Fast meat-free weeknight dinners

Cooking without meat gets easy once you stop trying to replace it and start building around what’s naturally quick: tofu, eggs, noodles and vegetables. Here are six dinners that take care of themselves in under 20 minutes. (As always, check the ingredients against your own needs — swap or leave out anything that doesn’t suit you.)

Tofu does the heavy lifting

Tofu is the fastest protein there is — no raw-meat caution, no long cooking. Two ways we like it:

• Soy-glazed pan tofu — crisp-edged slabs in a quick sweet-soy glaze, over rice.
• Quick mapo tofu — silky tofu in a spicy bean sauce. Leave out the minced meat and it loses none of the punch.

Eggs make it dinner

• Tahu telur — crispy tofu folded into a golden omelette with a sweet-soy peanut drizzle. Simple and very satisfying.
• Shakshuka — eggs poached in a smoky spiced tomato sauce, one pan, scooped up with bread. Breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Vegetables as the main event

• Capcay — a bright mixed-veg stir-fry in a light garlic sauce. Whatever’s in the drawer works.
• Sambal kangkung — water spinach flash-fried with chilli sambal; serve over rice.

The trick to making veg filling

Three things turn a pile of vegetables into a meal: a starch (rice or noodles), a fat (oil, butter, sesame oil, or peanut), and a savoury hit (soy, miso, or oyster sauce — or a mushroom-based “oyster” sauce if you prefer). Hit all three and you won’t miss the meat.

Cooking from what’s already in the crisper drawer? Tell OneToCook what you have and it ranks dinners by how much you already own.