12 Plant-Based Meals With Zero Heat and All the Flavor
A lot of plant-based menus assume that the only way to make vegetables interesting is to set them on fire with chili crisp, sriracha, gochujang, harissa, hot sauce, and smoked paprika piled on top of pepper flakes. If you don't enjoy spicy food, you start to wonder whether plant-based eating is even for you.
We hear this all the time from our customers, especially the ones who are switching to more plants for heart-health reasons or because their doctor said to cut back on red meat. They want more plants on the plate. The chili heat just doesn't work for them.
So here are 12 plant-based meals from our current menu that we make with zero chili heat. No jalapenos, no chipotle, no chili oil, no hot sauce in the dressing. Real flavor comes from lemon, fresh herbs, slow-roasted vegetables, garlic, olive oil, toasted nuts, and good olives. You'll see all of it below. Every one of these arrives at your door fully cooked and ready to heat and eat in just 2-3 minutes, or eat cold in the case of the salads.
1. Lentil Bolognese over Penne Pasta with Garlic Croutons
This one is our lentil bolognese, and we serve it over penne pasta with garlic croutons on the side. We slow-simmer cremini mushrooms and lentils in Italian red wine and tomato sauce, which is what gives the sauce that meaty depth without any meat in the pot.
If you've ever made spaghetti bolognese the long way on a Sunday, you'll recognize the flavor right away. It's the same long-simmer Italian tomato thing, just with lentils doing the work meat normally does.
2. Tomato and Spinach Linguine with Cannellini, Basil & Lemon
Our linguine with tomatoes and spinach is the one I'd send to someone who isn't sure about plant-based food, because it tastes more like fresh Italian than anything else on the list. We make our own dairy-free pesto, and we toss the linguine with roasted cherry tomatoes, cannellini beans, and fresh spinach. The basil and the lemon do a lot of the work that cheese normally does in a pesto pasta. You don't end up missing the cheese.
3. Roman Bowties with Chick Peas and Grilled Lemons
This is our take on a Roman-style bowtie pasta. We use bowtie pasta with garbanzo beans, sun-dried tomatoes, and grilled lemons on a bed of fresh spinach. The grilled lemons make this one different from the lemon pastas most Italian places serve. You get a slightly charred, sweetened citrus that softens into the pasta as you eat it, instead of the sharp raw squeeze most people expect from a lemon pasta. There's no chili and no pepper flakes in the dish, just bright Roman flavors.
4. Mediterranean Rotini with Artichoke Hearts and Kalamata Olives
If your taste runs Mediterranean, this is the one to start with. We use rotini pasta with lemon artichoke hearts, Italian beans, Greek olives, and tender kale. The salty kalamatas and the bright lemon-and-artichoke combination do most of the flavor lifting, and the kale gives you something to chew on without being grassy or raw. It's a plant-based pasta with real Mediterranean flavor, and the artichoke and olive combination gives it depth that makes you stop counting ingredients.
5. Vegetable Lo Mein Noodles with Toasted Almonds
Lo mein is one of those dishes that mainstream Asian-American takeout made a household standard a long time ago. This is our plant-based version. We use a ginger-garlic sauce with fresh stir-fry vegetables over sesame noodles, finished with toasted almonds. Ginger has warmth without chili heat, and most people who avoid spicy food find it comfortable. The almonds give you the crunch the noodles can't.
6. Moroccan Stuffed Peppers with Couscous and Spinach
This is one of my personal favorites on the list. We bake bell peppers and stuff them with spiced couscous pilaf, fresh vegetables, and raisins. The "spiced" in there is the aromatic Moroccan kind, not the chili-hot kind. The raisins also catch some of the steam from the baked pepper and turn into little sweet bursts inside the couscous. You eat one of these and you don't think about heat at all, you think about Sunday cooking.
7. Saffron Vegetable Paella with Green Olives & Almonds
Spanish paella is one of those plates that looks complicated but lives entirely in vegetables, rice, and good olive oil when you make it plant-based. We use roasted eggplant, fennel, peppers, and squash served over yellow saffron rice, with sliced green olives and toasted almonds on top.
Saffron is the gentlest spice on this list. It's the orange thread that makes the rice yellow and gives the dish a slightly floral, slightly honeyed taste. Nothing burns. If you've had paella at a Spanish tapas place, you'll know exactly what to expect.
8. Chopped Market Salad with Chilled Cantaloupe
This is the salad I'd order on the hottest week of a Chicago summer. We use chilled red potatoes, green beans, corn, tomatoes, and bell peppers tossed in a fresh lemon vinaigrette, and we serve it with cubed cantaloupe on the side. It's all cold, so there's nothing to heat, and you can eat it straight from the container if your kitchen is too warm to deal with.
The cantaloupe is the surprise. It sounds like it shouldn't work next to potatoes and beans, but you eat them together and realize the sweet melon is exactly what the savory needed.
9. Rainbow Veggie Salad (PB)
This is a colorful salad with a lot of vegetables in every bite. We toss tomato, carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers, kidney beans, red onion, and cabbage with sunflower seeds, and we dress the whole thing with a sesame tahini dressing. There's no lettuce hiding underneath.
10. Spring Vegetable Couscous Salad (PB)
Israeli couscous is the bigger, pearled version of the small couscous most people know from Moroccan dishes. We use it as the base of this salad, with sweet potatoes, cabbage, beets, asparagus, and spinach, all tossed in a lemon-herb vinaigrette. The sweet potatoes and beets are the substantial pieces, while the asparagus, spinach, and cabbage keep the whole thing from feeling heavy. None of those ingredients carry heat, and the lemon-herb dressing is bright without burning.
11. Flippin Kale Kruncher Salad with Oranges, Radish & Walnuts
This salad is built around shredded kale and cabbages with carrot, radish, oranges, and walnuts, and we dress it with a citrus vinaigrette. The orange in there is what makes the kale work for people who normally find raw kale too rough. Citrus naturally tones down kale's bite, and you can taste the difference. The walnuts and radish keep the texture interesting bite to bite, so you don't get into the salad-fatigue zone halfway through the container.
12. Roasted Vegetables on Pita with Lemon Hummus
This is the closest thing on the list to a meal you'd eat with your hands. We grill peppers, squash, and mushrooms, and we serve them with lemon hummus and pita bread. You assemble each bite at the table by piling the grilled vegetables onto pita with the hummus, folding, and eating. The lemon in the hummus is what gives the whole plate its lift. The combination feels like a real Mediterranean lunch rather than a meal-replacement bowl, and there's nothing on the plate that registers as spicy.
Picking the one to start with
Plant-based food doesn't have to come at you with chili oil to be interesting. Most of what makes vegetables, beans, lemons, herbs, olives, and good pasta taste like real meals is technique, not heat. The 12 plates above are the evidence. None of them require you to keep a glass of water nearby.
If you've been wanting to eat more plants but kept getting burned, literally, by the menus you've tried, start with any of these. The ones I'd point a first-time orderer toward are the Lentil Bolognese over Penne Pasta with Garlic Croutons, the Mediterranean Rotini with Artichoke Hearts and Kalamata Olives, and the Saffron Vegetable Paella with Green Olives & Almonds. They cover three different cuisines and three different formats, and all of them work for someone who wants flavor without fire.
Quick heads-up before you head to the menu. Our menu changes daily, so a couple of meals from this list might not be on the menu the day you order. The live menu shows exactly what's cooking today.
