Vegan southern style meal prep is my favorite style of meal prep for the week! I had no idea what I was missing until recently. I am here to open your eyes on how to create an incredible Southern-style feast that could either act as an impressive spread for you and your friends and family or as meal prep for a delicious array of lunch and dinner options throughout the week! We’ve got everything from vegan macaroni, pulled BBQ mushrooms, collard greens, and more.

Let’s start off with…

Veggies!

Vegan Slaw

When one thinks of a southern barbecue, one can’t help but envision delicious creamy, tangy, crunchy coleslaw! I found a super easy recipe from Healthier Steps.

For meal prep for the week, I kept my slaw-sauce in a little container and would mix in as much as I needed into a bowl with the amount of slaw I need for the meal. Just make sure you have enough bags of mixed cabbage-slaw ready to go!

Collard Greens

But of course! There are actually a lot of different ways you can prepare your collards. After trying multiple ways, I am a huge fan of simple traditional collards with olive oil, lemon, garlic, sea salt, sauteed onion, and pepper flakes, as seen in this recipe “Quick Collard Greens” by Cookie and Kate.

There are ways to make this dish smokey, meaty, tomatoey, sweet-salty, etc. It is all delicious but it depends on what you are into! You can use kale, chard, or spinach too if collards are too scarce or pricey in your area. This is all about easy meal prep on a budget!

Pickled Corn Side Dish

This little side dish is a snappy sidekick that is full of tangy, spicy, refreshing flavor! I was trying to find ways to add even more variety of vegetables and flavor to the feast/meal prep and came across this.

It is so cheap and easy to make I highly recommend it. I found this recipe at Epicurious. Spice, tang, and freshness in every bite.

The Starches!

Vegan Mac’n Cheese

When I was looking up vegan southern dishes, I think my heart skipped a beat for pure joy when I remembered that cheesy noodles are popular in the South. To make myself feel a little healthier, I try to use gluten-free or whole wheat pasta, but you do whatever feels right for you!

I have been loving the Wicked Healthy blog, and they happen to have multiple incredible cheese sauce recipes. Check them out, and try any one of them, you won’t be disappointed.

Potatoes

Easy enough! Instead of making mash, I decided to boil my potatoes. I like how boiled potatoes keep in the fridge compared to mashed potatoes.

I also like having the ability to season them a little bit differently each time I make them. This makes it feel like you have more variety, compared to pre-seasoned and prepared mash.

Sweet Potatoes

With the sweet potatoes, I could only think of one way to season these, so I had no trouble mashing them. I wanted these to be sweet like candy, mashed up, and topped with crushed candied pecans/walnuts, because, yum!

I simply baked some sweet potatoes (or yams), peeled the skin off, mashed them up, added maple syrup, nutmeg, cinnamon, and topped them off with crushed nuts.

Black Eyed Peas

This is key! It is filling and delicious. So far, the tastiest vegan version I’ve tried for this dish is this one from “The Wanderlust Kitchen.” It has the perfect amount of heat from the hot sauce and spices. As beans are annoying to work with (let’s be real), be sure to soak them the night before.

Fake Meats!

Nashville Hot Tofu

YUM! No matter what recipe you end up using, here is my advice. Once you buy your firm/ extra firm tofu, through it in this pineapple brine as outlined by the incredible Edgy Veg -> Here. This marinade of pineapple juice, soy sauce, and water has magical powers and is worth it every time.

She also recommends freezing your tofu first and letting it thaw out. I can attest that this truly does help the tofu both in texture and in flavor retention. However, this step isn’t as mandatory as the marinade she shows in my personal opinion.

I usually marinate my tofu in this pineapple marinade for at least 4 hours and then proceed to squish away the liquid. Once my tofu has been squished of its juices, I throw on some tasty spices, usually a mix of cayenne, paprika, salt, pepper, BBQ rub, onion powder, and garlic powder. This way, my tofu has been soaking up some seasoning flavor long before I even feel the need to coat it and fry it.

All these steps greatly help elevate the flavor before you finally cook it. With your pre-game on lock, I recommend trying out an awesome Nashville hot recipe such as this one from Rabbit and Wolves.

Pulled Pork Mushroom

Yes, you read that right, mushrooms! Wicked Healthy blog, at it again, changing my life forever. Do yourself a favor and forget about jack-fruits, just leave them alone forever. They are like those bad 90s highlights people thought were the coolest things ever. However, now people learned about balayage, and we’re never looking back. Why would you ever go back to those terrible 90s streaks when you can get a balayage? Why?

Watch this life-changing video on vegan pulled pork HERE.

If you are meal prepping this, cook the seasoned mushroom in a cast iron and keep that in the fridge. Then whenever you want some, just take some out, cover it in BBQ sauce, and put it in the oven on high for 10-15 mins (or simply recook it on the cast iron before drizzling the sauce as a final step).

Complimentary items for your vegan southern style meal prep

1. Delicious white bread. I mean ya, you could go healthy with this option and use something else, but the rest of your vegan southern style meal prep is so dang healthy, ya know?!

2. PICKLES! Heck yes, crunchy delicious pickles. Preferably some with some sugary-sweetness to them and good crunch.

3. Vegan Mayo and/or butter. To put on that white bread.

4. Mushroom Gravy! I don’t care what you put it on, it’s tasty as heck, put it anywhere.

5. Stevia Rootbeer. It just feels right and is still kinda healthy-ish.

6. More hot sauce. Just in case you need a little more heat in your seat.

I hope you feel inspired to create your version of a veggie-packed vegan Southern-style feast meal prep for the week. I always encourage people that are trying to meal prep to use flavor profiles/cuisines that they love to guide them. I didn’t know about a lot of these recipes until I decided to go digging into Southern Style vegan recipes. I hope to learn more and revise this list down the road. Until then, I hope you enjoy this one!