Vegetarian Dinner Ideas: 20 Easy Veggie Dinners for Weeknights
Twenty veggie dinners grouped by what the evening needs: fast, comfort, high protein, one pot or a crowd, plus the three habits that keep them filling.
By Eatpace 9 min read 
Vegetarian dinner ideas are easy to find and hard to actually cook on a Tuesday. Most lists are either forty variations on a chickpea curry or dishes that need three pans, a food processor and an ingredient you have never bought. What a weeknight needs is simpler: a dinner that is on the table in the time you have, that fills everyone up, and that nobody describes as "fine".
The 20 veggie dinners below are grouped by what the evening needs rather than by ingredient. Fast, for the nights when 30 minutes is the ceiling. Comfort, for pies, bakes and pasta. High protein without meat, for when you want to stop feeling peckish an hour after eating. One pot and traybake, for the washing up. And a handful that feed a crowd. Every one is named with its own cooking time from the recipe, so nothing here is optimistic.
If you are thinking about a whole week of them rather than tonight, there is a separate post on vegetarian meal planning for a week of easy dinners. This one is about the single evening and the dish that fits it. The full shelf is under vegetarian dinner recipes.
Fast: on the table in 30 minutes or under
Fast vegetarian dinners have an advantage over fast meat dinners: nothing needs to reach a safe temperature. Eggs, noodles, beans and pasta are done when they taste done, and the clock is honest.
Chilli Crisp Noodles with Soft Egg is ready in 20 minutes and is the dinner for the night you have nothing in but noodles, eggs and a jar of chilli crisp. The egg yolk and the chilli oil make the sauce between them. Smoky Black Bean Tacos in 25 minutes are a tin of beans fried hard with smoked paprika and cumin, piled into warm tortillas with something crunchy and something sharp on top.
Egg Fried Rice takes 20 minutes and is a better dinner than its reputation suggests, provided the rice is cold, the pan is very hot and there is more egg and spring onion than you think reasonable. Pea Ricotta Fusilli, 25 minutes, is pasta tossed with peas, ricotta, lemon and mint, green and gentle and liked by children who distrust anything else green.
Comfort: pies, bakes and pasta that do not need meat to be rich
Comfort food is where vegetarian cooking is at its most convincing, because the things that make a dish comforting, melted cheese, pastry, a cream sauce, a crust, never had anything to do with meat in the first place.
Melty Mozzarella Gnocchi Bake is ready in 35 minutes: shop-bought gnocchi in a quick tomato sauce, mozzarella torn over the top and grilled until it blisters. It is the dinner people ask for again. Spinach & Feta Filo Pie, 43 minutes, is layers of crackling filo around a spinach, feta and dill filling, and it is far less fiddly than it looks because filo forgives torn sheets.
Mushroom & Thyme Tagliatelle in 35 minutes is the pasta for a cold night: mushrooms cooked until properly brown, thyme, garlic, a splash of cream and a lot of black pepper. Cheddar Mac & Cheese Bake takes 38 minutes and needs no defence. Make a double batch of the sauce; it keeps.
Brown the mushrooms until you think you have gone too far, then give them two more minutes.
High protein without meat
The common complaint about vegetarian meals for dinner is hunger an hour later, and it usually comes down to protein. Beans, lentils, paneer, halloumi, tofu, tempeh, eggs and cottage cheese all carry a lot of it, and the recipes here lean on them deliberately. The protein figures are the recipes' own.
Herby Cottage Cheese Flatbread is ready in 18 minutes and has 35 g of protein, which surprises people until they realise cottage cheese is mostly protein with a mild flavour that takes herbs, lemon and black pepper well. Paneer Tikka Skewers, 42 minutes, also give you 35 g: cubes of paneer in a spiced yoghurt marinade, charred under the grill or on a griddle pan with peppers and onion.
Creamy Cottage Cheese Pasta & Tomatoes is 26 minutes and 28 g of protein: the cottage cheese is blended into a sauce that behaves like a cream sauce and tastes richer than it is. Soy Ginger Tempeh & Broccoli takes 28 minutes for 24 g, with tempeh fried until the edges crisp, then tossed with broccoli in a soy, ginger and garlic glaze. If you have not cooked with tempeh, start here; it is firmer and nuttier than tofu and takes on sauce quickly.
For more in this lane, the high-protein dinner recipes include a good number of vegetarian dishes.
One pot and traybake: dinner with one thing to wash
The best weeknight veggie dinners are the ones where the tin is the dish and the oven does the cooking. Vegetables and beans roast in the same tray, or everything simmers in one pan and the pasta cooks in the sauce.
Chickpea & Spinach Stew is ready in 28 minutes in one pan: chickpeas, tomato, cumin, a lot of spinach stirred in at the end and a squeeze of lemon. It is cheap, it reheats well and it wants bread or rice. Harissa Aubergine & Chickpea Traybake, 40 minutes, is aubergine and chickpeas roasted in harissa until the aubergine collapses and the chickpeas crisp, with yoghurt or tahini spooned over.
Marry Me Halloumi Orzo takes 38 minutes and cooks the orzo in a creamy tomato and sun-dried tomato sauce with seared halloumi on top, all in one pan. Coconut Vegetable Curry in 40 minutes is the one for the end of the week when the vegetable drawer needs clearing, and it freezes. The one-pot dinner recipes have more of this kind.
Feeds a crowd
Vegetarian is the easy answer when you are feeding a table of mixed eaters, because nobody has to be given a separate plate. These four scale up, hold in the oven and do not mind being made in advance.
Three Bean Chilli, ready in 39 minutes, is the obvious one and deserves to be: three kinds of beans, smoked chilli, a long enough simmer to thicken, with rice, tortilla chips, soured cream and grated cheese on the table for people to build their own. Veggie Enchilada Bake in 42 minutes is tortillas rolled around a bean and vegetable filling, covered in sauce and cheese and baked in one dish that goes straight to the table.
Roasted Vegetable Lasagne is 95 minutes, the longest cook on this list, and worth it on a Sunday when the house is full; it can be assembled hours ahead and sits happily in the fridge until it is time to bake. Lentil & Sweet Potato Cottage Pie, 77 minutes, is the other make-ahead: a lentil and vegetable base under a sweet potato mash, and it happens to be vegan without anyone noticing.
The three habits that make veggie dinners satisfying, and what to keep in
Why do some vegetarian dinners leave people rummaging for a snack while others do not? Across the 20 above, three things keep showing up.
- Put a protein in every dinner. Beans, lentils, eggs, tofu, tempeh, paneer, halloumi or cottage cheese. A pasta with only vegetables in it is a side.
- Add something crisp or charred. Fried chickpeas, charred broccoli, blistered cheese, crunchy tortilla, browned mushrooms. Soft on soft is what makes some veggie meals feel like baby food.
- Finish with acid and salt. Lemon, lime, vinegar or yoghurt at the end, and a final pinch of salt after tasting. Vegetarian dishes have less natural savouriness than meat and need this step more, not less.
The cupboard follows from the habits. Tins of chickpeas, black beans, butter beans and chopped tomatoes. Dried red lentils and a bag each of pasta, rice and noodles. A jar of harissa, a jar of chilli crisp, soy sauce, tomato purée and a tin of coconut milk. In the fridge: eggs, a block of halloumi or paneer, a tub of cottage cheese or feta, lemons, and whatever hard cheese you cook with. With those in, at least half the dinners above are a short shop or no shop away.
Planning takes the last bit of friction out. If you use Eatpace, setting More veg as your goal leans your next few dinners toward dishes like these, and putting meat under Never means the plan respects it strictly rather than offering a chicken dish you then have to swap away. One grocery list follows those dinners, sorted by aisle, so the chickpeas and the halloumi are already in the house on the night.
Whatever you cook from, the grouping is the useful part. Decide what the evening needs, fast, comfort, protein, one pan or a crowd, and pick from that shelf rather than scrolling through all twenty. Rate the ones that worked Loved it in Eatpace and more like them come round.
What are some easy vegetarian dinners for weeknights?
Noodles with a soft egg and chilli crisp, black bean tacos, egg fried rice, a pea and ricotta pasta, or a one-pan chickpea and spinach stew. All of those are ready in 28 minutes or under by their recipes' own times.
How do I make vegetarian dinners more filling?
Put a real protein in every dinner, such as beans, lentils, eggs, tofu, paneer or cottage cheese, and keep a proper portion of carbohydrate alongside. A vegetable-only pasta or salad is what leaves people hungry.
Which vegetarian dinners are high in protein?
By their recipes' figures: Herby Cottage Cheese Flatbread and Paneer Tikka Skewers at 35 g each, Creamy Cottage Cheese Pasta & Tomatoes at 28 g, Soy Ginger Tempeh & Broccoli at 24 g and Three Bean Chilli at 18 g.
What vegetarian dinner can I make for a crowd?
Three Bean Chilli with toppings on the table, a Veggie Enchilada Bake, a Roasted Vegetable Lasagne or a Lentil & Sweet Potato Cottage Pie. All scale up, and the last two can be assembled hours ahead.
Are these vegetarian dinner ideas suitable for vegans?
Several are: Smoky Black Bean Tacos, Chickpea & Spinach Stew, Harissa Aubergine & Chickpea Traybake, Coconut Vegetable Curry, Three Bean Chilli, Soy Ginger Tempeh & Broccoli and Lentil & Sweet Potato Cottage Pie are all vegan by their recipes. The pies, bakes and paneer dishes are not.
The dinners in this post
Every one is in the Eatpace catalogue, with the time and nutrition on the recipe. Add it to your plan in the app.
