Easy Vegetarian Recipes

Archive for the ‘Easy Vegetarian Snacks’ Category

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Easy Vegetarian Pecan Crusted Medjool Dates

by April’s Recipe Winner: LISA S.! This is her first guest blog post with many more to come. Feel free to email any recipes questions to her at Lisa (at) easyvegetarianrecipesblog.com.

Hello All!

I am so excited to be the winner of April’s Easy Vegetarian Recipes Contest! I simplified my “Veggie Shrimp Creole” to make it as quick and easy and possible, without sacrificing flavor. I hope you will all like it as much as my family and friends do, and now would like to share an easy, easy recipe that tastes just like candy. It is a great dish for vegetarians, diabetics, or anyone who just loves good food.

Enjoy!!

Pecan Crusted Medjool Dates

Ingredients:

• 4 large, fresh, in season Medjool dates for each plate served
• Mixture of coarsely and finely chopped pecans

Directions:

Place pecans in a shallow dish. With a sharp paring knife, slice halfway around the pit of each date, remove the pits, and flatten the dates. Press each date firmly into the pecan mixture, shaking off the excess if necessary.

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Easy Vegetarian Boston Market Dill Potato Wedges Recipe

Somewhere along the way, regular old french fries stopped working for me.  Since then I’ve just made up variations of my own fries and here’s an easy vegetarian Boston Market Dill Potato Wedges recipe that’s got a nice kick.

Ingredients:

• 7 or 8 new red potatoes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced fine
• 1/4 pound butter
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. celery salt
• 2 tsp. dried dill weed

Directions:

Wash potatoes well and boil until barely soft. Drain, and cut potatoes in wedges. Melt 1 stick of butter, in large frying pan (use only real butter) and saute garlic for about one minute. Add potatoes and the rest of the seasonings. Pan−fry the potatoes until they are lightly brown.

These are great with a nice dinner, but this is also great in bulk for parties.

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Easy Vegetarian Applebee’s Spinach Pizza Appetizer

There are a couple of vegetarian raw and cooked pizza appetizers that I’ve loved for years. This is a yummy easy vegetarian Applebee’s Spinach Pizza Appetizer recipe that is sure to be a hit!

Ingredients:

• Pita Bread (2 or 3 whole)
• 1 − 10 oz. pkg frozen spinach
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 med. onion
• 5 or 6 plum tomatoes
• 8 Ounce pkg fresh mushrooms
• 3−4 cloves garlic
• 1 Teaspoon of each of the following spices:
• basil, parsley, cayenne pepper
• 1/2 to 1 cup rice milk
• 4 Tablespoon flour

Directions:

Thaw spinach completely, press out all water. Heat milk in saucepan, when hot but not boiling stir in flour. Stir until sauce begins to thicken, turn heat down. Add nutritional yeast and spinach. Stir constantly until thick and gooey, only about 3−4 min. In separate pan, saute onion, garlic, until onion is tender. Stir in tomatoes, mushrooms, and spices. Saute until just done. Preheat oven to 425. Using a very sharp bread knife, split each pita bread so that you have two round flat pieces instead of one thick one.

Place each piece of bread on a cookie sheet or pizza pan. Spread spinach sauce over each. Top with tomato mixture, being careful to avoid the juice. Bake for 5 to 7 min. Watch closely so that the edges of the pita don’t burn.

Let me know what you (or more importantly your guests) think of this recipe.

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Easy Vegetarian Fried Pickles Recipe

I LOVE fried pickles. I tried it once at Nate’s Seafood & Steakhouse many moons ago, and I believe it was the best part of my meal. Here’s an easy vegetarian fried pickles recipe.

Ingredients:

Seasoned Egg Wash:

• 1 Egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/3 cup Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/3 teaspoon Tabasco

Seasoned flour:

• 2 cup flour
• 1/2 tablespoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon garlic salt
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• Oil for deep frying
• Klauson Whole Pickles

Directions:

Whip together all ingredients for seasoned egg wash, set aside. Mix ingredients for flour mixture in a shallow dish. Slice pickles 1/8″ thick. Dip into flour mix, then egg wash, then flour mix again. Fry until golden brown, about 1 minute. Drain on paper towels. Serve with dipping sauce of ranch dressing, ketchup or horseradish sauce.

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Easy Vegetarian A&W Onion Rings Recipe

Who doesn’t LOVE onion rings?

DeLonghi Deep Fryer

First off, to make this easy vegetarian A&W Onion Rings Recipe even easier, you should have a deep fryer. If you don’t have one, I suggest this DeLonghi brand (I’ve had mine for 3+ years and can’t imagine life without it!). It’s affordable and easy to clean  up. If  you want something more extensive, here’s the one I bought for my mother because she kept saying how much she wanted a deep fryer. Well, once I got it for her, she was pretty upset because it wasn’t exactly like my DeLonghi. So I gave my baby sister this awesome Presto Stainless Steel Deep Fryer instead. We just used it again last night at a birthday party for my mother no less.

Anyways, it will make life so much easier, cleaner and tastier.

So here’s the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup McCormick Golden Dipt Tempura batter mix
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup beer
• 1 extra large white onion, sliced 3/8″ thick
• 6 cups vegetable oil in your deep fryer

Directions:

Preheat the deep fryer to 375F

Combine the tempura mix with the spices and liquid to make a
batter using a fork. There will be some small lumps; don’t worry
about those.

Slice the onion, and separate all of the rings.
Dip the individual rings in the batter, and drop into the
preheated oil. Deep fry 3−5 minutes until golden brown. Remove
to a paper towel lined plate, salt lightly, and serve hot.

*Note: I use my deep fryer for this and realized I needed to test out a few rings first to get the timing right. But it was worth the testing!

March Madness is all around us and I came across this very timely article that from the Chicago Vegetarian Examiner that’s got a couple of tasty easy vegetarian recipes that your pals will love to snack on. You know how important it is for me to be able to throw some of this stuff together quickly especially because entertaining for me is so time consuming with having to scrub my entire house before I let the first guest walk over my threshold!

This is a yummy mix of ingredients that is I will definitely categorize under the ‘easy vegetarian recipes’ section.

Louisville Cardinals Red Roasted Tomato Dip

Ingredients:
1/4 cup oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained and chopped
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 cloves garlic, minced
hot pepper sauce to taste
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup fresh basil

Directions:
In a food processor, mix the sun-dried tomatoes, cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise, garlic, hot pepper sauce, salt, and pepper. Process until well blended. Add basil, and continue processing until smooth. Chill at least 1 hour in the refrigerator before serving with UConn pita chips and fresh cut veggies.

And of course you can’t have dip without some chips to dig it up with! Here’s an easy vegetarian recipe for homemade pita chips.

University of Connecticut Huskies Homemade Pita Chips

Ingredients:
3 Pita Bread Slices
1/4 cup Olive Oil
1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
Pepper to taste
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Dried Rosemary Powder
1/4 cup dried parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions:
Place aluminum foil on a cookie sheet and then apply a light coat of olive oil on top of the foil. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut the slices of pocket pita bread into small triangles and arrange them on the sheet. Make sure that the inner portion of pita triangles is facing up. Mix olive oil, garlic powder, pepper and kosher salt in a small bowl. Apply a thin layer of the mixture on the upper portion of each triangle with a small pastry brush. Sprinkle the rosemary and parmesan cheese over the pita slices. Bake the pita triangles in the preheated oven for about 5 minutes. You may increase the baking time, depending on the thickness of the pita bread. Take the pita triangles out of the oven when they have been evenly baked from inside and are golden-brown in color and crispy. Let the chips cool down to room temperature before serving.

This combo will be the hit of your party and you won’t have to slave away for hours either.

Click here for the original story and for more of the Chicago Vegetarian Examiner.