Catering for the vegetarian in your family

It’s estimated that about 5% of people in the UK are vegetarian and a further 5% only eat meat occasionally, so many households now have a vegetarian family member. While there are many health benefits associated with following a vegetarian diet, catering for veggie and non-veggie tastes at meal time can be tricky.

The best approach is always to work with what suits you and your family’s lifestyle best. Whether you enjoy elaborate meal planning or prefer quick and simple dishes, there are plenty of meals that can be adapted to suit everyone.

Pasta
Pasta is an incredibly versatile meal base – simply add tomato sauce and vegetables for a veggie option. Stir fry meat pieces separately and add them to the pasta when serving non-veggies.

Pizza
Even with a small selection of ingredients, pizza really is an option to satisfy all tastes! Having lots of pre-chopped vegetables, meats, pineapple and cheese (keep to the side for strict vegetarians) will make for really fantastic, personalised meals.

Stir-fry
Your options are limited only by your imagination! There are some fantastic recipe books devoted to stir-fry – my personal favourite is the Australian Women’s Weekly Stir-fry cook book – so if you don’t know your way around a wok, it’s really simple to learn. Prepare your vegetables and meat separately then serve with sauce, and rice or noodles.

Tacos / burritos
Fill with beans, lettuce and tomatoes, and even avocado, sour cream and cheese if you’re adventurous. What’s great about tacos and burritos is that people can serve themselves, and they can play around with the fillings to find the combinations they like!

Toasted sandwiches / burgers
Toasties and burgers are as versatile and varied as the tastes of the people eating them. If you have more time to prepare, ingredients like marinated spicy chicken, grilled peppers, artichokes, and bacon and egg all make interesting additions. There are plenty of veggie patties, veggie sausages and meat alternative products (like Quorn) to use instead of meat, too.

Veggie chilli / hotpot
Add as many vegetables, beans and spices that you can think of to a pot – then it pretty much cooks itself! Meat can be left out, or stir-fried separately, or you could even have 2 pots with the meat added to 1 (this is the better option if your veggie / non-veggie split is fairly equal!).

There’s no doubt that planning meals to suit veggies and non-veggies needs a bit more time and thought, but it needn’t be daunting. The important thing to bear in mind is that meat ingredients need to be replaced with suitable alternatives (such as beans, pulses, grains or lots more vegetables) to help replace key nutrients like iron, selenium, zinc and omega-3 that are normally found in meat, meat products and fish.

For more information, the Vegetarian Society is an invaluable resource – they have plenty of ideas for Christmas meals too!