EASY VEGAN DINNER IDEAS ‣‣ great for beginners!

Hey friends, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Alyssa. Today I have got a video all about dinner. I'm gonna show two of my favorite vegan dinner ideas that are easy to make, healthy, and also gluten-free. I know you guys are always looking for easy dinner ideas, so I think you are going to enjoy both of these recipes. If you do want to make either of them, you can find the links right down below. They are up on the blog, so I put those blog posts down below. And before we dive in, I would love to encourage you to join us if you are new around here. We share plant-powered recipes, as well as blogs, and healthy lifestyle advice and tips, and really fun videos like that. So if that's something that you like, you can tap the red button that is right below this video that says subscribe. Otherwise, let's go ahead and get into our vegan dinner ideas. So the first recipe we're gonna make is our vegan lasagna roll-ups. We're gonna start with some tofu ricotta, or any sort of ricotta that you'd like. To that, you will add some thawed and drained frozen spinach as well as a little bit of nutritional yeast and some salt. Then you can just use a spatula to fold this all together, and this is going to be our filling. So once you have the filling mixed together, you will set that aside and bring out your cooked lasagna noodles. And we're gonna essentially assemble these the same way as lasagna, but we are going to roll them. So you'll take about a tablespoon or two of the spinach ricotta filling and place it onto one of your cooked noodles, and then just use a spoon to spread the ricotta across the entire noodle. So you should have a noodle that is completely covered with the ricotta filling, and just repeat that with your other noodles, and then you will roll them up into little swirls or spiral-type shapes. Once you have everything rolled up and you have all of your lasagna noodles filled, you can place them in your baking dish. You're gonna wanna start with some tomato sauce on the bottom just so that you can make sure that it's nice and tomatoey, and then you'll add in your lasagna noodles. And then I just kind of place them across, but it really just depends on the size and shape of your lasagna pan. And once all of your noodles are in there, you will finish by topping off with a generous amount of sauce. And then if you want, you can finish it off with some shredded vegan cheese. You just don't have to, but I just personally like shredded cheese on top of lasagna. And then we'll bake it up until it is bubbling and the cheese is melted and it's hot in the center. It's about 35-ish minutes, and that's pretty much it. These are just a really fun, definitely kid-friendly, really easy meal prep-friendly way to get that sort of lasagna feel. But I like that they are a little bit more individual in terms of their portion size, and they're really, really, really delicious. And then our second recipe is a quick and easy tofu and broccoli stir fry. We're going to add broccoli into our pan, followed by a little bit of water. And you're gonna basically steam this for a little bit to soften the broccoli, maybe a minute or two. And then from there, you will add in your tofu. And make sure to use extra firm tofu or super firm tofu if you can get it. If you can't get super firm, then you'll definitely wanna press your tofu for a little bit before adding it in, or else it will crumble when you saute it. While that is steaming, you can quickly make your sauce. And the sauce is going to be some gluten-free soy sauce, or whatever type of soy sauce you like, as well as a little bit of olive oil, some water, a little bit of rice wine vinegar, some Asian hot sauce. I like to use sriracha. This is optional. As well as some crushed garlic. And then the last thing is a little bit of arrowroot starch or cornstarch. And by adding this into your sauce and cooking it, it's gonna help give it that thick, kind of teriyaki-style sauce feel, instead of just a traditional soy sauce. So it really helps to thicken and helps you coat the vegetables more evenly. So once you have everything mixed together, you are pretty much ready to just pour that into your vegetables and tofu. So just remove the lid, pour the sauce over the stir fry. And then you will just stir everything up. And you'll notice that the sauce starts to get bubbly on the bottom. You're waiting for that because that is indicating that it's starting to thicken. So just continue to saute and make sure that you are trying to coat the vegetables and tofu in that sauce as much as possible, because that's where you're gonna get all the flavor. And once everything is fairly coated and the sauce seems to be pretty thick and kind of sticky, you are ready to serve up your stir fry. So for serving, you really could do any type of grain you wanted. I just used white basmati rice here, but you could use quinoa, you could use another type of grain, you could use cauliflower rice, or you could just eat this honestly plain. You could also use noodles if you wanted. And then you just can dig in and enjoy. This is a really quick and easy, should take no more than maybe 15 to 20 minutes to make. Really flavorful and it kind of reminds you of takeout. It's delicious, so good, and I can't wait for you to try it. And there you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed today's video and I hope you give one of these or both of these vegan dinner ideas a try. They are both delicious, you can't go wrong with either. And as I said, they are both fairly quick and easy as well. So I hope you enjoy them. So if you did, please give this video a thumbs up. And if you want to try either of the recipes, you can find those linked down below in the description box. Now before we go, I would love to invite you to subscribe if you are new around here and this is your first time watching a video of mine and you enjoyed it. I would love for you to join our community here on YouTube. Super easy, just tap the red button that is right below this video that says subscribe. Otherwise, thank you so much for being here and taking some time out of your day to spend it with me here on YouTube. It means the world to me. I appreciate you and I will see you in the next video. Bye.