Vegan dishes from around the world
Traditional recipes with no animal product in them at all.
There is more vegan food in traditional cooking than is usually assumed: the fasting table of Orthodox countries, West African kitchens built on palm oil and peanut, Levantine vegetable dishes on olive oil manage without animal products by construction rather than by principle.
Honey, butter, yoghurt and ghee are excluded alongside meat. Recipes where such a swap is possible but not original stay in the vegetarian collection.
45 dishes
- AjvarSerbia
A relish of roasted red pepper and aubergine, cooked down in oil to a thick paste.
150 min · Medium · Sauce
- Api moradoBolivia
A hot thick purple corn drink with cinnamon and cloves, with fried pastries.
65 min · Easy · Drink
- BolaniAfghanistan
An Afghan flatbread with a potato or leek filling, cooked on a dry pan.
80 min · Easy · Snack
- CallalooTrinidad and Tobago
A thick purée of taro leaves with okra and coconut milk. The Trinidadian Sunday table.
80 min · Easy · Soup
- ChakalakaSouth Africa
A spicy vegetable relish of carrot, pepper and beans with curry. For a braai, for pap, or on its own.
40 min · Easy · Side dish
- ChimichurriArgentina
A sauce of parsley, oregano, garlic and vinegar. A knife rather than a blender: texture matters more than smoothness.
15 min · Easy · Sauce
- Coconut ricePanama
Rice cooked in coconut milk with caramelised coconut solids, dark and faintly sweet.
60 min · Medium · Side dish
- DoublesTrinidad and Tobago
Two soft fried breads called bara with spiced chickpea channa between them. Trinidad's street breakfast.
160 min · Medium · Breakfast
- FattoushSyria
A salad of vegetables and herbs with fried pieces of flatbread and sumac.
30 min · Easy · Salad
- Ful medamesEgypt
Fava beans stewed to a cream with olive oil, lemon and cumin.
255 min · Easy · Breakfast
- Galayet bandoraJordan
Tomatoes cooked down in olive oil with chilli and garlic to a thick sauce.
50 min · Easy · Main course
- Gallo pintoCosta Rica
Yesterday's rice fried with black beans and Salsa Lizano. The Costa Rican breakfast, every day.
35 min · Easy · Breakfast
- GazpachoSpain
A cold tomato soup blended with bread and oil into an emulsion — that is what makes it thick rather than watery.
20 min · Easy · Soup
- GemistaGreece
Tomatoes and peppers stuffed with herbed rice and baked with potatoes in olive oil.
125 min · Easy · Main course
- GuacamoleMexico
Avocado, lime, onion and chilli crushed with a fork. No blender and no sour cream: both turn it into a dip rather than guacamole.
15 min · Easy · Snack
- Gundruk soupNepal
A sour soup of fermented dried greens with potato, soybeans and chilli.
55 min · Easy · Soup
- GurasaSudan
A thick Sudanese pan bread, served with meat stew or sauce.
110 min · Easy · Baking
- HummusIsrael
Chickpeas whipped with tahini, lemon and iced water to a cream. The skins come off.
110 min · Easy · Snack
- ImqaretMalta
Maltese pastry diamonds with an aniseed date filling, deep-fried.
110 min · Medium · Dessert
- InjeraEthiopia
A sour, porous flatbread of teff on a three-day ferment, serving as both bread and plate.
70 min · Takes practice · Baking
- Jollof riceNigeria
Rice cooked in a thick sauce of tomato, pepper and onion. The sauce is reduced dark before the rice goes in.
80 min · Medium · Main course
- Kenyan chapatiKenya
A soft layered flatbread of wheat dough coiled into a spiral before rolling.
105 min · Medium · Baking
- KokiCameroon
A pudding of ground black-eyed beans with palm oil, steamed in banana leaves.
190 min · Takes practice · Main course
- KoshariEgypt
Rice, lentils and pasta in one bowl under a vinegary tomato sauce and fried onion.
90 min · Medium · Main course
- MakroudAlgeria
Semolina diamonds with a date filling, fried and steeped in honey.
105 min · Medium · Dessert
- Masala dosaIndia
A thin crisp crêpe of fermented rice and lentil batter with a spiced potato filling.
105 min · Takes practice · Breakfast
- MatokeUganda
Green bananas steamed in banana leaves and mashed to a purée. The staple of the Buganda table.
110 min · Medium · Side dish
- Misir watEthiopia
Red lentils in a berbere sauce. A fasting dish eaten in Ethiopia on fast days all year round.
85 min · Easy · Main course
- Moros y cristianosCuba
Rice cooked in the liquid from black beans, which darkens it and gives it all their flavour.
110 min · Easy · Side dish
- MuhammaraSyria
A paste of roasted red pepper, walnuts and pomegranate molasses, from Aleppo.
55 min · Easy · Snack
- Muriwo unedoviZimbabwe
Collard greens stewed in peanut butter with tomato. The side to sadza in every household.
40 min · Easy · Side dish
- Nicaraguan gallo pintoNicaragua
Rice fried with red beans. The Nicaraguan version: red beans, and no Salsa Lizano.
35 min · Easy · Breakfast
- Pasuts tolmaArmenia
A lenten dolma of soured cabbage leaves with lentils, beans and grains.
150 min · Medium · Main course
- RatatouilleFrance
A Provençal vegetable stew where each vegetable is cooked separately before they meet — otherwise it turns to mush.
65 min · Easy · Main course
- Rice and peasJamaica
Rice cooked with red beans in coconut milk, with thyme and a whole scotch bonnet.
110 min · Easy · Side dish
- RuisleipäFinland
A dense sourdough rye bread, sour and with almost no wheat flour in it.
100 min · Takes practice · Baking
- Salata aswadSudan
A Sudanese salad of fried aubergine with peanut butter and lemon.
50 min · Easy · Salad
- SamosaIndia
Triangles of potato and pea in a ghee-rich pastry. Fried on a moderate flame, never a fierce one.
90 min · Medium · Snack
- Sukuma wikiKenya
Collard greens stewed with onion and tomato. The everyday accompaniment to ugali across East Africa.
35 min · Easy · Side dish
- TabboulehLebanon
A parsley salad with a little bulgur in it, not the other way round. There is ten times more herb than grain.
25 min · Easy · Salad
- Tavče gravčeNorth Macedonia
White beans baked in a clay pan with onion, paprika and peppers. North Macedonia's national dish.
140 min · Easy · Main course
- TostonesCuba
Green plantain fried twice, flattened between the fryings, with a garlic dip.
40 min · Easy · Snack
- Trinidad rotiTrinidad and Tobago
A layered flatbread beaten into rags on the pan, served with chicken or goat curry.
130 min · Takes practice · Baking
- VitumbuaTanzania
Rice cakes on coconut milk, cooked in a pan of hemispherical wells.
70 min · Medium · Breakfast
- WaakyeGhana
Rice and black-eyed beans cooked with sorghum leaves, which turn it deep red.
100 min · Easy · Main course