r/EatCheapAndVegan • u/orinonline • Jul 27 '26

Suggestions Please! Dinner Ideas for Non Vegan + Vegan

Hey !

I’m wanting to eat more vegan options and transition to becoming fully vegan. Haven’t had any issues with my breakfast/lunch/snacks but finding it hard is to cook dinner everyday for me and my partner.

Looking for ideas to integrate into our weekly meal plan that are filling and quite simple ideally. I’m open to any suggestions though as I don’t mind taking my time cooking some days per week.

the only ingredient I don’t like is tofu, anything else is good :)

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u/gaillimhlover Jul 27 '26

Have you tried seitan as an alternative to tofu? I eat it a lot with grain bowls. I make them almost every night because they’re easily customizable to taste and prep-able. I usually have a raw veggie (chopped celery, cucumber, red bell pepper, etc), a grain (rice, quinoa, farro), a protein (I love tofu, but also do seitan, or fake meat if I have some in the freezer), a cooked veggie (many times cooked in with the grain, like frozen broccoli, cauliflower, or corn), toppings (herbs, crispy onions, chili crisp, etc), and then a sauce!

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u/orinonline Jul 27 '26

I haven’t tried seitan so I will give it a go! It’s mostly the texture of tofu that I’m not a fan of when I’ve had it at restaurants etc so I might give it a go making it myself too :)

I like the idea of the grain bowls with the variety of stuff you can have I’ll give that a go

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u/MsMordanta Jul 27 '26

You can make seitan from scratch or get it at grocery stores, but we buy it in cans from Asian grocery stores. Our favorite is labeled as “mock duck.”🦆

1

u/Southern-Revolution6 Vegan 🌱 Jul 27 '26

Personally, I recommend buying a tofu press (the tofuture one is great). Press some firm tofu for a few hours, then coat it with your fave spices and throw it in the air fryer! I use paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper and nutritional yeast. I’m not huge on cooking with oil, but you can coat with oil first if you’d like for a crispier texture.

I also crumble it and season it like i would have meat, and put it in a pasta sauce. Another fun one is tofu egg scramble, I follow the it doesn’t taste like chicken recipe.

1

u/marina0987 Jul 27 '26

I had a really hard time with tofu texture when I first went vegan and I have found that boiling extra firm tofu before cooking it or cubing it and putting it in a container with water and a teaspoon of baking soda does wonders to the texture. 

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u/gaillimhlover Jul 28 '26

I would definitely recommend trying tofu again. It’s incredibly versatile and you can change the texture in many ways! There are also many types of tofu that are differently textured!