High-Protein Vegan Meals EVERYONE Should Know

Okay, so I get a lot of requests for high-protein vegan meals, usually from folks who are looking to get ripped, brawny, burly, beefy, and or hunky. So today I've got three 20-minute meals, each of which has over 30 grams of protein, and it's guaranteed to get you looking as swole as I am. Let's get into it. First up, we're gonna make a smashed edamame toast, like a smashed avocado toast, but different. And I love using edamame just like this. It comes frozen in a bag. I like to buy it pre-shelled because it's less prep work, and it is so high in protein. It's got more protein than any other bean, and is also great for quick 20-minute meals because it's already cooked. This is just a little frozen still, so I'm going to just run it under some warm water. You can also defrost it in the fridge. Oh wait, I need a... The blade, one sec. Where'd that be? Down here, maybe? Okay. The great thing about this edamame smash is that everything happens in the food processor. So it is super quick, super convenient, minimal chopping. We're also gonna add some avocado. It's kind of a smashed avocado toast, like I mentioned. We need a half of a medium. All right, she looks pretty good. The beauty of living in California is that all of your avocados look nice all the time. Our taxes, though. I feel like we're paying an avocado tax. Got some raw garlic. Gonna give it a rough chop. Serrano pepper for some heat. Leave out the membranes if you don't want it spicy, or too spicy. Some cilantro. I'm gonna just do like a large handful, not measuring it. Any tough stems, you wanna get rid of those, but tender stems, A-okay. They're delicious, they're edible. Right in there. What else do we got? Lime. Some lime zest. The zest is gonna add this pure lime flavor, and the juice is gonna add acidity. So they both work really well here to brighten all the flavors. Quarter cup of tahini. This is gonna add a nutty indulgence. It's also got some protein in there. Look at that. Some tamari or soy sauce. Use tamari if you're gluten-free. Tablespoon and a half of that. That's gonna add that really lovely, savory depth of flavor. Optionally, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil. I love the flavor. It's like rich and nutty. If you don't love it, you can omit it. And now we're just gonna blend it all up. All right, this is what you're looking for. It's chunky. It's not totally smooth, but it's come together in a nice, beautifully green dip consistency. Let's just give it a taste, see if it needs any salt or extra lime. That's really good. I don't think it needs anything. I love it. Bread. There's a lot of variation in bread. You can get it from the bakery. You can get it from the grocery store. Since this is a high-protein meal, I picked the highest-protein bread I could find. This particular brand has six grams of protein per slice. 12 grams of protein in these little guys. I'm gonna pop this under my broiler to toast for a minute, and then we'll assemble everything. So this bread is tiny, but I promise it's really filling, so don't let the size dissuade you. And the great thing about this dip is it makes a lot, so you can have this for breakfast or lunch for several days. And the full measurements for everything is on the blog, printable format in both metric and imperial measurements. Final couple toppings, if you wanna sneak some extra protein in there, hemp seeds or hemp hearts. These have a good amount of protein. They'll add a little bit of a nutty crunch and some sauerkraut because it's got that good gut bacteria, and also it adds this nice little tangy, salty finish on top. Ta-da! It's not like gourmet-looking, but it's really, really delicious, and it's gonna fill you up if you have this for breakfast or for lunch. Should we give it a bite? We should give it a bite. I'd like a bite. This is ridiculously good. It's savory, it's salty, it's a little creamy and nutty. It was incredibly easy to make, so definitely add this one to your breakfast or lunch rotation. Next step, we're gonna make a tofu noodle bowl with an almond butter sauce. And the first thing we're gonna do is cook our noodles, our pasta, so let's get some water on the stove for that. So my little secret is to fill your saucepan up halfway with water, and also put on your electric kettle to boil because that boils faster. Then you can add your boiling water to your saucepan, and that is how you get a pot of pasta water, pot of pasta water, to boil quickly. As for the type of pasta, I've got some whole wheat spaghetti here. I'm using whole wheat pasta because it has a little bit more protein than your standard white flour pasta. It's got like six to seven grams of protein per serving, so not bad. While we wait for the water to boil, we're going to prep our tofu. We're gonna make some spiced tofu crumbles as our protein. I've got a block of super firm tofu, and I like using super firm tofu for two reasons. One, it's got most of the water pressed out of it. Minimal prep work for you. You don't have to press it yourself, so great for a 20-minute meal. And the second reason is that super firm tofu has slightly more protein per ounce than a firm or extra firm tofu because it's denser and more compact. Great for those quick, protein-heavy meals. I regret opening this before going to the sink. Carefully tiptoe over there. Oh, nope, it's already spilling. All right, we don't have to press the tofu, but you do wanna just dab out some water if you can. There's really not that much left, which is great. I'm gonna slice it into a couple slabs, just, again, to get any water out. And now we're gonna crumble it into really small pieces, like the size of a blueberry, maybe. Just some therapeutic tofu crumbling. Super firm tofu is also chewier than a regular firm or extra firm tofu, so you get more of that meat-adjacent quality. You could also do this recipe with tempeh. If you like tempeh, it's got even more protein than tofu. You would just crumble it into small pieces with your hands and follow the recipe as is. If you wanna learn how to make tempeh taste really amazing, I've got a whole video on that right here. And I've got a few things here to add some flavor to our tofu. We're gonna start with a couple spices we need. Where's my half-teaspoon measuring? A half-teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder, and possibly my favorite spice blend ever, five-spice powder. It is intoxicatingly good. It's warm, it's slightly sweet. It's just delightful. And some salt. Obviously we need some salt. Good amount of black pepper. And we're just going to gently toss everything together. You can use your hands or a silicone spatula like I am. Soon, these pale chunks of tofu will be crispy and golden brown. All right, our kettle's ready. Let's finish our pasta water. Let's add some salt to season and our noodles. We're gonna have to kind of finagle them in there. While the pasta's cooking, we're gonna make our tofu. Got this medium frying pan, medium-high heat. We're gonna add a little bit of oil, about a tablespoon. Any oil is fine. This is avocado oil. All right, once your oil is nice and hot, time to add the tofu. And the goal is to spread it out as much as you can in a single layer. I probably could have used a bigger pan, it's fine. And you want to cook it undisturbed for the first few minutes, then flip and continue that process so that the tofu gets really nicely golden brown and crispy. The nice thing about this tofu recipe is because you don't have to stir it very often, you can kind of do a couple other things in the meantime, like prep your vegetables. I'm gonna use about three cups of broccoli florets. I'm just measuring that out. And then we'll add it to our pasta water. This is not a floret. I'm very disappointed in whoever prepared these. This is not a floret. All right, that looks good. Give this a stir. You can see it's already getting nicely browned. It smells fantastic from the five spice powder. All right, let's add this broccoli in. Plop, plop, plop. Give it another stir. Let's go see if our pasta and broccoli are ready. No, this does not feel ready. It is ready, I lied. Okay, it could use a little longer. In the meantime, we're gonna get started on our sauce. It takes like two minutes to put together. It's a spicy-ish, savory almond butter sauce. I make some variation of this all the time. I like using almond butter because it's high in protein. Seven grams of protein in two tablespoons, not bad. We're gonna use four tablespoons of that. I feel like it's gonna be irresponsible though if I don't drain the pasta, so let's go do that. I like serving this cold or at room temperature, so we're gonna rinse this under cold water. And we'll just let this hang out in the sink to dry off a bit. Back to our sauce. Multitasking is fun. All right, rice vinegar for a nice little tang. Tablespoon of that. Let's give her a shake. Pretty much done. Just give it another minute maybe. Some soy sauce or tamari. Two teaspoons of that. Gonna add that savory saltiness that I love so much. Little bit of maple syrup, just a little bit to kind of balance the saltiness and the savoriness and the heat, which we haven't added yet, but we will. As promised, our heat. These are Sichuan chili flakes. If you don't have them, that's fine. Just use like a red pepper flake. I'm using half teaspoon. You don't like spicy food? Don't use them. We're good on the tofu. Let me just show you what it looks like before I kill the heat. Nicely golden brown, crispy. Perfect. All right, let's give this a whisk. And we're gonna have to add a little bit of water to make it more of a sauce consistency for our noodles. Let's give it a taste. It's good. A little pinch of salt. And we are off to the races. No, we're not. Vegans don't go to the races, but we're gonna assemble the meal. That's what we're gonna do. Get our sauce in there. It looks good already. Gonna use the tongs I had for the pasta. Bringing this all together. Yum. Now for our tofu. I can feel I'm already getting swole just looking at this. Couple final tush it. Tushes? Tushes. Couple final touches. Again, my favorite ingredient, just a tiny drizzle for that sesame flavor. And sesame seeds. Can you tell I like sesame? I love it. These are gonna add a nice nutty crunch and also a tiny bit of protein. So, win-win. She looks good. It's time for a taste. I freaking love this one. It is creamy. It's nutty. It tastes very indulgent. Definitely doesn't taste like a high-protein meal. I honestly can't tell it's whole wheat pasta. I love the sauce. The tofu is chewy and a little crunchy. So, definitely give this one a try. Next, we're making garlicky quinoa and lentils with ricotta. This is probably a good time to tell you that I don't like quinoa. I think it is boring in texture and boring in flavor, but it's high in protein. So, I wanted to challenge myself to come up with a quinoa recipe that I actually like that can be made in 20 minutes. And this is the recipe. We need one cup, 175 grams of quinoa. If you're really sensitive to bitter food, go ahead and rinse the quinoa before you cook it. Otherwise, just put it in your water on your sauce pan. So, we need one and a quarter cups of water. Not too much water. You don't want your quinoa to be soggy. Let's bring this to a boil. While we wait for that water to boil, we're gonna start on one of two condiments. These condiments are going to really dial up the flavor and texture of quinoa to make it exciting and also add some protein. So, the first one is my tofu ricotta. I use this in pasta and sandwiches and lots of different things. It is so easy and it's got a lot of protein and it's delicious. First, I gotta drain the tofu, but we already saw what happened when I tried to open it on the counter. So, I'm gonna go do that at the sink. I'll be back in a second. This is one block of extra firm tofu. You don't need to press it. But again, like last time, we are going to just squeeze out a little excess water. And you'll notice that I've been using soy products in this video because soy is one of the best sources of plant-based protein. I know some folks think that soy is bad for you and that it's gonna give you boobs if you're a man, but if that were the case, there'd be a lot more men with beautiful breasts. And these, let's just say, these would not be these. These would be a lot bigger, if you know what I mean. So, that's all false. Those are just myths. If you're eating whole food soy products like tofu and tempeh and edamame, soy milk, you have nothing to worry about. Our water seems to be at a boil, so let's add our quinoa. Just gonna lower the heat down to low, cover, and set a 12-minute timer. For some flavorings, we have nutritional yeast that has that really concentrated, savory, slightly cheesy flavor that is gonna be really excellent in this kind of ricotta replacement. Quarter cup of that. Garlic powder and onion powder, half teaspoon each. Nice, generous heaping teaspoon of kosher salt. Pepper. A little bit of extra virgin olive oil to give that rich mouthfeel and body. Tablespoon and a half. And some lemon, the zest of one medium lemon. This is gonna brighten it, give it some fresh, zippy flavor. And maybe about a tablespoon, tablespoon and a half of the juice. All right, this is it. You just need to blend it until smooth. Quick taste. As you can see, this makes a generous amount, probably five servings, so you can enjoy it with the quinoa and lentils a few times during the week, and then you can put leftovers, slather it on toast, you can put it with some pasta, you can put it on like a grain bowl or a salad. It's very versatile. Set that aside for now. All right, I promised you two condiments. The next one is a garlicky spiced oil with pepitas. Pepitas are high in protein. It's delicious. It's crunchy. We're gonna start by taking four fat garlic cloves and thinly slicing them. This one is extra enormous, so she counts as two large garlic cloves. And we're going to just very thinly slice them as evenly as you can. A smaller knife like this is really helpful for this. Even more helpful and faster is a mandolin if you have one of these things, but it only works with a large garlic clove because if it's small, you don't have a lot of surface area if it's small, but a big one like this is great. And always wear a glove for protection. Be safe. Look how cute these are. Just gonna see if the quinoa is ready. You're gonna get a better texture on your quinoa if you spread it out on a sheet pan after it's done cooking. Just spread it out so that it dries out and doesn't clump. It can kind of get like soggy and mushy if you let it sit in the pan. Back to our garlicky situation. We're gonna use two teaspoons of coriander seeds. I am obsessed with these. They add this really lovely crunch. They've got this lemony, citrusy, bright flavor. A little warmth, so good. That's all though. No other Indian spices, don't worry. And we're gonna use a half cup of pepitas or shelled pumpkin seeds. These are super high in protein, probably the most high in protein seed there is, so I love using them. We're gonna warm two tablespoons of olive oil in a small frying pan, just over medium heat until it's warm. You don't wanna get too hot so the garlic doesn't burn. And this is pretty much my like go-to party trick for really flavorful, fun, crunchy, delicious flavor when I don't have that much time. It's basically gently fry some garlic with some spices and then pour it over whatever you're eating. It's great. In goes the garlic. All right, so this is what our garlic looks like. And if any of the slices are sticking together, try to separate them with your spatula, which is what I'm trying to do with one hand while I film. Starting to just slightly get golden, that's when you wanna add your pepitas and coriander seeds. Now this needs two to three minutes and you wanna stir frequently so that the spices and the garlic don't burn. When the garlic starts to turn brown around the edges, that's when you wanna add our final two ingredients just for 15, 30 seconds at the most, some chili flakes. Standard red pepper flake is fine, but I've got this amazing stuff from Burlap & Barrel, my favorite spice company, red jalapeno flakes. I'm using half teaspoon. Again, adjust to your spice level. And some flaky salt. This is not flaky salt. This is flaky salt. Forgot to mention the lentils, so let's talk about them. These are precooked steamed lentils. Normally I do cook my lentils from scratch, but you're not gonna have time to cook them in 20 minutes. I prefer these refrigerated ones that come in packs like this. Instead of the canned lentils, I think the texture and the taste is just better. I did not open this right. This is a really terrible way to open it, but I've made my bed. You need a half cup per serving. You can find the full measurements for like the ideal protein range in the blog post. Just gonna eyeball it since I made a mess of this. Okay, just gonna eyeball this as well. And I gotta be honest, at this point, I'm not interested in this meal. Plain quinoa, store-bought steamed lentils, do not sign me up. But with those condiments, something magical happens. Let's get a nice big dollop of the, oh, that was messy. Okay, we're gonna get a nice big dollop of the ricotta on here, and some of our crunchy, garlicky spices and pepitas. That looks a lot better. Yum, not bad for 20 minutes. If you have something pickled in your fridge, this would be a great opportunity to use that. Pickled carrots, cabbage. I've got pickled chili peppers. If you've got store-bought sauerkraut, you can add some of that as well. This actually tastes pretty gourmet. The ricotta, the garlic, the pepitas, the spices. I can totally see myself making this for dinner, even though I don't like quinoa. And if you'd like to see even more 20-minute meals, I've got more right here. Bye!