What are your easiest vegan meals?

Maesri curry paste is vegan (most other curry pastes have fish sauce).

I used to do lazy meal prep on Sundays where I'd heat up a can of the paste and a can of coconut milk, and then just throw in some bags of frozen veggies that I had on hand, and maybe a can of chickpeas or corn. Let it heat up and then dish it into different containers. The nice thing about doing it as a meal prep was that it actually tastes better the longer it sits, so the dinner I was having on Thursday from it tasted way better than the one on Monday.

The whole process was dead simple and super tasty, and writing this out now makes me wonder why I stopped.

Edit: I should also clarify that I’m not vegan, but I’m attempting to get progressively more vegan over time from my currently mostly vegetarian ways.

Rice and green lentils. You can throw them combined in a pan with water or vegetable broth (so say 1 cup rice, 1 cup lentils, 3 cups liquid), bring to a boil, then simmer covered for 15-20 minutes. I add soy sauce or chili garlic sauce as condiments and chow down.

Curry lentils are also pretty easy, iirc.

I should clarify and say I'm not a vegan first.

There's this vegan scrambled egg alternative that you can get here that tastes just amazing. Not much like egg, but just tasty. I keep a few packages for when I want to have something to eat in just a few minutes. Mix with water, chuck in lightly oiled pan, eat with a slice of bread and some crunchy cherry tomatoes or spring onions. Yummy

Don't underestimate the basic tomato salad:
Chopped tomatoes (I like cherry)
Chopped Scallion/Onion
Some kind of fat source (Veganaise/oil/avocado)
You can add some fixins like hot sauce, vinegar, cucumber, corn, pepper, dill, etc.

It's a solid side, or even just a snack. Less work to make and eat than a regular salad, imo.

Not precisely a meal, but I recently discovered a very easy vegan topping that adds great umami and sensory qualities to most vegan entrees.

1 T toasted sesame oil
4 oz. (heaping 1/2 c.) panko breadcrumbs
1 T + 1 tsp black sesame seeds

Heat the sesame oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat until shimmering, add panko and sesame seeds. Stir and cook until the panko is golden brown, remove from heat.

This can be stored in an air-tight container in the 'fridge indefinitely. It's delicious on salads, legume dishes, and pasta, occupying roughly the same flavor-enhancing space as grated Parmesan, but crunchy.

Also, the fastest easy vegan I can make is vegan ramen with a couple of tablespoons of unsweetened peanut butter stirred in to make a sauce, a handful of sliced green onion, and a few shakes of spicy furikake.

Aglio e Olio is the easiest hot dinner I can make in under 15 minutes. I'm not vegan so I use parmesan or grana padano to garnish the pasta but the meal is great even without the cheese. I used yeast flakes once as a cheese substitute and it's also suiting well.
Just fry garlic slices with peperoncino or any other dried chili on olive oil. Add cooked pasta to the pan. Cook for another minute or so, garnish with parsley and serve. If you don't overcook the garlic it's the best "fast food" you can prepare in home. Oh and I like to add sun-dried tomatoes to the mix so I feel like other dried small vegetables like olives will work as well.

Kimchi fried rice (김치볶음) is good when I need to eat fast and I have all the ingredients (I usually do).

Squeeze and reserve kimchi liquid. Squeeze tofu gently to dry it out a bit, then squeeze hard to crumble. Fry kimchi and tofu (note: getting vegan kimchi is hard unless you make it yourself) for 3 minutes. Add rice and kimchi liquid, fry another 3 minutes. Add a little sesame oil and sesame seeds and eat!

Your salad recipe looks good, but I don't think it would fill me up!

Depends on what exactly you're referring to by "easy".

For example, you can add anything you want in rice. Lentils (e.g. Greek fakoryzo), beans and tomato sauce (e.g. chili), mushrooms, frozen vegetables, fresh vegetables... and have a very lovely, easy, and nutritious vegan meal! The difficulty here is not uniform, though. E.g. lentils and many vegetables are easy and fast to cook, canned beans are ready to eat, but "normal" beans require hours of soaking or a long time of cooking.

Similarly, you can pretty much "yeet" whatever vegetables (& mushrooms) you want in the oven with some olive oil, salt, oregano, and tomato sauce, and have a full and easy meal. Potato, zucchini, eggplant, tomato, onion, pepper, etc. For example, Greek "mpriam"

These are two of the most versatile options I can think of, that I often cook.

Especially for summer, I have another recommendation! Boil some pasta (anything tube-shaped works, e.g. penne) at the same time as boiling a small amount of lentils (I guess 60~100g) in another pot. While these are boiling, cut up a cucumber, a tomato, a little onion, and any other salad vegetable you might want, into chunks.

Put the pasta at the bottom of a plate, put lentils above, put the vegetables over the lentils, add some lemon juice or balsamic vinegar & some olive oil, and you've got yourself a great comfort food for summer! I cook that a lot during the warm months.

Hummus and Baba Ganoush wraps. You can use a pita, tortilla, Naan, etc. as the base and then give it a good smear of your spread of choice. If you want to sprinkle some hemp seeds or some other nut/seed, add it on top of the spread so it has something to stick too. Then add any greens you have in your fridge; sometimes I quickly toss them with a random dressing that pairs well or do a quick sweetner/vinegar/oil mix. If I have any leftover veggies from a previous dinner like broccoli or Zucchini, I'll sometimes throw that in there as well. You can stuff it as much as your appetite can handle, but I've found this to be super satisfying and filling.

If you're willing to put in a little bit of effort, Masoor Dal is another great option. Take 1/2 -1 full onion and finely dice it. Saute with oil in a saucepan until soft and add minced garlic and ginger, cook until fragrant. You can also cheat with buying premamde ginger-garlic paste from an Indian grocery and using that instead.

Add chilies and curry type spices depending on what you have available; coriander, turmeric, cumin, ground ginger. You can wiggle some of the spices if needed, although it might not be super traditional, but the goal here is easy :) also see if an Indian grocery near you carries premade spice mixes or order online.

Once the spices are fragrant, add red lentils and toss with your onion flavor paste you just made. Some recipes also call for diced tomatoes, but that's up to you. Add water or stock, bring to boil then let simmer until the lentils are soft or split to a consistency you like. Add salt to taste. Serve with a little yogurt and Naan to help balance out the heat. You can also add other vegetables to make it more substantial like sweet potatoes, but it's a great simple dish that allows for creativity.

New York Times Recipe and Swasthi's Recipe serve as good starting points. Don't fret on having all the specific spices. As long as you have onion, basic spices, and red lentils, you could make a real simple dal.

Tofu Scramble. You can make it however you want, but the gist of it is that you simply crumble apart a block of firm tofu and pan fry it with turmeric to make it yellow and your choice of veggies.

Any kind of grain can be made tasty with the right seasoning. I've been a big rice eater, but lately I'm on a quinoa kick; it cooks in my instant pot in 20 minutes with no real intervention. In the same vein, bread is absolutely delicious and there are many ways to serve it.

A premade salad needs no prep, but having a good dressing recipe and some extra toppings can make it really great.

Beans! Especially served with rice. Or in the form of hummus! Add some cut fresh carrots to that and you've got yourself something that's good for a snack or a meal.

Pancakes and waffles can easily be made vegan. Try making crepes if you've never tried them before. They're much easier than they look, and they are just as good savory as they are sweet.

And for dessert try some delicious fruit. If you want to make it fancy you can turn them into a smoothie or nice cream.

Veggies + more on toast is the most versatile vegan meal. Start with your toast, add a generous helping of your vegan spread of choice (I like Hummus), and as many veggies as you have on hand. If you premix all the veggies in a bowl and add salt/pepper and a dash of olive oil it also is good.

This is a snack not a meal but Penn Jillette's favorite food is blueberries, unsweetened cocoa powder, and a lot of cayenne pepper. It's bizarre but quite good. Best eaten with a spoon since it'll do a number on your fingers!

I stumbled on a very easy one-dish meal with pre-made ingredients from the store that you can also get as fancy as you want with. It's quite simple:

Ingredients:

• 2oz (about 57g) of fettuccine noodles per person.
• 4oz (about 113g) pre-made vegan Alfredo sauce per person (I prefer Primal Kitchen No Dairy Garlic Alfredo Sauce).
• 4oz (about 113g) Tofurky Lightly Seasoned Chick'n per person (I recommend this specifically because it has great consistency and mouthfeel to chew on and the seasoning is delicious and carries the rest of the dish).

And that's it for the minimum. I'll throw in other stuff depending on what I have on hand, such as spinach (all I do is wash it and then throw it right in) and button mushrooms (sometimes grilled in very light teriyaki sauce or simply seared directly and briefly in a pan).

Recipe:

1. Place the fettuccine noodles in a pan large enough that the noodles fit within the pan. You can break them in half if it doesn't fit if you want, I won't judge ;)
2. Cover with about 1.5 inches (4cm) of water
3. Place on medium-high heat for 8-14 minutes.
4. While waiting, cook the Tofurky. Microwaving it actually turns out quite good, but better would be an air fryer (I just put it on a small bit of aluminum foil) or cooking on a separate pan to get some charring.
5. Place a pan lid on the pan with a small opening between the pan and lid and drain the water, leaving the noodles in the pan. Place back on the burner on low or medium-low heat.
6. Add the Alfredo sauce, stir.
7. Add the Tofurky, stir.
8. Add additional ingredients such as mushrooms or spinach.
9. Serve and enjoy.

Soylent is vegan and can't be beat on "easy." I quite like creamy chocolate flavor. Maybe that's more like a dessert than a meal, but it's quite filling and supposedly nutritious.

Stir-fried glass noodles

Throw glass noodles in a pot of hot water to soften. Julienne/chop/wash & drain vegetables like carrots, bell peppers, Chinese chives, bok choy, mung bean sprouts. Make stir-fry sauce with sweet chili sauce, peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, etc. Stir-fry vegetables and a block of tofu in a frying pan with a bit of oil. Chop tofu into cubes with a spatula as you stir-fry. When veggies are mostly done, add reconstituted glass noodles into frying pan. Stir in sauce. Add a bit of water if too dry and let the noodles soak in the sauce a bit. Turn off heat and serve. For best results, add the bean sprouts and Chinese chives, which require less cooking, later with the glass noodles.

I often use glass noodles since they reconstitute pretty quickly, but you can substitute with rice noodles, soba noodles, udon noodles, etc. You can also play around with the sauce. I like a simple ponzu and sesame oil sauce with stir-fried soba noodles. Also, miso can be a nice replacement for peanut butter.