill garden The mill race Water wheel (awaiting renovation) We stayed dry as we explored further into Winchester. There was even some blue sky for our selfie by the cathedral! But as we walked back to the car the rain hit us like a hose on full blast. An overhanging building provided some slight shelter, but the wa

National Forest Way: Calke Abbey to Ashby de la Zouch

All the best walking blogs have maps on. I finally figured out how to add a route map to mine. If I get time, I'll add them to the previous posts as well, so you can see where I went. So, here are the two walks which made up the next stretch of the NFW. Walk 1  I started from the National Trust property and walked along by the lake, up the hill by the deer park, and down to Staunton Harold reservoir - all very familiar. Calke village postbox featured a highland cow on top. Lake at Calke Abbey Herd of deer   A short stretch on the road took me to Dimminsdale, which was new to me. There are records of mining at the site from the 13th century until the end of the 19th century. It's incredible to think that people worked there for so many hundreds of years. Now it is a secluded landscape of still pools and shaggy trees. Dimminsdale   I crossed a small section of the Staunton Harold estate, then went up a private lane with some rather nice houses. My turning point was where the Nati

Reading for Spiritual Formation 2023-24

I wasn't sure whether to read another set of theology books this year. Could the time I spend on it be better spent on something else? At what point does it become reading for the sake of it, without having much impact on my wider life? It's difficult to tell. However, as usual, I had a growing list of books I wanted to read. I do need to think about what I'm doing as well as what I'm reading, and I don't expect to continue this specific discipline indefinitely. But I decided there was space for at least one more year of Reading for Spiritual Formation. So, without further soul-searching: The Books. Three Mile an Hour God Kosuke Koyama Japanese theologians are few and far between; Christianity is still very much a niche religion in Japan. Kosuke Koyama was Japanese and appears to be both influential and accessible. Not every theologian is both! So I'm excited to read his recently republished book Three Mile an Hour God. It was originally written in 1979, and is