Combined veggie/meat dinners

[Notstrongandstable]

DD has decided to try giving up meat, she will carry on with fish for the time being. This makes dinner time more challenging!
DH and I would happily eat loads of veggie stuff but DS is a big meat head. He will eat things like a veggie lentil lasagne but not all the time.
How do others manage without cooking two dinners or someone eating processed crap as it's convenient for the person who can't/wont eat the dinner?
I'll also start working on having portions of leftovers in the freezer for her that I can use when we are having a meat dinner

this is like us! I'm pescatarian (though I don't eat much fish) and while DH eats pretty much anything, DD is a big meat eater.
So we make a lot of meals where meat can be added separately- eg pasta with tomato sauce and meatballs cooked on the side, stir fries with noodles/rice, veggies and meat cooked separately, fajitas with veggie and meat separately.
For things like chilli and lasagne we cook a meat and veggie one, but make the big so they will do 2/3 meals

The first options is to cook vegetarian side dishes, then just serve a different protein for the vegetarians and meat-eaters. You’ll all be mostly the same, so there won’t be too many additional pans to wash. I know a lot of vegetarians aren’t fond of meat substitutes, but they’re really useful for this kind of meal. Veggie sausages, soya nuggets, grilled Quorn ‘steaks’ – they can all be used as one-for-one replacements for meaty equivalents. I’d do this for roast dinners, burgers, hot dogs, bangers and mash.

Another option is to cook a vegetarian meal, and then scatter some kind of meat or fish on top for those who want it. I sometimes find it helpful to do a roast/pulled chicken or roast/pulled pork once a week so that we have some cooked meat on hand for adding in at the end. You can add pulled chicken right at the end to: enchiladas, fajitas and stuffed peppers. Roast chicken can be added at the end to a chickpea and couscous salad or tagine. I add cooked pork at the end to dishes like curries and stir fries. It's also useful to have bacon lardons for frying and adding right at the end to egg fried rice, carbonara, risotto and lentil casserole.
Make a bunch of beef meatballs and keep them in the freezer, so that a veggie tomato sauce for pasta can get a beefy boost when needed. Also, lamb meatballs are great to throw into a chickpea and vegetable tagine over some couscous, or can be part of a tapas or mezze dinner.

Another option is to use two separate pans, which might sound like the equivalent of making two separate meals, but it’s not! If you’re making a stew or casserole, you can make the exact same thing in two different pans, with barely any extra effort. Chop all your veg, and rather than dumping them into one pan, separate them into two. All the other ingredients can be added to both pans, with meat added to one, and some kind of veggie protein added to the other. Sure, you’ll have two pans to wash instead of one, but there’s otherwise the same amount of prep work and cooking time. It's easy to make two small toad in the holes from one batter mix and just use different sausages.
This oven-baked frittata is a good veggie dish if you fry the bacon separately and use two separate oven dishes, leaving the bacon out of one of them //www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3077673/bacon-and-ricotta-ovenbaked-frittata It’s worth making a big batch of these kinds of meals. By the time you’ve started prepping, it’s not really any extra effort to make a larger amount. Stews and soups freeze really well, so you can freeze any leftovers in portions, to make for a quick and easy dinner another night.

Good suggestions above

the other easy way is make a veggie meal and add some meat as a side dish for your son - eg veggie quiche, plus a piece of chicken etc (an airfryer helps so much for cooking an extra item or two separately )

I agree with this, my husband is vegetarian, the rest of us are not, but we rarely eat meat at home, because it's better for our health not too, and honestly I really cannot be bothered cooking twice!!

So the times we do eat meat as exactly as detailed above, when you can just add the meat to the dish at the end. We have traybaked roast vegetables one dinner a week, and then sometimes we all have the same if I add feta and chickpeas for example, or we have fish and my husband has some veggie-something (which incidentally, ALWAYS take longer to cook than stated on the packets, so beware that on timing your meals!).

Some veggie substitutes are pretty good, the Richmond sausages use the same seasonings, so they taste just like old-school cheap sausage, perfect for sausage rolls. My very unadventurous Dad, who eats meat and potatoes, pies and salad, didn't even notice they were not real meat.

If you want to batch cook, freeze small portions of lentil bolognaise, it's great for freezing, then defrost if you are all having a meat version.

You might want to try some dinners from countries with strong vegetarian food cultures, like Indian food, having a creamy dal and a saag paneer with spicy bhaajis and soft naan... you are not going to miss the meat.

There’s the good old “put a chop with it” style of cooking vegetarians from the 1980s will recognise!

Risotto, vegetable and bean casseroles, salads with eggs and pulses, curries or pasta dishes, that sort of thing. A vegetarian main that can be served as a side dish with a fillet of chicken/steak/chop/meat of preference.

We often have some vegetarian Ottolenghi one pot meals that the meat eaters have with duck or pork. Or Chana masala and rice with a shared ready-meal lamb curry added to the meat eaters as an extra.

It depends on your DD's opinion on cooking meat separately eg if you were to do say a tray bake would she want the meat cooked separately or would wrapping the meat in foil be OK?

Things like taps or thalis might be a good option too or some sort of picky meal.

Baked potatoes with different fillings.

How old are the children? Could they do some cooking for themselves?

Good use of the freezer, eg make meatballs and freeze in portions so DS can have a portion on the side of a vegi pasta dish.

Individual pies / pasties or foil parcels.

Do you have a raclette? letting people cook their own food.

We have a very similar situation - DD a veggie, DS a big meat eater and me and DH happy either way.
When DD went veggie I was trying to cook our usual meals and leave the meat out for her but then I switched it and it works much better.
So I cook mostly veggie meals but add meat for DS if that makes sense?
It might sound daft but for us if the mindset was veggie but with meat added rather than non veggie with the meat taken away it was much easier.