Easy vegan meals when you’ve no time to cook

The objection

“I work full time. I don’t have hours to spend chopping vegetables and following fiddly recipes. Vegan food is a hassle I can’t fit in.”

The answer

The picture is of someone spiralising courgettes, or zucchini, for an hour, when the usual weeknight version is a tin of beans and a pan. Tinned beans, chickpeas and lentils come already cooked, which is why a taco salad from BBC Good Food, a UK recipe site, tips drained black beans straight into the bowl without heating them [1], and a dhal on the same site starts from a tin of cooked lentils [2]. With those in the cupboard beside pouches of ready-cooked rice and jars of curry paste and tomato sauce, and a bag of vegetables in the freezer, what’s left in a quick recipe is some chopping or blending and ten minutes or less in a frying pan, as in the falafel and lentil recipes below [4][5].

What does take time is the learning, as with any change of routine: finding a handful of dinners you like enough to make without the recipe, which is part of why going vegan can feel too hard at first. Quick food can be balanced as well. The NHS’s guide to a vegan diet in the UK (2026) is built on the same staples, with beans and pulses, wholegrain starchy foods, fortified dairy alternatives and at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, plus fortified foods or supplements for nutrients that are harder to get, such as vitamin B12 [3].

What vegan dinners can I make in 20 minutes?

Falafel burgers and lentils with fried vegetables and tahini are two vegan dinners that BBC Good Food lists at 16 and 20 minutes. The burgers (2010) are a tin of chickpeas blitzed with onion, garlic, herbs and spices, then fried for three minutes a side [4], and the lentils (2016) are a pan of fried onion, pepper, green beans and courgette tossed with a pack of pre-cooked puy lentils, kale and a tahini dressing [5]. Both sit in the site’s quick vegan collection, first published in 2019, where 23 of the 24 recipes are listed at 30 minutes or less and the odd one out is a batch of cupcakes [6]. A listed time can be optimistic: the collection’s chickpea and coconut dhal (2021) is listed at 10 minutes, but its method has at least 11 minutes of frying and simmering plus a few more to wilt the spinach, and no time is listed for the chopping [2]. Plenty of vegan cooking is slower, as plenty of meat cooking is: the same site’s vegan chilli (2018), which roasts sweet potato while the pot simmers, takes an hour [7], so read the steps as well as the time before you start.

What can I eat without following a recipe?

Meals such as beans on toast, a hummus and falafel wrap, or pasta with a jar of tomato sauce and a tin of chickpeas stirred through need no recipe, because they are put together from food that is ready to eat or only needs heating. A few others work the same way:

• baked beans in a microwaved jacket potato
• peanut butter on toast, with a banana
• a pouch of microwave rice with a drained tin of black beans, salsa and avocado
• noodles stir-fried with frozen vegetables and cubes of firm tofu

The frozen vegetables in that stir-fry need cooking right through: the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA), a government food-safety body, says in its 2017 guidance on cooking that some, such as sweetcorn, peas and carrots, can carry bacteria, so check the pack before adding any to a cold dish, or use tinned ones [8]. Milk and egg turn up in some breads, wraps, noodles and sauces, so read the label; what to check when cooking for a vegan covers where else they hide. When even that is too much, a ready meal, a frozen burger or a takeaway does the job, as long as the label or the menu says vegan.

Is vegan cooking quicker than cooking meat?

Vegan cooking can be quicker, because tinned pulses skip the hygiene steps and checks that raw meat needs, though a seared steak is quick as well. The FSA advises separate chopping boards and utensils for raw meat, fish and poultry where possible, washing your hands after handling them, and not washing the meat itself, since that can splash bacteria onto hands, worktops and other food [9]. Chicken and pork have to be cooked all the way through, with no pink meat at the thickest part and the juices running clear, and so do mince, burgers and sausages [8]. A tin of chickpeas needs none of this. Vegetables still need washing and keeping apart from ready-to-eat food [9], and whole cuts such as steaks and joints, poultry and pork excepted, can be served pink once seared on the outside [8], so how much time you save depends on what you would otherwise have cooked.

Can I batch cook vegan meals?

Pulse-based chillies, dhals and curries can be cooked in bulk and frozen: BBC Good Food’s vegan chilli (2018) serves four and keeps in the freezer for up to three months [7]. Cooked at the weekend, that pot gives one person four dinners and a couple two, as long as it’s handled the way the FSA’s 2017 guidance advises: cooled and in the fridge within two hours, with whatever you won’t eat within 48 hours frozen, and reheated only once, until steaming hot all the way through [8].