Easy Chinese Vegetarian (Vegan) Recipes for the Week!
I have never meal-prepped vegetarian (vegan) Chinese food before! More surprising than that, since going vegan I have never attempted to cook a vegan Chinese meal. Why is that? I think Chinese food, through no fault of its own, has a bad reputation among people that are unfamiliar with it.
When I used to think of Chinese food, I would think of deep-fried everything, covered in loads of artificially enhanced sauces. I now know that is Americanized Chinese food that does not represent true Chinese food.
To try something new, I decided to take on vegetarian Chinese dishes for meal prep this week!
I found an incredible list from Connoisseurs Veg called “ 50+ Chinese Inspired Vegan Recipes for Chinese New Year". I highly recommend checking it out! All the recipes I used for this week’s vegetarian Chinese dishes were pulled from this list!
All of these recipes are completely meatless Chinese dishes. There is one recipe that creates a Chinese vegetarian mock meat dish that is absolutely crave-worthy!
Chinese Vegetarian Recipes for the week:
Vegan Hot and Sour Soup with Bok Choy - Connoisseurus Veg
Chinese Spinach and Peanut Salad – Omnivore’s Cookbook
Vegan Dan Dan Noodles – Serious Eats
Crispy Orange Ginger Tofu with Broccoli - Connoisseurus Veg
Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts - Connoisseurus Veg
Spicy Hunan Cauliflower - Connoisseurus Veg
Sweet and Sour Crispy Mock Chicken Stir Fry - Olives for Dinner
Vegan Chinese Fried Rice - Simple Vegan Blog
What seasonings do I need for vegetarian (vegan) Chinese dishes?
Before getting started you will need a bunch of the following for most of the Chinese vegetarian/vegan dishes listed above:
Cornstarch - A lot of the sauces and even some of the soups call for cornstarch.
Sesame Oil
Vegetable Oil - You can use any oil really but this makes it taste even more authentic
Soy Sauce/ Tamari or Coconut Aminos
Rice Vinegar
Maple Syrup
Fermented Soy Bean Chili Paste (Doubanjiang)
Chili Oil
Shaoxing Wine - Also known as Chinese Cooking Wine.
Toasted Sesame Seeds
Vegan Sweet and Sour Soup with Bok Choy- from Olives for Dinner
This soup is delightful! Even people that aren’t huge soup fans will like this soup. It packs a variety of healthy ingredients like leafy bok choy, tofu, cilantro, green onions, mushrooms, garlic, and ginger. Hot tip, I used oyster mushrooms for their delicious meaty texture! I highly recommend them.
This works very well as a light lunch or light snack.
Chinese Spinach and Peanut Salad – Omnivore’s Cookbook
This is a healthy and simple vegetable dish to have on hand.
Instead of using regular spinach, I found fresh tall spinach leaves at T&T that I wanted to experiment with. They turned out incredible! I would recommend using these over the regular spinach you find at most North American grocery stores, however, I’m sure it would work out either way.
To meal prep I store the boiled spinach separately, sauce separately, and I used regular ready to eat peanuts.
Boiled down spinach doesn’t actually serve that much, I would recommend buying at least 2 large bundles!
Easy Vegan Dan Dan Noodles – Serious Eats
My gosh, this meal is absolutely delicious. Buy enough noodles because you’re going to want to make this again and again. This one is definitely the most specific as each ingredient is very important to get the flavor correct.
How to meal prep vegan Dan Dan Noodles:
I prepared everything as a ready-to-make ingredient. I doubled the sauce ingredients and kept it in a mason jar in the fridge.
I tripled the suggested amount of mushrooms (bought 3 packs of mushrooms) and pre-chopped them in the food processor and moved them to a separate container (still raw).
I finely sliced a bunch of chives/green onion and cilantro and stored that in another container (or bag) for garnish.
I bought a bunch of different vegan noodles from T&T that only take 3-4 minutes to cook the night of.
Now, when I want to make Dan Dan Noodles for dinner or lunch, I can quickly assemble them according to the recipe!
Crispy Orange Ginger Tofu with Green Bell Peppers- Connoisseurus Veg
This vegan orange sauce was so easy to make and surprisingly healthy! I used broccoli for some other recipes so I cooked my version of orange-glazed tofu with green bell peppers to switch things up. I will definitely make this again vegan orange sauce again.
At T&T I found something called ‘Pressed Tofu’ and used it for this recipe!
What is Pressed Tofu?
Pressed tofu is a lifesaver for any vegan, vegetarian, or plantbased person! It is firm tofu, already pressed, so it barely has any water content in it! It is perfect for any recipe that calls for extra firm tofu and saves you the hassle of pressing it yourself! For the time you save, it’s a steal of a deal price-wise!
Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts (or Broccoli)- Connoisseurus Veg
I couldn’t find brussels sprouts at the grocery store so I decided to steam some broccoli for this dish instead! It still turned out amazing. It really can get anyone excited about eating their broccoli. I hope to try the original brussels sprouts version soon!
Spicy Hunan Green beans or cauliflower - Connoisseurus Veg
Another incredible recipe that I had to swap ingredients for because the grocery store was out! I made the spicy Hunan sauce from scratch and put it on blanched green beans instead! I am a huge fan of savory spicy green beans so I wasn’t mad about it. I highly recommend this combination.
How to blanch green beans
Simply boil your beans in water and cook for a maximum of 2-3 minutes. Drain your beans and transfer straight into a large bowl with ice. Let the beans soak in the ice water for about 5 minutes before draining.
Tips for making Hunan Sauce
This is a delightful savory sauce that has a bit of spice to it. The recipe originated from the Chinese province of Hunan. It seems most traditional recipes use ginger, garlic, chili paste, oyster sauce, and soy sauce. It can be created very fast!
Thankfully the Connoisseur Veg Blog, omits any oyster sauces. Instead, she utilizes star anise, soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, rice vinegar, sesame oil, maple syrup, black pepper, dried red chili peppers, garlic, ginger, water, and cornstarch.
Sweet and Sour Crispy Mock Chicken Stir Fry - Olives for Dinner
To make things even easier for this vegetarian Chinese dish, instead of using soy curls I adapted this recipe and used ready-made deep-fried seitan. With this swap, this recipe is incredibly quick, easy, and mouth-watering. Another great option would be using tofu puffs!
The original recipe uses soy curls! I will be using these next time as I found some awesome-looking ones at T&T as well.
For the greens, I used Kale from my garden.
For the mushrooms, I picked a random type I found at T&T that I had never used before. Luckily it turned out great!
What is Seitan made out of?
Seitan is an incredibly tasty vegetarian mock meat! It is made out of hydrated gluten, which is the main protein in wheat. It is created when wheat flour is kneaded with water. This develops sticky strands of gluten protein.
Unfortunately, seitan is not gluten-free mock meat.
Where can I buy pre-made seitan?
I bought my pre-made seitan at T&T. Most grocery stores that are heavily Asian based should carry some form of pre-made seitan. You can usually find it near the refrigerated tofu section.
The brand I buy is Hon’s Asian Comfort Food. It is the fried seitan package. Hon’s vegetarian mock meat seitan is absolutely delicious!
Are Tofu Puffs Gluten-Free?
I buy the Sunrise Soya Foods brand tofu puffs. They seem to be the most commonly carried Tofu Puffs. According to their website’s ingredient list, they are gluten-free. The ingredients listed for tofu puffs are water, soybeans (Non-GMO), Canola Oil, and Magnesium Chloride. Pure canola oil is gluten-free as well.
Tofu puffs are an easy ready-to-go option. They also taste a bit less oily than ready-made seitan.
How do I cut calories in vegetarian or vegan Chinese recipes?
I think a huge way you can cut down on oil or calories is by sticking to plain tofu instead of the deep-fried, glutenous, or oil puffed versions. I would choose to stick to the pressed-tofu option mentioned before.
The awesome thing about pressed tofu is that you can let it marinate in your sauces right away! No further pressing is needed.
Vegan Chinese Fried Rice - Simple Vegan Blog
Photo by Pille-Riin Priske from Unsplash - Delicious Rice
Honestly, I just meal prepped regular rice to start with. I have yet to make some tasty Chinese fried rice, but when I do, this recipe looks delicious and easy.
For this recipe, I’ll be sure to buy a frozen mixed package of corn, carrot, and peas to make my life easy. I suggest you do the same!
How to cook vegetarian (vegan) Chinese dishes Final thoughts.
There truly are so many incredibly healthy vegetarian Chinese dishes! The hardest part was choosing which dishes I should use for this week! I mainly wanted to highlight the variety in flavor and vegetables you can easily create if prepping vegetarian Chinese food for the week. If you try these dishes or a different combination of dishes from Connoisseurs Veg’s incredible list, @ me on Instagram!
I am always looking for ways to incorporate new plant-based whole foods into my routine. Sometimes the easiest way to do that is by exploring new cuisines you wouldn’t regularly cook! For instance, with this vegan Chinese meal prep, I used new mushrooms, new bok choy, new spinach, new hot peppers, and new green onions/chives. I hope to get even more adventurous next time!
One last bonus tip for creating awesome Chinese vegetarian dishes more regularly would be to check out the ready-made sauces in the bean paste/ chili sauce section of your local Asian supermarket! There is a surprising amount of fully vegan prepared sauces that are extremely tasty and very cheap to buy. I might have to do a review on them sometime soon!