No-Meat Meals

It's Taiwanese popcorn chicken, but vegan. Mushrooms, with their woodsy umami flavor and meaty bite, make a compelling substitute for the usual boneless chicken. Potato starch gives them a crunchy coat. Five spice powder imparts that signature flavor, while deep-fried basil leaves adds extra aroma and an attractive burst of green.

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Popcorn chicken is a popular street food in Taiwan: boneless chicken bites deep-fried until crispy, tossed with aromatic five spice powder and fried basil, and served in a paper bag. Like its big sister 

 there's enough flavor and texture for you to enjoy the chicken as is—no sauce or gravy necessary.

This recipe uses a mix of fresh oyster and shimeji mushrooms. You can stick to one type, or change it up with other kinds: spindly 

 or fat king oyster mushrooms sliced thinly can work. Salting the mushrooms beforehand will help draw out excess moisture and dry them out for a crispier fry.

Taiwanese Popcorn Mushrooms

Give meaty mushrooms like oyster and shimeji the Taiwanese popcorn chicken treatment.

Kangkong stems, often discarded in favor of the 

Our chef, Selina, got this gising-gising recipe from her dad, who led a vegetarian lifestyle for over 25 years. Most of the prep time goes into chopping the 

 stems into inch-long pieces. Simmering in 

This recipe has another unusual gising-gising ingredient: charred 

. Smoky talong adds a velvety, meaty body to go with the soft stems. Mash them as you would with tortang talong, season with salt, and slice into small slabs to make a bed for the kangkong stems.

Prepare Eggplant Base

Make Gising-Gising

Water Spinach (Kangkong) Stem Gising-Gising

Don't throw your kangkong stems away. Chop them up and make this spicy gising-gising served over roasted eggplant.

 that skirts the line between appetizer and dessert. Hot out of the fryer, each crispy baton breaks into ribbons of melted mozzarella cheese speckled with crunchy corn. The sugar coating is optional, but adds a delightful sweet-savory crunchy finish to every bite. Serve as a prelude to a meal, or enjoy as a party snack with a round of drinks.

Korean Corn Cheese-Filled Lumpia

While corn cheese sounds like a dish off the kids’ menu, Koreans enjoy it as 

 or drinking food. (Think pulutan.) It arrives on your table in a sizzling skillet—a hot, bubbling mixture of corn, 

This recipe adds cream cheese for an extra-creamy dip. For a bonus toasty browned topping, finish your corn cheese in the broiler or with a blowtorch. Or skip it completely and dig right in with nacho chips (or a spoon). Hot, freshly cooked corn cheese waits for no one.

Korean Corn Cheese

Consider this tofu recipe the vegetarian cousin of Chinese 

. Using both orange and lemon juice gives the glaze an extra-citrusy, puckery flavor. And it’s this aggressive tang makes this dish addictive—doubly so when paired with extra-crunchy tofu. Serve with freshly cooked rice for a satisfying meat-free meal.

Tofu

Dry Breading

Wet Batter

Orange-Lemon Glaze

For Garnish

Crunchy Orange-Lemon Tofu Recipe

 葱油饼) demand time and skill. Unlike breakfast pancakes, where you whip up a wet batter to spoon into a pan, the Chinese pancakes require a flour-water dough that you knead, roll, and shape before cooking. Green onion pancakes have no shortcuts—until today.

This recipe skips the dough by using store-bought lumpia wrappers. Paper-thin and ready to roll, they get you cheat green onion pancakes in just 30 minutes. Melted butter creates lamination, forming a flaky, layered interior. And the irreverence doesn’t stop there: we add a layer of mozzarella cheese with the green onions, because 

 obviously. But they get the job done for emergency cravings!

Cheat No-Dough Green Onion Pancakes (Cong You Bing)

These garlic green beans get their crunch through a Chinese cooking technique called dry-frying (ganbian, 干煸). It means to fry until dry, and there are 

 the traditional stir-fried way, and the restaurant-style deep-fried way. This recipe follows the latter.

When you drop the green beans in hot oil, the heat forces out their interior moisture and dries them out. The dehydration creates a wrinkly, blistered skin and a unique crisp.

We recommend cooking with French beans—they retain their snap well after dry-frying. Baguio beans tend to be tougher and more fibrous, making them prone to overcooking.

10-Minute Chinese Garlic Green Beans

Dry-fried garlic green beans have a pleasant crunch and snappy bite that will have you snacking on them like French fries.

Traditional lasagna minus the red sauce equals white lasagna. In this recipe, kangkong (water spinach) gets sandwiched between layers of lasagna noodles and creamy nutmeg-flecked béchamel. We cheat our way out of the layering step by baking the pasta as-is—any wayward noodles crisp up nicely in the oven. As a bonus, this dish freezes beautifully too. Don't be afraid to make two batches.

No-Layer White Lasagna with Kangkong

This vegetarian- and budget-friendly lasagna uses pairs kangkong with a silky white béchamel sauce. No layering required!

Garlic butter noodles are for days when you’re lazy, but not instant 

-lazy. You have a hankering for something fast and comforting, but with an ingredients list longer than just hot water.

This not-so-instant recipe does the trick: Toss your noodles in a pool of garlicky butter and slurp away. Using chicken broth cubes seasons the dish with meaty umami. If you’re feeling extra fancy, take it up a notch and throw in some shrimp, chicken, or crab.

Near-Instant Garlic Butter Noodles

These easy, comforting, and near-instant garlic butter noodles are ready to cook on your laziest day.

For a vegetarian katsudon as satisfying as its pork counterpart, use tofu. A marinade of soy sauce, mirin, and garlic injects it with flavor. Breaded and deep-fried, the tofu’s soft, creamy interior contrasts with the crunchy panko crust.

But if you prefer a meatier bite, freeze and defrost your tofu before marinating. This step causes the tofu’s water to expand and solidify into tiny ice crystals. When these crystals melt away, they leave behind sponge-like holes that give the tofu a firm, meat-like texture. The holes help soak up and more marinade too, resulting in extra flavor.

Breading

Katsudon Sauce

For Serving

Tofu Katsudon

Who says katsudon can't have a vegetarian version? This tofu or tokwa katsudon recipe is as savory and delicious as its pork counterpart.

If you had to point out one flaw in Cibo’s Spinaci Zola, it’s the serving size. No amount of rationing will make the dip, which comes in a teeny-tiny ramekin, enough for everyone at the table. Good thing it’s easy to make at home, and easier to make big batches of.

The appetizer gets its name from its two primary ingredients: spinach and gorgonzola. Both fresh and frozen spinach will work well with this recipe—the latter saves time by skipping the blanching step. If you can’t get your hands on gorgonzola, use any blue cheese in its place.

Bake the dip in small ramekins a la Cibo, or pour it all into one communal oven-safe dish. Serve at a party with crostini or nacho chips, then watch it disappear in seconds.

Cibo-Inspired Spinach Gorgonzola (Spinaci Zola) Dip

If you're not at Max's Restaurant for the 

 with kamote fries, maybe you're there for their second best menu item: tofu 

Served on a sizzling cast-iron plate, it's everything you love about sisig—the dish Anthony Bourdain called 

—sans the pork. But the tofu, sliced into cubes and deep-fried to a crisp, will leave even the staunchest meat-eater satisfied. 

Replicating Max's tofu sisig at home is easy, all thanks to liquid seasoning. It provides that familiar umami flavor that makes this copycat a dead ringer for the real thing.

Some brands of tofu have a slightly sour taste that remains even after cooking. Blanching tofu in hot salted water brings out a fresher flavor while coaxing the tofu's inner moisture to the surface, making it easier to dry.

Either pour the hot salted water over the tofu, or dunk the tofu into a simmering (not boiling) pot of salted water. Pat it dry, and your tofu's ready to use. Sounds counterintuitive, but it works!

Freezing tofu changes its tender texture to something chewier and meat-like. When thawed, the ice crystals inside the tofu leave sponge-like holes, creating a bouncy mouthfeel. It's a trick we use in our popular 

To freeze, you can keep your tofu whole or cut up into smaller portions. Keep the tofu in its packaging or, if using cut-up portions, transfer to freezer-safe containers or zip-lock bags. Freeze until solid and more yellowish in color, then defrost either overnight in the fridge or at room temperature on an 

 Don't forget to (gently) press out that extra moisture before frying.

Fried Tofu

Sisig

Max's-Inspired Sizzling Tofu Sisig

This hack for Max's tofu sisig tastes exactly like the restaurant's, all thanks to one convenient pantry ingredient.

Hong Kong's Yardbird is known for their yakitori, but they also have some other items on the menu such as Sweet Corn Tempura, Garlic Fried Chicken with Kewpie, and the crowd-pleasing Korean Fried Cauliflower. The lightly battered, crisp vegetables are dressed in an addictive sweet-spicy glaze. Think of them as a healthy-ish alternative to spicy chicken wings.

Glaze

Yardbird-Inspired Korean Fried Cauliflower

 (except the Mushroom Sandwich) are actually not completely made out of mushrooms. They're a 50/50 mix of mushrooms and meat. While we do love their burgers, we were aiming to make something vegetarian-friendly. Enter our fried whole mushroom burger recipe. 

This burger—which we call our shroom-wich—is made up of a whole, fried mushroom patty, homemade garlic aioli sauce, and all the fix-ins of a regular burger.

Garlic Aioli

Batter

Fried Mushrooms

Burgers

Prepare Aioli and Mushrooms

Assemble Burgers

Fried Enoki Mushroom Burgers with Garlic Aioli

This vegetarian mushroom burger uses fried whole enoki mushrooms as patties, with homemade garlic aioli and the usual burger fix-ins.

You can't go wrong with a California maki. For Japanese food lovers that aren't initially enticed by the idea of eating raw fish, it’s the middle ground; it has seafood and sushi rice, and it’s served in the same shape as most sushi. But it’s packed with other stuff people are already familiar with: cucumber (veg—that’s good for you), mangoes (who doesn’t love it), and, in some iterations, avocadoes (another fruit, it’s pretty much healthy for you).

This California maki recipe has all that, sans the avocadoes. But what makes it different—or *extra*—is the addition of a 

 salad topping. It doesn’t need it, but the loaded topping complements the roll’s flavors and solves the top problem of most California maki: not having enough crab.

Kani Salad

Sushi Rice

Maki

California Maki Sushi Roll

Make a restaurant-quality roll at home with this California Maki recipe.

Cyma’s Roka Salata makes for a great crowd-pleaser with the sweet, lively flavors of sundried tomatoes, candied walnuts, and a honey-balsamic vinaigrette. Arugula, tossed with romaine, provides a peppery bite. Make it as a starter or as a light meal.

Salad

Candied Walnuts

Greek Vinaigrette

Make the Candied Walnuts

Make the Vinaigrette

Assemble the Salad

Cyma-Style Roka Salata with Candied Walnuts

Cyma's beloved Roka Salata is a sweet-salty affair of arugula, sundried tomatoes, candied walnuts, and fresh parmesan.

 penne, gets its name from the melted mozzarella in the dish. When stretched into long strands, the cheese resembles 

This hack comes together with surprising ease. Cook the pasta, make the creamy tomato sauce and add shredded mozzarella—that's it. True to its name, each forkful is connected by a web of stringy cheese. Serve warm before it loses its stretch.

Pasta

Pasta Sauce

Cibo-Style Penne Al Telefono

Our Cibo Penne al Telefono hack makes a simple but hearty pasta dish, combining creamy tomato sauce with stretchy mozzarella cheese.

Treat enoki mushrooms like fries or onion rings: Batter and deep-fry them into crispy golden fritters. Cornstarch and soda water keep the batter light, not bready. The nori is an optional step that's both decorative and delicious—each fritter ends with a briny, umami-packed bite. Snack on these on their own, over rice, or between bread.

Crispy Fried Enoki Mushrooms

When battered and deep-fried, enoki mushrooms turn into a light, crispy fritter with a meaty center. Serve with a sweet soy or spicy mayo dip.

Total Time

There’s no singular definition for Filipino ensalada—many versions exist, like talong, mangga, lato, etc. But what’s common among all of these is their ability to showcase our rich agriculture. Ensaladas are proof that with great produce, you can create magic. This recipe for Filipino ensalada dumplings recipe is no exception. The filling makes use of five different and readily available vegetables. And in lieu of dressing, we throw in a sweet bagoong and calamansi dip!

This recipe was developed in partnership with

, a social enterprise that aims to support the country’s food security, achieve environmental sustainability, and drive economic opportunity by harnessing the full potential of our local agriculture.

Sweet Bagoong-Calamansi Dip

Dumplings

Filipino Ensalada Dumplings with Bagoong-Calamansi Dip

These Filipino ensalada dumplings pack some of our favorite local vegetables into pan-fried dumplings.

Roasting vegetables makes them sweet and tender. It's a convenient, hands-free way to cook them too, with no recipe or technique required. Chop your veg, coat in olive oil, season, then toss in a hot oven.

Treat this recipe as a template for the roasted vegetable pasta of your dreams. Here we pair rigatoni and sundried tomato pesto, with crumbled feta cheese and basil as garnish. Use as little or as many vegetables as you like, with whatever pasta shape and sauce you fancy.

Roasted Vegetables and Feta Pasta

This pasta recipe combines colorful roasted vegetables, crumbled feta cheese, and sundried tomato pesto for a veg-heavy, feel-good meal.

Mamou has been a well-reputed institution for a food experience that hardly disappoints. One of their consistent staple among patrons is their Lorenzo Truffle Cream pasta, a dish that has made appetites dance in rejoice—it makes you forget about the existence of conscious eating. 

factor, unlike other cream-based pasta dishes. It only takes six simple ingredients to let its true flavors shine and make your eyes roll once the devouring begins.

Mamou Lorenzo Truffle Cream Pasta

This SaladStop! Oh Crab Lah recipe rewards those unfazed by the fake crab or the dubious nutritional value. The creamy dressing takes inspiration from Singaporean chili crab sauce: it’s sweet, spicy, and aromatic. The “crab” comes in via imitation crab sticks. A healthy-ish mix of cherry tomatoes, vermicelli, croutons, and crumbled hard-boiled eggs adds enough heft to make this salad a filling meal.

Croutons

Salad Dressing

Make the Croutons

Make the Salad Dressing

Saladstop-Inspired Spicy Chili Crab Salad (Oh Crab Lah)

This easy Oh Crab Lah recipe gets you the signature SaladStop! salad at home, down to the sweet and spicy chili crab salad dressing.

Recreating Shakey's mojos at home was always incredibly difficult. How do they get their distinct flavor? How does the breading get a crispy coating that gets delightfully soggy in parts?

After a few tests, we found that Ferna breading mix was the definite winner. The texture was spot-on, right in between crispy and soggy that the breading would wrinkle in some parts. The flavor from the seasoning reminded us of KFC’s own umami bomb. Plus, the overall appearance it gave the mojos could make you pass it off as the real thing.

For the dips, use Lady’s Choice Classic Caesar for Shakey's Zesty Caesar; use Lady’s Choice Ranch Dressing for Garlic Ranch.

Shakey's-Style Mojo Potatoes

Smoothie bowls were all the rage a few years back. It's healthy and easy to eat, but the good ones are always expensive. We'll prove in this breakfast smoothie under P200 recipe that you don't need strawberries and chia seeds to make it delicious; nor do you have to go to a hip brunch place to enjoy a well-made one.

This breakfast smoothie bowl recipe uses ripe mango, papaya, and bananas; all of which you can easily get from your local fruit vendor. To make sure your smoothie is thick (you're not making a drink here), it's necessary to freeze the fruits overnight. Don't sleep on the granola (or cereal)—you'll love (and look for) that contrasting crunch.

Mango-Banana-Papaya Breakfast Smoothie Bowl

You don't need to be fancy when making a breakfast smoothie bowl under P200. All you need is a blender and a complementing combo of fruits.

A dish as simple as beef salpicao is enough to make your tastebuds on a spin. Today, we're recreating that same experience in this tofu salpicao recipe. We're using tofu instead of meat to lessen the sheer indulgence of eating fatty foods. (We still care for your health, after all).

The process is pretty much the same. It's simple, but the flavors are spot-on. Thanks to the absorbency of the tofu, each bite provides a juicy burst of the salpicao sauce.

Tofu Salpicao

This tofu salpicao recreates the garlicky appetizer (that's always made ulam) using tofu for a quick and easy vegetarian treat.

The secret behind the explosion of flavors in 

 is a medley of dried herbs and spices. It can be intimidating seeing these long ingredients lists. And we understand that, especially in the Philippines, it can be hard to get your hands on all of them.

So this tofu tikka masala recipe only needs three spices (okay, more, if you put together your own garam masala)—all of which you can easily find at the supermarket or an 

. Still, it packs a lot of bright, punchy, spicy flavor in it, making it perfect over rice or with a couple of pieces of 

Tofu Tikka Masala

This easy tofu tikka masala recipe is a vegetarian (you can also make it vegan!) version of the flavorful, spicy Indian chicken curry.

 is a one-bowl side dish. It's made up of roasted eggplants, tomatoes, and red onions, mixed with a sour vinegar dressing. It goes with almost every Filipino dish, and it's a favorite pairing for any fried dish. 

Our take on the dish follows the foundations of 

. However, this version doesn't mix everything together in a bowl. It piles the mix-ins on top of the butterflied roasted eggplant. We used a bagoong-based dressing for a salty and tangy, umami-rich finish.

Eggplants

Bagoong Dressing

Bagoong Mix-Ins

Ensaladang Talong with Bagoong Dressing

This recipe pairs roasted eggplants with a bright, umami-rich bagoong dressing and finishes with some chicharon on top!

Eggplants are excellent fellows when roasted, and they’re incredibly easy to get some flavor out of. They instantly become deep and smoky just when a little fire hits them directly, which means cooking them is almost always guaranteed to have good or great results.

You’ve probably roasted eggplants a dozen times before, but this one-step marinade makes them sweet, and taste darker and even more like smoke and fire than usual. Just pour hot water, olive oil, and sesame oil into some red miso paste, then introduce the eggplants to this simple rub. Place them on a tray and put them in the oven until they blister, and their skins start peeling off, and the flesh looks soft to the touch. They are so moreish, you’ll probably want them at the dinner table beside various meats, or even as the center of a vegetarian spread.

Roasted Miso Eggplant Steak

These roasted miso eggplant steaks are good as a side, main, or snack.

You won’t miss the meat in this sweet potato shawarma. The spice rub coating the potatoes brings a lot of savory, earthy, Mediterranean flavors to the table. The sweet potatoes themselves—if done right—give a nice crunch to each bite.

Our trick to crispy sweet potatoes: cornstarch, olive oil, and salt. Before roasting your sweet potatoes in the oven, toss them in these three ingredients. This forms an almost pasty coating around your sweet potatoes, which crisp up and leave the inside of the sweet potatoes soft and fluffy. (Lifehack: You can do these with sweet potato fries, as well.)

To assemble your shawarma, we suggest going in this order: tortilla, cheese (optional), sweet potato, vegetables, sauce. Depending on your garlic tolerance (ours is pretty high), the sauce might be too garlicky. Just adjust with more lime to balance it out.

Spice Rub

Sweet Potatoes

Sauce

Shawarma

Sweet Potato Shawarma with Lime Yogurt Sauce

Overnight oats may be a quicker alternative to other breakfast options, but it's certainly packed with health benefits. Avocado is one of the go-to fruits for many health-conscious people today. It's become so popular that you're bound to see a toast or rice bowl version of it on a menu. For most of us, it's been a common dessert staple that's very reminiscent of our childhood. But this sweet avocado oats recipe recognizes those nostalgic roots and brings them back to the healthy eater today. 

Sweet Avocado Overnight Oats with Honey and Almonds

We’ve created a version of sweet avocado oats using Quaker Oats that’s a grown-up, nutritious take on our childhood favorite.

We came into this with every intention of making this vegetarian nuggets recipe taste as close to actual chicken nuggets as possible. We failed, and have resolved into thinking you can't really recreate that without meat. But our effort led us to something better. And honestly, what are you doing looking for vegetarian nuggets expecting it to taste like McDonald's?

 of ingredients. However, this mix of vegetables and spices gives it its unique taste and helps it mimic the shape of real nuggets. You'll definitely need a 

 to make this recipe. You can go old-school and crush them all together. But that's probably going to take you a couple of hours.

Nuggets

No-Meat "Chicken" Nuggets

These vegetarian "chicken" nuggets taste (and look!) way better than regular meaty nuggets. Get your food processor out to make it!

Cloud 9 has just enough of everything: nougat, chocolate, caramel with 

 packed in a delectable bite-sized chocolate bar. We recreate all of these elements in a no-bake, vegan recipe. It looks fancy enough to pass for a plated restaurant dessert, but when all the layers come together, we hope you’ll be reminded of grade school snacking days of scrounging up your peso coins for a taste of this goodness.

Nougat Layer

Peanut-Caramel Layer

Chocolate Layer

No-Bake Vegan Cloud 9

Filipino cuisine has a special way of flaunting and bringing out the best in local veggies. Case in point: ginataang kalabasa, a dish of native squash stewed in coconut milk. Naturally sweet and creamy but full of earthiness and umami, it makes for a hearty Filipino main that’s especially good piled on steamy white rice.

Here, we bring ginataan and its characteristic flavors into a soft, spreadable hummus. It's a straightforward affair, entailing little more than puréeing together cooked squash, coconut milk, and chickpeas until it forms a chunky but creamy mixture.

Crudités or toasted pita wedges on the side are a no-brainer dipping medium option, but its culture-crossing attribute also lends it a versatility worth taking advantage of and experimenting with—try it as a thick “gravy” with poached seafood, as a spread to liven up a vegetarian sandwich, or even as ulam with rice.

Ginataang Kalabasa (Coconut-Squash) Hummus

You can say that Wooden Spoon's popular Crab Pancit is French. The recipe was conceived in Paris for Aux Iles Philippines, the Filipino restaurant helmed by culinary icon—and mother of Wooden Spoon chef Sandy Daza—Nora Daza. It looks nothing like the pancit back home. Here, a thick egg and crab sauce rests on a pale white nest of fried vermicelli noodles, richly flavored yet light enough to be an appetizer. 

The last surviving Wooden Spoon branch closed during the pandemic. Fortunately, you can replicate their Crab Pancit at home with this recipe. The crab sauce's intense flavor eluded our multiple tests, until a dash of Magic Sarap came along and finally cracked it.

Wooden Spoon-Style Crab Pancit

This hack makes a convincing copycat of Wooden Spoon's famous Crab Pancit, if not an exact replica.

We love vegetables just as much as the next plant-based person. But there’s more to being vegetarian than just swapping everything out with fruits and greens. From tofu katsudons to mushroom burgers, there’s so much opportunity to be creative here.

Adding to the list is this vegetarian baked ziti recipe. It’s our take on the classic baked ziti, except it doesn’t have any meat. Nor does it swap what would’ve otherwise been ground beef with vegetables. Instead, we use 

, a locally produced meat-free alternative to ground meat!

The result is still the creamy, gooey baked ziti everyone loves, complete with a “meaty” element.

Veega Vegetarian Baked Ziti

This vegetarian baked ziti recipe (which you can make vegan!) delivers the meat-packed experience thanks to Veega giniling.