15 Vegetarian Recipes that Celebrate Bold Asian Flavors

Vegetables are at the heart of weeknight dinners across Asian cuisines. Our favorite recipes are loaded with big, bright, bold flavors. We know you'll love them too.

By
Myo Quinn
Myo Quinn
Myo Quinn
Myo's recipes, writing, and food styling can be found on King Arthur Baking, Food Network, Delish, Food52, and more. She collaborated on the cookbook Delish Vegan Dinners and trained at Gramercy Tavern and Untitled at the Whitney Museum.
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Updated December 12, 2024
Myo Quinn
Recipes - Bold Asian Flavors

Walk into any Korean restaurant and you'd think our national food was BBQ, meat cooked on the table family-style. (It's popular because it's delicious. Order it!) But that's not how I eat at home, where vegetables, tofu, and rice are on heavy rotation.

Traditional Korean home cooked meals lean vegetarian and are simple yet bold: easy to find vegetables like broccoli, bok choy, spinach, and squash are transformed into delicious meals using soy sauce, sesame oil, gochujang (Korean chili paste), or gochugaru (Korean chili flakes).

Similarly, most Asian cuisines put vegetables at the center of weeknight dinners. Below we gathered our favorite vegetarian recipes inspired and beloved by the vastly diverse cultures of Asia. We have traditional dishes like Chana Masala and Kimchi Fried Rice to inspired versions like Eggplant Green Curry and Kimchi Deviled Eggs.

One thing these recipes have in common: They rely on bright, bold, and daring seasonings, which are pantry staples found in each culture's home kitchens.

  • Slow Cooker Chickpea Curry With Sweet Potatoes and Red Peppers

    Slow Cooker Chickpea Curry
    Sabrina Modelle

    Most curry powders found in the grocery store have turmeric, coriander, cinnamon, cumin, garlic, ginger, black pepper, and cloves. That's a lot of flavor packed into a small spice jar! And it seeps into the chickpeas slowly over six to eight hours.

  • Easy Vegetable Fried Rice

    How to Make Vegetable Fried Rice
    Cheyenne Cohen

    Speed and riffability are the name of the game. Fresh veggies trump frozen ones, except when you need to get dinner on the table stat. I've used an 11-ounce bag of frozen mixed vegetables (my favorite combo: broccoli, carrots, snap peas, and water chestnuts), adding them straight into the hot wok frozen.

  • Eggplant Green Curry

    Green Curry Eggplant
    Elise Bauer

    Thai green curry paste is a combination of chilis, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, basil, and sometimes fish sauce. If you're strictly vegetarian, check the label. Also, this recipe calls for fish sauce. You can use soy sauce, coconut aminos, or a vegan fish sauce instead.

  • Potato and Broccoli Curry

    Potato Broccoli Curry
    Sheryl Julian

    Instead of using cream, almonds are blended into the sauce to make it thick and creamy. It's a smart technique traditionally used in India to make masalas (curries), typically with cashews.

    Continue to 5 of 15 below

  • Gochujang Green Beans

    Green Beans with Gochujang in a skillet.
    Sally Vargas

    Katie Morford, RD is brilliant at coaxing bold and interesting flavors into bright healthy foods like these green beans. Here she uses gochujang, a Korean chili paste that's sweet, salty, tangy, and a little funky, to get a 15-minute side dish you'll make over and over again.

  • Curried Potato and Vegetable Soup

    Curried Potato Vegetable Soup
    Elise Bauer

    Elise Bauer, founder of Simply Recipes, picked out all the yellow ingredients from her pantry and fridge to create this vegetarian soup. And it works! I love my soups chunky, so I think it would be okay not to blend the soup, right?

  • Chana Masala

    Best Chana Masala bowl of chana masala with rice, and lemon wedge
    Prerna Singh

    You'll want to put the ginger-garlic paste, recommended by Prerna Singh, the recipe developer, in everything including this quick and easy Indian dish. Canned chickpeas make it as simple as can be.

  • Asian Zucchini Noodle Salad

    Asian Zucchini Noodle Salad
    Elise Bauer

    A drizzle of dark sesame oil can make anything taste delicious, including these zoodles (i.e. zucchini noodles). It has a deep, rich, nutty, a little sweet and funky flavor that's hard to mimic with any other ingredient.

    Continue to 9 of 15 below

  • Sesame Ginger Noodle Salad

    Asian Noodle Salad with Sesame Ginger Dressing
    Elise Bauer

    The world of Asian noodles is vast (and delicious). This recipe calls for chow mein. Any thin round noodles like somen, rice sticks, soba, or rice vermicelli works.

  • Korean Spicy Cold Noodles

    Korean Spicy Cold Noodles
    Elise Bauer

    These are the cold noodles I grew up making without a recipe. That's your permission to use whatever fresh vegetables or noodles you have available, A non-negotiable? The gochujang in the sauce adds a depth a flavor that's unique to this dish. Here is a brand I love.

  • Stir Fried Japanese Eggplant With Ginger and Miso

    Japanese Eggplant with Ginger and Miso
    Elise Bauer

    Of the many types of eggplants out there, Japanese eggplants can stand up to the assertive flavors of ginger, miso, and chili, all while staying intact (i.e. it won't become mush when cooked). No need to peel the skin—it's tender and not bitter.

  • Chinese Hot and Sour Soup

    A bowl of hot sour soup.
    Elise Bauer

    Use vegetable broth (or better yet, a mushroom broth) to make this spicy, sour, and earthy soup. The key to feathery ribbons of egg is to keep stirring the soup as you drizzle it in. Resist the urge to stop stirring to check whether it's working. It'll work, as long as you keep stirring.

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  • Hoisin Glazed Brussel Sprouts

    Hoisin Glazed Brussels Sprouts
    Elise Bauer

    We love Brussels sprouts and this version stands out for its use of hoisin, a fragrant, salty, sweet fermented soybean sauce used in Cantonese cooking. The sauce is vegan even though hoisin means seafood in Chinese.

  • Cold Rice Noodle Salad

    Overhead view of an easy rice noodle salad in a serving bowl along with wooden claws.
    Alison Bickel

    Cold Rice Noodle Salad is filling but not heavy. They are full of vegetables and wholesome without being virtuous. It's a little spicy, very crunchy, and the noodles are chewy. Basically, the perfect meal.

  • Easy Vegetable Lo Mein

    Side view of a white plate and fork with homemade vegetable lo mein. A fork is on the plate and a second plate is partially visible in the upper right hand corner.
    Nick Evans | Art Banner Credit: Andy Christensen

    You can have a steaming plate of lo mein in about 30 minutes using whatever vegetables you have and like—not a takeout box in sight! It's okay if you don't own a wok. Use the biggest skillet you have.

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