12 Vegetable-Packed Dinner Recipes That Are Hearty Enough to Be the Main Course

These recipes prove that vegetables deserve a spot in the center of the table.

By
Emily Johnson
Emily Johnson
Emily Johnson
Emily has worked as a food writer and editor for ten years, across publications such as Lucky Peach, Epicurious, Bon Appétit, and The New York Times Cooking.
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Published January 06, 2026
A dish of roasted cauliflower with grapes herbs and nuts being scooped with a spoon

Serious Eats/ Qi Ai

It’s one thing to make a weeknight dinner where vegetables play a starring role, and another to create a vegetable-forward dish that feels worthy of being the centerpiece at a dinner party. On a Tuesday night, you’ll find me pulling all manner of vegetables from the fridge and roasting, sautéing, or blending them into soup without much fanfare. These improvised, vegetable-based meals are satisfying, nutritious, and—most importantly—quick.

But vegetables deserve the same care and effort you’d give to slowly braising a splurgy cut of meat for a dinner party. The recipes below might just make you want to invite friends over to show off your handiwork. A few tips for making vegetables main-course-worthy run through this collection: First, choose robust vegetables like cabbage, eggplant, and broccoli—sturdy enough to take high heat and soak up powerhouse savory flavors. Second, mix cooking techniques; for example, combining raw and cooked vegetables can elevate a salad from weekday lunch to Saturday-night centerpiece. Third, use meat as a condiment (or don’t!): These recipes range from fully vegan to not-quite-vegetarian. That latter category proves a meal can center on vegetables, with just a bit of lardon or fish sauce as a flavor booster. That said, any of them can be made fully vegetarian by omitting the meat component.

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  • Orecchiette With Broccoli and Toasted Hazelnuts

    Orecchiette with broccoli and toasted hazelnuts in a black bowl.

    This pasta dish contains two whole heads of broccoli, making it perfect for when you're craving the comfort of pasta but still want to pack in plenty of vegetables. Broccoli and orecchiette are a classic pairing. In typical preparations, the broccoli is simply boiled, but here, vegetable genius Nik Sharma takes a dual approach: He sears half of it, developing bittersweet, crisp-edged florets, while the rest gently cooks down into the cream-based sauce, melting into its silky texture and lending sweetness.

  • Roasted Eggplant With Tahini, Pine Nuts, and Lentils

    20160410-roasted-eggplant-lentil-vegan-5.jpg
    J. Kenji López-Alt

    Like broccoli, eggplant makes a strong centerpiece for a vegetable-forward dish: it’s sturdy enough to withstand high heat and develops sweet-savory complexity as it caramelizes. In this preparation, the eggplant is halved and scored, allowing its porous flesh to soak up oil. It’s then roasted until deeply browned on the outside and meltingly tender within. A topping of lentils, pine nuts, and tahini adds protein and richness, making this a satisfying vegetarian main. Plus, serving halved eggplants whole gives the dish visual impact and makes it feel right at home in the center of the table.

  • Savory Cabbage Tarte Tatin

    A savory cabbage tart tatin on a green plate

    Serious Eats / Robby Lozano

    In this savory twist on the classic French apple dessert, cabbage takes on deeply caramelized flavors and becomes a perfect canvas for nutty, creamy Gruyère. In a traditional tarte Tatin, apples are coated in caramel and topped with flaky pie dough. Here, that caramel gets a savory upgrade with white balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, and thyme folded into the butter and sugar base. To prevent a soggy tart, the cabbage is pre-cooked and squeezed to remove excess moisture before assembly. For a showstopping finish, the cabbage leaves are arranged in rose-like patterns. Paired with a salad, this striking vegetarian main makes for a special-occasion vegetable-on-vegetable dinner.

  • Malfatti (Northern Italian Spinach Dumplings)

    A fork holding a piece of cooked spinach dumpling with more dumplings on a plate in the background

    Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

    The Italian word malfatti translates to “badly formed” which relieves the pressure right from the beginning to make these spinach-packed dumplings look perfect, and captures the recipe’s laissez fare vibe: It is forgiving if you want to mess with the ratios of breadcrumbs, ricotta, and greens (just make sure there’s enough egg to keep these guys bound together). Using mature spinach rather than baby spinach will allow the dumplings to hold their shape when you cook them, but you can also use any substantial green that you like, such as chard or kale.

    Continue to 5 of 12 below

  • Roasted Grape and Cauliflower Salad

    A dish of roasted cauliflower with grapes herbs and nuts being scooped with a spoon

    Serious Eats/ Qi Ai

    We love a warm salad in the winter, and this one is particularly satisfying. It makes use of the whole head of cauliflower, roasting the florets so that they get toasty flavor while the raw core gets blitzed into rice that’s primed to absorb the vinaigrette like a sponge. Once you experience warm roasted grapes that burst with sweet flavor over the roasted vegetables, you’ll want to include them in every salad recipe.

  • Vegetable Qorma

    Overhead view of a portion of vegetable qorma served next to white rice on a blue plate, on a textured blue fabric

    Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

    The braising technique quorma dates back to the Mungal empire, which had control of India starting in the 16th century. Quorma involves slowly cooking vegetables or meat in a thick and rich sauce, usually involving yogurt, cream, or nuts. Here, you’ll make a blended cashew and poppy seed mixture, but also add yogurt incrementally as you cook the vegetables, which will allow its liquid to evaporate, developing the yogurty flavor as the proteins cook. A blend of starchy and hearty vegetables—cauliflower, carrot, potato, and peas—make this nutritious and satisfying.

  • Crispy Kale, Brussels Sprouts, and Potato Hash Recipe

    Crispy kale, brussels sprouts, and potato hash

    Serious Eats / Mateja Zvirotic Andrijanic

    When you want to eat a giant pile of vegetables for dinner but still want it to feel like a composed dish, the humble hash is your best friend. The answer to Will It Hash? is almost always yes. Sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach—whatever mix of starchy, sturdy, and leafy vegetables you have on hand will work. In this version, parboiled potatoes provide a creamy interior before being crisped in the pan, while Brussels sprouts and kale fry until browned and frizzled. It’s all topped, of course, with creamy poached eggs, which double as sauce and central protein.

  • Ribollita (Hearty Tuscan Bean, Bread, and Vegetable Stew) Recipe

    20160201-ribolita-vicky-wasik-019.jpg
    Vicky Wasik

    This rib-sticking Italian stew started as a way to stretch leftover minestrone. The word “ribolita” means “re-boiled” and it involves adding bread and beans to leftover vegetable soup. But it’s absolutely worth making from scratch. Using a variety of vegetables—leek, carrot, turnip, and butternut squash, in this case—will make for nuanced flavor. Bread and beans thicken and enrich the soup, but you have control over how thick you want it: Reduce the soup so that it’s porridge-like, or leave it a brothy, sippable consistency.

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  • Salade Lyonnaise (French Bistro Salad)

    Salade Lyonnaise on antique blue and white plates with sparkling water, and utensils on white and grey striped napkin on a white marbled surface

    Serious Eats / Two Bites 

    When it comes to vegetable-forward dinners, salads are the obvious choice. And while we’ve all tossed together a quick salad from whatever’s on hand, taking the time to prepare this classic, composed dish from Lyon pays off in spades. Every element here is in balance: the greens bring freshness (this is the moment for frisée, a cold-season green, though endive or escarole work just as well). A classic French vinaigrette adds aromatic depth and savoriness. And the lardons are a textbook example of meat-as-condiment—just enough to contribute rich flavor and chewy-crisp texture, but restrained enough to let the vegetables stay center stage.

  • Loaded Baked Sweet Potatoes

    Side view of loaded backed sweet potato topped with cheese and beans

    Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

    Topping a sweet potato with whatever greens, beans, or other ingredients you have lying around is one of the best ways to get a healthy weeknight dinner on the table without much thought or effort. In this recipe, you’ll upgrade that emergency dinner and make it worthy of entertaining in a few ways: Oiling your potato skins and keeping them unwrapped while they roast in the oven makes them crisp. Then, give the potatoes the twice-baked treatment: Remove the meat and mash it with butter before re-filling the potato skins means every bite will be infused with creamy richness. Choose whatever toppings you like or have around, like a classic chili and cheese, corn salad, or sauteed white beans and greens.

  • Creamy Vegan Saag Paneer (With Tofu) Recipe

    20160330-vegan-saag-paneer-tofu-cauliflower-recipe-16.jpg
    J. Kenji López-Alt

    Swapping tofu for the paneer in this classic Indian dish makes it not just vegetarian, but totally vegan. To make the tofu taste as savory and tangy as the real thing, you’ll soak it in a mixture of lemon juice and miso. Additionally, the recipe calls for a mix of greens rather than just spinach, and adding arugula in the mix will lend peppery complexity. The recipe gets thickened and made creamy by the addition of nut-milk-soaked, pureed cauliflower—which means that in addition to being packed with greens, this dish manages to get its creamy richness from even more vegetables.

  • Vegan Peanut, Sweet Potato, and Kale Soup With Coconut Recipe

    20160309-peanut-sweet-potato-kale-coconut-soup-stew-19.jpg
    J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

    This rich West African stew gets rich nutty flavor from both peanut butter (which thickens and adds a bit of sweetness) and toasted peanuts, which add complex roasted flavor—a more profound nuttiness than the peanut butter would achieve alone. Pounding your aromatics in a mortar and pestle makes their flavors come out in a more pronounced way in the stew, which is packed with sweet potato and lacitano kale.

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