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Big Batch Weeknight Vegan Curry

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Natural Comfort Kitchen

Happy. Healthy. Homemade.

Quick and Easy Dinners

My best quick and easy recipes when you need to get dinner on the table fast. Most are healthy, too!

Big Batch Tabbouleh Salad

Fresh and filling big batch tabbouleh salad is hearty enough for a vegan main dish, keeps for nearly a week, and is ready in 30 minutes! Recipe at naturalcomfortkitchen.com

It’s big batch tabbouleh day! If you’re unfamiliar, tabbouleh is a fresh and filling middle eastern salad, and it’s a must have in your next batch cooking meal plan. Read on for a cute story about my firstborn and all you need to know about making your own tabbouleh…

When we were still a family of three, I remember sitting down to mediocre Greek takeout one night. I dished up then two-year-old Evan a little bit of tabbouleh, the easy/only star of the meal, with LOADS of lemon juice and parsley. He wasn’t the biggest or most adventurous eater at that point, so when he devoured it by the spoonful and signaled for more, Steve and I half giggled, half gazed in amazement (basically the theme of all toddler eating, right?).

Fresh and filling big batch tabbouleh salad is hearty enough for a vegan main dish, keeps for nearly a week, and is ready in 30 minutes! Recipe at naturalcomfortkitchen.com

With Zahav on my cookbook shelf, I quickly realized that I can make my Middle Eastern favorites pretty easily at home, exactly to my liking, saving the hassle and expense of unpredictable takeout. So many of my favorites, like this big batch tabbouleh salad, are naturally vegan and fit easily into our plant-based diet. The tabbouleh is fresh and filling all year, but the recipe requires just thirty minutes in the kitchen for at least two dinners’ worth of a hearty main dish salad, making it an absolute essential for the upcoming warm weather.

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Batch Cooking Quick Vegan Curry

Big batch vegan curry that was MADE for weeknight dinners! Recipe at Natural Comfort Kitchen

It’s quick veggie curry 2.0! I stand by my original quick veggie curry recipe, but there were a few things I wanted to change about it, to make it even faster and more delicious. A lot has changed in my life since that first quick veggie curry, like going almost 100% plant based and adding two kids to our family. So this updated batch cooking version has many of the features of its predecessor, plus lots of new perks.

  • A creamy coconut curry of chickpeas, veggies, and a pop of fresh ginger.
  • It’s officially NO CHOP. If you have a grater for the ginger you won’t need to even lay hands on a knife.
  • It makes a ton. Freeze the extra, feed a huge family, or take it for lunch for the week.
  • Less oil than the original.
  • Infinitely customizable. Use the frozen veggies of your choice, and even sub cooked lentils or frozen shelled edamame for the garbanzo beans. Adjust the spice level depending on the curry blend you use, or add a pinch of cayenne for more heat.
  • More balance: I’ve added tomatoes this time around, to balance out that rich and creamy coconut milk.
  • Just seven ingredients, and you probably have at least a couple already in your pantry.

The evening I tested out this recipe was CRAZY TIME. Kind of like every night at dinner time. Hangry kids hanging off my legs, screaming, crying, climbing things. Dog barking or urinating indoors. So needless to say, I didn’t get LOADS of great pics. On the upside, I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this curry recipe is excellent for a busy evening. Next time I make it, I’ll do so when my kids are asleep or at school, so keep an eye out for more helpful pics!

Big batch vegan curry that was MADE for weeknight dinners! Recipe at Natural Comfort Kitchen
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Oil-Free Balsamic Dressing (Vegan)

Big batch, smooth and creamy vegan balsamic dressing that keeps for weeks in the fridge!

My batch prepped lunch salad with vegan balsamic dressing, chickpeas, and homemade “chicken” cutlet

I had to break my streak of naming recipes “creamy”, but this smooth balsamic dressing is just that. I repeat, we aren’t talking about some light and not really exciting vinaigrette that you grudgingly drizzle over a sad lunch salad. We’re talking about a so-creamy-you-ALMOST-can’t-drizzle-it balsamic with a perfect, magical hint of flavor and sweetness. Let’s run down a list of its many other positive qualities:

  • Can be made WAY ahead. We’re not using fresh garlic or citrus, so this dressing keeps for weeks.
  • Perfect to make in a huge batch, so when you’re meal prepping lunches, you don’t have to make new dressing every week.
  • Totally oil free! Uses tahini to add thickness and balance out the pop of the vinegar and mustard.
  • Completely plant-based/vegan
  • For its ultra creaminess, is NOT high in calories/fat, because the base is vinegar, NOT oil.
  • Pairs with lots of salad combos (not just Italian-ish like I used to assume!)
  • No whisk or blender required: I shake mine up right in the mason jar I’ll use to store it.

Honestly, that kind of covers it. I’ve been making this dressing for weeks now, and while I have other delicious vegan sauces sitting in my freezer (chipotle aioli! roasted red pepper tahini!), ALL I want is this balsamic dressing!

Big batch, smooth and creamy vegan balsamic dressing that keeps for weeks in the fridge!

You might be asking, so why is tahini any better than oil? Aren’t they both equally fatty and bad? What is all this fuss about oil free? That could be a long conversation, but I choose tahini over oil because it still includes the entire food: the sesame seed. In making tahini, nothing big (or nothing at all, hopefully) gets removed. However, when you think about making olive oil, MOST of the whole food gets left behind.

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Instant Pot Creamy Vegan Black Beans

There were way too many adjectives to actually fit into the title of this black bean recipe, and only a few made the final cut. Honorable mentions for the rest of the list:

  • Big batch
  • Oil free
  • Luscious (my husband’s words lol)
  • Versatile
  • Freezer friendly
  • Protein packed
  • Whole food plant based

Go make them right now and report back on any others you think should be added to the list!

Big batch Instant Pot creamy black beans: no soaking, no dairy, no blending, and no oil!

For years, I’ve been loyal to this other vegan black bean recipe, which is still delicious in its own right, and will definitely stay in my repertoire for its layers of flavor and more complex spices. However, it’s more work, with extra chopping, measuring, ingredients, added oil, and standing over a hot stove attempting to fend off my toddlers. Not something I have a lot of patience for in my life right now. It also requires cooked beans, so you’re either loading up on canned beans or taking the huge extra step and dishes of cooking your own beans from scratch first. With a broken-since-November dishwasher, I honestly might cry if I see another dirty dish.

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Essential Pickled Red Onions

Pickled onions recipe post for Pinterest

Essential is the only way to describe them, and I’m tired of going to my own Instagram or the recipe on this blog that originally featured the only pickled red onions I’ve ever loved. The key points: they’re NOT loaded with sugar and the only cooking involves hot tap water. You’re going to want to keep them on hand at pretty much all times, which won’t be a problem, considering how easy and quick the recipe is.

Mexican inspired kale salad with pickled red onions

What makes this condiment SO great? It really comes down to this: they’re a weeknight cooking all star. You know that I’ve shifted my focus on this site to plant-based batch cooking, which is all about making weeknight dinners easy without sacrificing taste or variety. Dinners could be anything from a freezer-friendly vegan mac and cheese, to a highly flexible plant-powered bowl, to a simple soup, to–my personal favorite–build-your-own burritos.

But when you’re pulling something out of the freezer, you might be missing that FRESH element. The crunch. The acid. And THAT is where pickled red onions come in. So grab a jar and an onion and let’s get to it!

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Vegan Slow Cooker White Bean Chili

When we started eating plant based last fall, my cravings for crock pot white chicken chili all but vanished. Luckily my pantry is brimming with dried beans, so I popped onto Google to quickly grab a recipe for a vegan white chili. The meaty, dairy-laden version I previously enjoyed was easy to throw together in the slow cooker, and that was a big criteria for my recipe search.

Pot of white bean chili

But Google came up short (just like I did when photographing this chili in the pot used to reheat it and NOT in the crockpot). Apparently it is REALLY hard to come by a white chili recipe that has ALL of the following characteristics:

  • Vegan/plant-based
  • Uses dried beans (not canned)
  • Made in the slow cooker

In our food blog world, it’s rare that a recipe search basically fails, and I was really bummed. White chicken chili is a great family staple, typically milder than a red chili, so was it really that hard to veganize it? In a crock pot? With dried beans? Doesn’t everyone have dried beans in the pantry during a pandemic??? I was undeterred, but what I thought would be a quick search, grocery order, and assembly had expanded into a recipe development project.

Vegan white chili ingredients

Vegan white chili slow cooker prep

I already knew how to cook dried beans in the crock pot, a skill, in my opinion, that you MUST acquire if you’re to survive long as a plant-based eater (it’s easy: I learned from my favorite cookbook). So I worked in the flavors I love in a white chili and some quick tricks I’ve picked up along the way to really make this a thick CHILI, not just a misleadingly named white bean SOUP.

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