Meat free meals - that don't involve pasta

[thesmallestpotato]

Trying to reduce our meat intake, we have meat pretty much every night!

Our few meat free nights are usually a complete carb-fest though with pasta and garlic bread which I want to try and move away from too

Does anyone have any tasty simple fool-proof meal ideas - or know of a good place to find some - for palates accustomed to meat?

None of us (family of 2 adults and 2 children - 5 and 2.5) have any allergies or requirements - all interesting flavours welcome :)

Quiche/puff pastry tarts and salad (with hummus, olives, potato salad type stuff)
Vegetable stir fry with rice or noodles
Vegetable or paneer curry with rice
Seafood risotto
Fish fillets with vegetables and sauce - lots of variations of this!

Vegetarian chili served with one of pitta, rice, baked potato
Cashew nut risotto
Vegetable kebabs with Haloumi
Vegetable curry

Read/Google Anna Jones Modern Way To Eat

Tons of lovely, cheap, simple, user-friendly deliciousness

Have a look on 'The vegetarian times'website. They have hundreds!

Mushrooms are your friend as they are quite meaty.

I make farinata quite a lot.

Basically chickpea flour soaked in water (if it's cooked chickpeas flour -check label don't need to soak but if not soak at least for half an hour I think). Add salt and chopped herbs. Then fry like a pancake quite thin. I then fill with fried mushrooms, roast tomatoes, bit of mozzarella and spinach in middle, fold sides and wedges over like a parcel and flip over.

V popular with my children. Husband would love them if he didn't know they were chick pea but is certain he has to have bread, pasta, potatoes or rice with every meal so he deems them insufficient.

chickpea curry is a staple in our house

I sometimes make deliah's onion flan and serve with baked beans or her broccoli soufflé with baked beans

Frittata, veggie curries and/or dahl, cheese and bean jacket pots with salad, omlettes, halloumi with salad and wedges, cheese and tomato (and whatever veg you like!) pizza, mushroom risotto

Fajitas with loads of peppers and onion in served with guacamole, grated cheese, sour cream, lettuce.

Curries are great.

Cauliflower cheese and nut cutlets.

Vegeburgers and wedges.

Fish or not?

Oven roasted veg (we do peppers, onion, courgette, mushroom, garlic, baby potato) with some oil and sweet chilli sauce. Serve with cous cous, bread, humous, slaw, etc. Could also chuck some chickpeas into the veg near the end.

Vegetarian cottage pie made with lentils
Mushroom risotto/pea & asparagus risotto
Vegetable soup with dumplings

Hugh FW Veg book is very good for ideas.

Thanks for the ideas, I like the sound of the seafood risotto and the chickpea farinata, haven't really thought about chickpeas before, will try that

Mushrooms would be good, the meatiness will appeal to DH, cous cous good idea too

Think I will need to stock up on seasoning, will get some sweet chilli sauce on my shopping list

We do veggie meals, but I also stretch meat by adding loads of veg to bollagnaise sauce, chicken curry, chili, shepards pie, etc. in my case, it's to make sure my veggie hating DD2 eats enough veg.

We substitute pasta with root veg cut into ribbons (or julienned for you posh'ns)
Cashew nut and kales pesto with courgette 'pasta' is a firm favourite.

Grilled halloumi with salad and a jacket pot or sweet potato or butternut squash wedges.

Prawns fried in garlic with courgette 'pasta'

Veggie curry with califlower 'rice'

Might get myself a julienne peeler, hadn't thought of that

what is courgette pasta though? Just googled and can only see actual courgette with actual pasta

Rissoto

huevos rancheros a great favourite in this house. I do it with lots of peppers as well as tomato, chili and onion.

My julienne peeler was only a couple of £ from Lakeland, it's really good. Sharp though, I've done my thumb a few times.

This is good. They've called it courgette spaghetti, which makes more sense because it's long and thin.
www.52recipes.co.uk/2014/01/16/the-art-of-courgette-spaghetti/

I also recommend sweet potato noodles (julienne) and rice pasta (food processor).

Butternut squash risotto is amazing. My toddler loves it too.

Ratatouille goes down well, especially with baguette and a glass of red wine.

Peel a courgette down like strips of courgette and fry. Just like spaghetti really.

Ooooh this is great, I'd never have thought of any of this stuff and recipes online for non-meat meals always feel quite intimidating

Love the courgette 'pasta', definitely buying myself a julienne peeler

Thanks for all these great suggestions!

I agree about ratatouille, some times I warm it up in the oven topped with a layer of cheese sauce or just grated cheese, or serve it with a poached egg on top, all very good with bread for dipping.

Baked stuffed veg such a auberging marrow mushrooms peppers, are tasty too, and a good way of using up small amounts of leftovers.

Aubergibe parmigiana (w garlic bread!).

Pumpkin and chickpea curry.

Lots of lovely veg recipes on Yotam O's website

I also like the book Grains seeds & lentils by Molly Brown buy here .It has interesting recipes for all sorts of unusual grains like freekeh, quinoa, kamut, lentils.