Looking for the best vegetarian main dishes? These healthy, easy to make, and seriously delicious entrees are guaranteed crowd pleasers.
Hi there. We’re Alex and Sonja, and we love to cook vegetarian recipes. In fact, we literally wrote the book on pretty simple plant-powered cooking! Together we’ve spent years researching the best vegetarian main dishes that make satisfying meals, sans the meat. (Yeah, it’s kind of a dream job.) Are you looking for vegetarian main dishes that are healthy, easy to make, and seriously delicious? You’ve come to the right place.
Reading: crowd pleaser vegetarian main dish
Now when it comes to vegetarian entrees, what does best mean, anyway? Here at A Couple Cooks, we’re unabashedly obsessed with balancing these three variables:
- Delicious: Most importantly, it has to taste great.
- Easy: Even better if it’s pretty simple to make.
- Nourishing: Why make a recipe if it doesn’t at least have a pinch of healthy?
Read more: 22 Easy Chickpea Recipes
The best vegetarian main dishes, the ones you want to make again and again, balance these three things. Scroll down for what we find to be the “best of the best”. And if you like these, we’ve got many more in our cookbook, Pretty Simple Cooking.
Recipes that are easy to make
Everyone is always asking us for the same thing these days: easy main dish recipes! And we get it. We know you’re not lazy. There’s just a lot going on, and you need recipes that will please everyone at the table but not take your entire evening to make. What does easy mean? All of these recipes use basic kitchen skills, dirty a moderate amount of pans, and are relatively fast to make.
If easy is your jam, start with these best vegetarian entree recipes below. And if you’d like more where that comes from, these Easy Dinner Recipes, Easy Weeknight Dinners, Easy Vegetarian Recipes, and Easy Vegan Recipes are engineered to be user-friendly for weeknights.
Dinner recipes with a pinch of healthy
Read more: vegetarian deep dish pizza recipe ideas
The other thing everyone asks for? Healthy vegetarian main dishes. Healthy means different things to different people. Here’s what healthy means to us: whole food recipes that are full of vegetables and whole grains, use healthy oils like olive oil, and focus on filling plant-based proteins. All of these recipes are vegetarian and vegan, and many of them are naturally gluten-free too. Get started with the best vegetarian main dishes below. If you’re looking for more, head to our Healthy Dinner Recipes.
All the best vegetarian main dishes (from quickest to longest!)
A feature readers love from our cookbook is that each chapter lists recipes in order from fastest to longest total time to prepare. That way, as you page through a chapter you know the quickest recipes are at the beginning, and the later recipes gradually longer to prepare. Due to popular demand, we’ve done the same thing with our best vegetarian main dishes below! So let’s start with the fastest…
Meal plans & more
Looking for more? Here are some additional recipes organized into meal plans, Instant Pot resources, and more!
- Healthy Meal Plan
- 28 Day Vegetarian Meal Plan
- 28 Day Plant Based Diet Meal Plan
- Vegetarian Instant Pot Recipes
- Vegan Instant Pot Recipes
- 15 Best Lentil Recipes
More vegetarian recipes
- Homemade Acai Bowl
- Healthy Ranch Dressing
- Feta & Quinoa Stuffed Peppers
- Stuffed Poblano Peppers
- Parmesan Potato Wedges
- Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie with French Lentils
- Incredible Vegetarian Gravy
- Artichoke & Quinoa Vegetarian Enchiladas
- Vegetarian Meatballs
- Golden Vegetable Soup Recipe
- Vegetarian Fajitas on the Grill
Read more: Vegetarian Breakfast Casserole
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