Easiest Plant-Based Meal Ideas: Soups, Salads, and Stir Fries

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*Video Description:* When I want to make fast and easy meals with no pre-planning, I use these three meal “templates” to make soup, salad, and stir fry. So delicious and easy!

*Meal Teamplates PDF:* https://showmemovegan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Soups-Salads-Stir-Fry-Templates.pdf
*Soup Recipes PDF:* https://showmemovegan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Soup-Recipes.pdf

Blogpost including Zucchini/Squash Bread Recipe: https://showmemovegan.com/what-i-eat-in-a-week-repurposing-leftovers/
Balsamic Vinaigrette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUPBx0XEZbE&t=7s
Pickled Peppers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vxnny7RF1I
Esselstyn’s Teriyake Tofu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYcWXbdHiwQ

0:00 Intro
0:35 Stir Fry Template
2:12 Stir Fry Examples
4:14 Soup Template
5:43 Soup Examples
7:15 Salad Template
8:25 Salad Example and Pickled Garlic Scapes
10:26 Outro

Hi everyone I’m Wendy and today I have three templates to make the easiest whole food plant-based meals. Whenever I want to make a meal fast and easy and I don’t want to think about it, my go-tos are soups, salads, and stir fries. No matter what fresh produce you have on hand, if you keep your pantry stocked you can have a meal in no time. These templates have been particularly helpful for me as I’ve started getting fresh produce from a local farmer every week as part of a CSA. We sometimes get a lot of veggies and it can be overwhelming, but I always use them up with these meal templates. So let’s get right to it. Let’s start with stir fries. If you’ve been following me for a while you know that I like to go for ease and simplicity, sometimes at the expense of traditional cooking methods. So no these are not traditional stir fries and certain chefs out there might disagree with me calling them that, but here’s how I do it. I always start with a foundation of onions and garlic. If you aren’t able to eat these for some reason you can omit them, but they definitely add great flavor and I can’t imagine a stir fry without them. And I’m oil-free so I just put these in a hot skillet. They have quite a bit of moisture that comes out, but you can also add more water as needed to prevent anything from sticking, no oil needed. To that I’ll add any other veggies that I have around. Some of my favorites for stir fry are cabbage, carrots, peppers, and mushrooms even though that’s technically not a vegetable. I’ll show you some samples in a minute using some more rare veggies that I don’t often use like snap peas and bok choy, which I’ve been getting in my CSA. Then I add some kind of bean or tofu. My favorite beans for stir fries are kidney beans, chickpeas, or edamame. Then once the veggies are almost done cooking, I add in some flavor. If you use salt in your diet, you can add some low sodium soy sauce, tamari, or coconut aminos, along with some rice vinegar. Or if you’re salt-free, try some flavored balsamic vinegars such as those you can get from California Balsamic instead. Then add what whatever seasonings you like, I usually go with something simple like garlic and onion powder, turmeric, and ginger. And finally we serve it with brown rice or other whole grains or a whole grain noodle like soba noodles. So let me show you this in action. One week in the CSA we got some broccolini, so we started by sautéing some onions and garlic and added some carrots and the broccolini. We like to put the lid on to steam the veggies so they cook faster. Then for this stir fry we added kidney beans and flavored it with rice vinegar and coconut aminos. Finally we added these millet and brown rice ramen noodles. If you like you can also add toppings, here we added some sesame seeds. In another week we got snap peas. Once again we started with onions and garlic, this time we had some shredded carrots along with those snap peas. We added fresh ginger and some teriyaki tofu. The teriyaki tofu recipe comes from the Esselstyn’s. We got it from their Engine 2 cookbook, but it’s also in their Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior cookbook. They also did a video for how to make this on their YouTube channel, which I will link below. Once again we served this with those millet and brown rice noodles, and added a side salad. Here’s one more stir fry example using Chinese cabbage, green onions, and garlic scapes from another week of the CSA. I’ll talk a little more about the garlic scapes later in this video if you’re unfamiliar with them. In addition to those veggies we did onions, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, and peppers. As before we sauteed everything, added some flavor, and finally here’s one other little tip with stir fries. If you have a little extra liquid in the pan you may want to thicken it up to make it more saucy. It’s really simple to do this using something like corn starch or arrow root powder. You’ll simply whisk a tablespoon or so into about 1/4 cup of cold water. Make sure you do this first. If you try to add the starch directly to your pan, it’ll end up being lumpy instead of silky smooth. After you whisk that together, pour it into your pan, and the sauce will start to thicken up and become kind of glossy. This time we served our stir fry with brown rice that we cooked in our Instant Pot, and we topped it with a few chopped peanuts and the green onions. Next let’s talk about soup. This template is very similar to the stir fry, and honestly you could use all the exact same ingredients you used for any of the stir fries and simply add water or broth. Often for soups I start with carrots, celery, onions, and garlic. I don’t always use the carrots and celery, but for me the onions and garlic are non-negotiable. Once again add whatever veggies you have on hand. Some of my favorites for soup are cabbage, peppers, spinach, kale, and potatoes. Again I add some kind of beans. My favorite for soup are white beans, chickpeas, black beans, or kidney beans. Then add some flavor and seasonings. I usually go super simple and just use some kind of no salt added seasoning blend. That way I don’t even have to think about measurements, I just dump a couple teaspoons of a mixture that someone else has already put together for me. A good old fashioned Italian seasoning blend is fantastic in soup. But if you want to use your creativity, start with some garlic and onion powder then add whatever other spices you love. Right before serving add a splash of vinegar or lemon to really brighten up the flavors of your soup. As with the stir fries I like to serve it with some kind of whole grain or whole grain noodles. It’s best to keep those separate and put them together just before serving. If you mix your grains or noodles into the soup any leftovers will just end up being mushy noodles or grains because they soak up all the liquid. It’ll still taste good the texture just won’t be the best. One week in our CSA we got some escarole, carrots, and potatoes. So we started with the foundation of onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. We added the potatoes, some white beans, and some vegetable broth. After the potatoes were cooked through we wilted in the escarole. If you’re not familiar with it, escarole is a leafy green that you can eat raw or cooked and it wilts down really fast. So just like with spinach or other greens, you can pile your pan high, put the lid on, and let it steam down, and then stir everything together. We seasoned the soup very simply with some garlic and onion powder, the Selacious salt substitute from Local Spicery, and some red pepper flakes. We served that with a side salad and my zucchini bread. I’ll put that recipe below the video. Here’s one more sample soup that we made with leeks from our CSA. In addition to the leeks we added red onions, garlic, potatoes, cauliflower, and vegetable broth. We seasoned it up with nutritional yeast and some other seasonings. I’ll put this recipe below the video as well. For this soup we blended it up and served it with a side salad and some of my mom’s whole wheat bread. She made the cutest little bread loaves for us. Oh and just a sneak peek, we also made a chocolate cake and it was delicious. Over the last few weeks we’ve made a couple variations on it including a mint chocolate cake and a vanilla cake. I hope to make a video for that soon although it’s been quite hot here so I may need to wait until we have some cooler days before I want to turn the oven on. Comment below if you’d like to see me make a video for these cakes. Finally I have my salad template. I think we all know how to make salads, but I like to really bulk them up, and here’s how I do it. I start with a bed of leafy greens. Any kind of leafy greens: lettuce, spinach, kale, cabbage, power greens, spring mix, you name it. Then I pile on the other veggies. Just like with the soups and stir fries, use whatever you have and they can be raw or roasted veggies. The old standbys like peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes are great, but some roasted cauliflower, broccoli, or corn is delicious as well. Next I like to add beans or baked tofu. One of my favorite things is actually to roast chickpeas. I like to season them with curry powder, and roasted chickpeas or any other kinds of beans that you roast will add a great crunch. Sometimes I also add cooked whole grains. I particularly love sorghum or quinoa in a salad. Then for the dressing I usually go super simple with just a little bit of vinegar or lemon or lime juice, but I’ll also include a link for my mom’s easy balsamic vinegarette for you. And finally add some fun stuff. I love adding fresh or dried fruits and perhaps a few nuts and seeds. Here’s a sample salad that I made recently with some of my CSA veggies including another fun topping: garlic scapes. I mentioned them earlier, but let me talk a little more about them. Garlic scapes are sort of like a bonus second vegetable that you get from growing a particular type of garlic. It’s a plant that grows up out of the garlic plant in the springtime, and if you harvest it that allows all of the energy of the plant to go into creating nice big bulbs of garlic, and then you have this bonus veggie. It has a mild garlicky flavor, so I often chop it up and use it in place of regular garlic in any dish. You can also saute it and eat it by itself as a side dish, but recently we got quite a bit of garlic scapes so I decided to make pickled garlic scapes. I made a video last year showing how to make pickled peppers, and I used the same basic method. First I chopped the garlic scapes into little bite-sized pieces. In hindsight I wish I had chopped them a little bit smaller because they ended up being a little tough, but then I added them to a clean jar, I also added a couple black peppercorns, and set that aside. Next you take equal parts of white vinegar and water and bring it to a boil. Traditionally you would add salt and sugar, but I just add a little bit of date sugar. It doesn’t dissolve so it’s not exactly the same, but it does give a subtle sweetness to the final product. Once the water and vinegar is boiling, you’ll carefully pour that over the garlic scapes. Make sure you have a canning jar that’s meant for hot liquids. Then I simply let it cool store it in the refrigerator and use it in salads like this one. I’ve shown you many different variations of salads in the past, so I won’t go into any more samples. I think you get the idea. But if you’re looking for something even more convenient, you can make a salad smoothie. I did this recently after I had some dental work done and I couldn’t chew very well for a couple of days, and I was surprised by how delicious it was. So you basically follow the same template but just blend it all together. It may not turn out to be a very pretty color, but I found it to be quite refreshing. The next time you’re struggling to figure out what to eat for dinner, I hope you’ll try these simple templates. Use whatever you have on hand and you’ll have a meal before you know it. Thanks for watching, and I hope to see you next time.