Vegan Recipes From What You Already Have at Home

Diet 6 min read June 2026

There's a common myth that vegan food is complicated, expensive and needs exotic ingredients. In reality, most simple vegan dishes come together from what's already on your shelf: grains, legumes, vegetables, oil, spices.

You don't have to be vegan to cook these — sometimes there's just no meat or eggs on hand and you still want to eat well. Here are simple ideas with no trip to the store.

What you usually already have

A basic "vegan kit" is in almost every cupboard:

Grains: rice, buckwheat, millet, oats, couscous.
Legumes: beans, chickpeas, lentils, peas (fresh or canned).
Vegetables: potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, whatever's in the fridge.
Flavor: oil, garlic, tomato paste, soy sauce, spices.

That's already enough for dozens of dishes.

Breakfast

Oatmeal on plant milk with fruit. A basic, filling breakfast. Add a banana, apple or any berries — nothing else needed.

Toast with mashed avocado or beans. Beans mashed with a fork + a little salt, garlic and oil — a spread as good as any pâté.

Lunch and dinner

Lentil soup. Lentils, carrot, onion, potato — cooked together in half an hour. Filling, with nothing special required.

Chickpeas with vegetables in a pan. Canned chickpeas + any vegetables + spices. A quick warm dish that satisfies.

Meat-free pilaf. Rice, lots of carrot and onion, garlic, spices. Vegetable pilaf comes out aromatic on its own.

Stewed cabbage with potatoes. A classic home dish that happens to be fully vegan.

In abc-eat you can note that you cook without animal products — and dishes will be picked from exactly what you have at home.

Find vegan dishes →

What to swap familiar products with

Instead of meat for fullness — beans, chickpeas, lentils, mushrooms.
Instead of eggs for binding — flax "egg" (1 tbsp ground flax + 3 tbsp water) or starch.
Instead of milk — oat, coconut, rice.
For creaminess — coconut milk or mashed chickpeas in soup.

The main thing

A vegan dish isn't a "special recipe" — it's often just ordinary home food minus one or two items. The easiest place to start isn't hunting for new products, but looking at what you already have: a great deal of it is plant-based already.