I would like to, once a week, cook a vegetarian meal for my family. I should say that my family’s favorite meals are a big, fat roasted pork, a nice juicy steak and masses of wings (BBQ, buffalo and honey mustard) so this will be a challenge. They do love their veggies, though, so it shouldn’t be an insurmountable challenge.
What am I looking for are beefy meals without the beef. Whatcha got?
How about Vegetarian Lasagna, with a box of chopped spinach squeezed out and mixed in with the ricotta cheese.
I recommend cheese enchiladas served with black beans and a Spanish rice pilaf with onions, green peppers and tomatos.
Eggplant Parmesan. With all that fried and cheesy goodness they’ll never know it’s meatless. Make sure you slice it really thin and soak it in salt water for a half hour or so before cooking.
Vegetarian tacos or chili using soy based “ground round” instead of ground beef. They’ll never know the difference.
How about a “southern” night with macaroni and cheese, collard greens, black eyed peas and cornbread?
Or a big oriental stir-fry with fried eggroll skins on the side?
Falafel!
For a while I fed 7 people, 2 of whom were vegetarians. So lots of meals had 2 versions.
Soups are great (and usually simple) to vegetarian-ize. I recommend potato chili–use your usual recipe, but substitue lots of diced potatoes in place of the meat. Also maybe up the bean content for higher protein.
I recently made West African chicken stew (recipe on allrecipes.com) and I’m thinking of making a vegetarian version by subbing veg stock for chicken, and chickpeas for chicken. I think it would be really good.
Not really beef and potatoes, I know, but maybe workable for your needs. Good luck!
Yes, they probably will. But it’ll still be good.
Portobello mushrooms are very rich and “meaty.” An easy starter dish is mushroom stroganoff. Remove stems and gills before using.
Does your family like Indian food? There are so many options vegetarian options in Indian cuisine that I don’t even know where to start.
Falafel pitas with hummus are tasty.
You can use vegetarian soy based ground beef to make sloppy joes or tacos
Cheese and onion enchiladas
Rice and beans
If your kids like chicken nuggets, you may want to try chick’n nuggets (from soy) or Quorn nuggets (they are made from a fungus but do NOT taste like a mushroom at all - they actually taste more like real chicken than soy nuggets do in my opinion).
I’ve heard that if you contact the Quorn folks they will send coupons to try their stuff.
Bean chili tacos sounds good. Portobella stroganoff sounds fantastic. If I served my family Mac n cheese and greens without ham or fried chicken they’d murderize me.
Falafel! Hubby would love that. I think I’d like to stay away from meat substitutes, buy not necessarily away from soy. There really isn’t anything that’s meat except meat.
Soup, salad, and crusty bread. A hearty minestrone is great this time of year.
Indian food! Why didn’t I think of that? Spicy curried potatoes with that stuff that looks like lentils on the side. I bet I could use Goya empenada discs as a samosa dough.
I love eggplant. Temperature permitting, you can always grill them and use them in place of a hamburger patty in between some buns. I always prefer that personally to using fake meat.
Before you completely dismiss the fakey meat products, give the Gardenburger BBQ Riblets a try.
Ohhhhh…
~VOW
Yeah, I find that Indian dishes do a terrific job of being hearty without meat. Mind you, they’re even better with some lamb, or pork, or chicken… But you might be surprised how tuck-into-able some garbanzo beans can be.
I’m a meat-eater, and I’ve had dishes with TVP where I really couldn’t tell the difference. It only works with things with other strong flavors, though, like tomato sauce. There, the meat is really mostly adding texture, and TVP does just fine on that score.
On another note: Would your family consider grilled cheese and tomato soup to be a suitable dinner? My family does, but I can see someone thinking that that’s just lunch food.
Oh, and pieroghis.
Notice the trend toward suggestions from Italian, Mexican, and Indian cuisines. The common factor is a standard meal component in the “hearty hot glop” category (pasta/cheese, beans/cheese, and potatoes/pulses respectively) that is likely to scratch the carnivore’s itch for savory substantial stodge.
Search on Mark Bittman, foodie for the NY Times. His book is titled How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.
Here is a blogger that does a lot of his recipes: http://bittmaninmykitchen.blogspot.com/
You can also register for the NY Times (free for 20 article view per month) and search Bittman’s archive.
I was going to suggest this. It’s also a great way to serve a vegetarian mean without meat eaters realizing they’re eating “a vegetarian meal”; if that makes any sense.