3 High-Protein Vegan Meals (Meal-Prep Friendly!)

[00:00] It seems like everybody's trying to eat more protein these days and if you're in the same boat this is the video for you. I am sharing three easy recipes that you can make ahead of time. I think a lot of times when people think of adding more protein to their meals they think that

[00:13] they're going to be suddenly eating like a body builder eating a bland combination of protein steamed vegetable and a plain rice but it really doesn't have to be like that. I love incorporating

[00:26] plain-based protein along with fiber and healthy carbs and fats to create balanced meals that look as good as they taste and will keep you eating a variety of whole foods in your diet. I'm making this video in collaboration with the thrive market which is my favorite online grocery store

[00:42] that aims to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone. I place an order for somebody eating ingredients I'll be using in the recipes for this video plus I also got some high protein snacks that I'm so excited to try. I've been shopping with thrive market for years now and I love how

[00:56] easy they make grocery shopping especially when I'm in a busy season of my life. I can choose from their wide variety of products on their website shop in my pajamas and get it delivered straight to my door. Another great thing about thrive market is they have all of these values and filters you can apply

[01:11] to your searches so for me I am vegan and it's very easy to check a box on the side of the screen and only see vegan products. You can also filter products for gluten-free women-owned brands and so much more they have over 90 different values for you to choose from. And once you find your favorite this

[01:27] also very easy to set up auto shipments with their buy it again button. First I got two bags of this high protein chickpea rice. It's essentially shaped like an orzo so I love using this in place of orzo when recipes when I want to add a little bit more vibrant protein. I also stocked up on my

[01:43] favorite crackers. I discovered these in my last thrive market order. They're sourdough sea salt crackers and I got three boxes of them because I just could not stop eating them the last time I ordered them and regretted not buying more. While we're on the top of the crackers I also got these brown

[01:59] rice cakes that are going to be used as a sort of crunchy size one of our recipes we're making today and I ordered some of our favorite chili crisps. We'll also be using this. I also ordered some organic sesame seeds. I love how far if market sells their spices in these bags so it's super easy

[02:13] to refill the jars that I already have. I also got this coffee creamer in my previous thrive market order. We love it. It's an almond and coconut french vanilla flavored creamer and I love that it has no added sugar to it because I personally don't like my coffee to be too sweet. Last but certainly not

[02:27] least I got three different high protein snacks that I'm really excited to try. I've never seen these at my grocery store so I'm really glad that I've market had them because they look like they'll be so helpful for grab and go. First up I got these mini bars. I always have a craving for a little something

[02:40] sweet in the afternoon and they each have six grams of protein and I think it's just the perfect little thing to grab if I don't want to grab like a square of chocolate. I also ordered a pack of these snack-sized bramy beans. They're a Mediterranean flavored and they're just little fun snack-sized

[02:56] packs of lupini beans. I like to keep these in my fridge because I prefer them cold but I also just like stuffing a few in my purse if I'm ever out and need a quick little snack and these are a great source of fiber and protein too. Last but certainly not least I'm excited to try these protein crisps.

[03:11] They're sea salt and vinegar flavor and they're made with a plant-based protein blend and coconut oils like an alternative to chips which I think will be really fun to try. That's my thrive market order for this time as you can see I like to get a good mix of pantry staples, plums snacks that I know

[03:25] you love and new things to try as well because I'm partnering with Thrive Market for this video I get to offer you a special discount code. You can go to thrivemarket.com slash shoemaker and when you sign up for Thrive Market you'll get 30% off of your first order plus a free gift worth up to $60. I already

[03:42] saved money by my favorite products online at Thrive Market so you'll save even more when you place your first order and the free gift is like a nice little cherry on top so click the link in the description below and now we're going to move on to cooking some of these recipes. The first recipe

[03:56] we're going to make together is a high protein pesto orzo salad. I love making a good pasta salad for meal prep because I feel like it's a great way to throw in some greens and veggies and pasta unlike rice doesn't dry out as much in the fridge once it's been tossed in a dressing. So I'm following

[04:12] my recipe for my pesto orzo salad which does have chickpeas which is a great source of fiber and plain-based protein but instead of using regular orzo we're going to be using the high protein orzo that I got from Thrive Market. We're going to be using the whole bag which has 36 grams of protein which

[04:26] is a lot more than traditional orzo and it's gluten-free. The first step of this recipe is actually cooking your orzo so I have a large pot of water that I'm bringing to a boil that once that's boiling I'm going to add in some salt with my orzo and then cook according to the package instructions

[04:41] so this simmers for about six to seven minutes and I'm going to drain this rinse with cold water until it reaches room temperature and set it aside. While the orzo simmers we can prep the rest of our ingredients. Another thing I love about this recipe is there actually isn't too much to prep. I'm

[04:54] just going to slice my tomatoes in half here. The only other change I'm making to this recipe is I'm actually going to make it nut-free. The recipe calls for pine nuts which can be a little pricey sometimes but they are delicious but today I'm going to be using pumpkin seeds instead which is a

[05:10] great substitute if you have a nut allergy or you just want to save a little bit more money and pumpkin seeds are also a great source of iron too. I like to use fresh tomatoes but if they aren't in season when you're watching this video you can also use sundried tomatoes too for a nice little

[05:22] fun variation and feel free to throw in extra veggies too. This one is going to be using our tomatoes, chickpeas and arugula or baby spinach if that's what you prefer. You could also easily throw in a cucumber, some shredded carrot or any other veggie too like like olives if you just

[05:37] want to add a little bit more variety. The only other thing we need to chop is some basil. We need about half of a cup of fresh basil. I just want to understand how we're living in 2025 and have so many modern inventions but we still can't create basil that doesn't wilt between the grocery store

[05:53] check out and arriving at your house and now we're going to work on our dressing. You're going to want a large bowl to assemble our dressing. This dressing is a little unique. We're actually going to be using pesto as the base. I'm using my arugula pesto but again I substituted pumpkin seeds for

[06:08] walnuts to make it nut free but you could also just use a store-bought pesto if you want to make things extra easy. The pesto already has oil, salt, green seasonings so the only thing we're going to do is add

[06:20] three tablespoons of red wine vinegar. You could also use lemon juice. We're going to whisk this together to form more of a pasta salad dressing. We're really just adding some acid to the pesto to

[06:32] make it more of a vinaigrette and then we're thinning it out with a liquid as well. It might still look a little thick but that's actually okay because the orzo is going to be kind of wet which is going to thin it out even more. We've got our orzo that we've rinsed and cooled. We're going to add in some

[06:46] greens. I'm using two ounces of arugula but if you're not a fan of arugula you could also use baby spinach. Then we'll also add in some tomatoes, chickpeas, fresh basil, vegan feta which is technically optional but I recommend it and some nuts. You can use pine nuts or here I'm using the

[07:02] pumpkin seeds. Now we're going to mix everything together until it's all evenly coated in the dressing. This recipe tastes like summer to me but in a way that's like good even when it's cold outside. It's just so refreshing especially from the basil and fresh tomatoes and I think this is a

[07:16] pretty balanced meal as is but if you wanted to add even more protein you could easily top it with another protein source. You could toss in another can of chickpeas if you wanted to or make some crispy tofu or add some if you can chicken on top as well. I mix this all together to show you the basic

[07:30] process but now that I'm thinking about it if you're actually making this for meal prep I would probably not mix the arugula in and just have like an extra saucy salad then divide your salad into your meal prep containers and then I would put the arugula on top. It's still going to be good this way

[07:45] that your arugula is just going to wilt a tiny bit more but if you just put the fresher arugula on top and seal it up you can flip it upside down when you're ready to eat it and just give it a quick mix and that would be the best if you want like extra crispy greens. So that's it for this pesto orzo salad as

[08:01] with all these right speeds you can find the full details on my blog all of it is linked in the description of this video. Next I'm going to make my smashed cucumber and edamame salad. I have been loving bean salads in the last year or two which are essentially salads with a base of beans instead of lettuce.

[08:17] So the bulk of the salad is going to be beans but we're still going to add in a bunch of other veggies and seasonings and herbs and dressing so it's very filling and nourishing but it's also great source of plant-based protein and fiber which is going to help keep you full. For this recipe

[08:29] we're going to be using edamame but if that's not your thing I have a ton of other bean-based salads on my blog you should definitely check it out. I really love this recipe in spring to warmer months because it's very satisfying and it's great for meal prep because it only gets better in the

[08:42] fridge after everything gets to marinate for a bit. The first thing we're going to do is smash our cucumber so you're going to need one long seedless cucumber. This is sometimes known as a hot house cucumber it's usually wrapped in thin plastic. I much prefer these to the English cucumbers that have a thicker

[08:58] skin and they almost taste a little more sour so I'd really recommend this Friday or you can use Persian cucumbers which are also seedless but as you can see they're a lot smaller. So if you are using the smaller cucumbers you probably want about four or five of them but either one will work

[09:12] for this recipe and the first thing we're going to do is to quarter our cucumber to make it easier to smash. I like to cut it in half as well I find that that's easier to deal with and depending how

[09:24] thick your cucumber is you're going to want to cut it into quarters. Actually I think I'm going to do in thirds today just to get a little bit of a smaller smash cucumber piece. Keep the cucumber cut

[09:36] side down and we're going to repeat the same thing with our other half. My cucumber is cut and now for the fun part we're going to smash it if you're wondering why do I even need to smash my cucumber it actually does slightly change the flavor of the cucumber when you smash it. It gives almost more

[09:50] of like an earthy flavor and I think the texture is also really fun so my favorite way to do this is with a rolling pin because it's long and flat but you can use any heavy object you want. If you want to be gently you can just like roll over your cucumber but I feel like in today's day and

[10:03] age we have a lot of things to be mad about. So I'm going to take some of my anger out on these cucumbers and you just give them a nice little tap. It's okay if they move around some and you might get some splashes but you just kind of want to mess up the edges. Our cucumber is smashed now we're going to cut it into bite-sized

[10:18] pieces. I like to say about like half inch slices. I just take my knife and work my way down this sliced cucumbers. Now we're going to transfer this cucumber into a bowl. I haven't lined with

[10:31] a metal sieve. Any kind of strainer will work though. Place all of your cucumber pieces in the sieve and we're going to generously salt our cucumber. Just use like a few pinches of salt and you're just

[10:43] going to sprinkle it over top. I need don't need to mix it too well but just give it a few good mixes to make sure all of the cucumber pieces are coated in salt. This is going to draw out some moisture from the cucumber and keep our salad from becoming too soggy. It's kind of hard to see from this angle

[10:59] but there actually is already some water draining out of the cucumber. So ideally you want to let this sit for about 20 to 30 minutes which I think is a perfect time because it gives you enough time to do the rest of the things for this recipe. And now we're going to cook our edamame. This is shelved edamame.

[11:15] A lot of times in the story I'll see it as mucumame starts with an M. Just means a shelved. I usually find this in my grocery aisle in the frozen veggie section near where like the frozen peas are. Most of the time you need to cook this before you use it to make sure you read the bag carefully. You can

[11:29] often cook it in the microwave but today I'm going to cook it in the stove top according to the package instructions. It only takes a few minutes to simmer so we're going to get this going and then once it's done, remove it from the stove and rinse it with cold water until it comes back down to room temperature. Well everything drains. We're going to work on our dressing. You need a medium-large

[11:45] size bowl. We're going to add two tablespoons of unseasoned rice vinegar, a tablespoon of soy sauce, a teaspoon of cane sugar or you can use another liquid sweetener, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil. I also recommend adding between one and three teaspoons of chili oil depending on how spicy you

[12:01] like things. I'm going to go in with about two teaspoons and last but not least we're going to add a clove of crushed garlic. You may be worried that this is going to be too strong but it's going to mellow out a lot once it comes in contact with the vinegar so we're going to whisk everything together

[12:15] until the cane sugar has completely dissolved. Once it's dissolved then you just dump everything in and it makes it. So first we've got our cucumbers that are nice and drained. You don't want to rinse the salt off just add the drained cucumbers directly to the bowl. We'll also add in our cooked

[12:27] edamame. I like to add about three thinly sliced green onions for some extra flavor and a little bit of crunch and for extra crunch I like to add about a tablespoon of sesame seeds, toasted or untosed of whatever your preference is. Now we're just going to mix everything up until it's

[12:41] evenly distributed and you have your smashed cucumber and edamame salad. If you like like a lighter snackier lunch I think this is perfect as is or you can even use this as like a protein snack or side for whatever your lunch or entree is. I do like to bulk it up sometime so especially in

[12:57] cooler ones or if I'm serving this right away it all just makes some rice in my instant pot and I love to serve it over rice. You could also easily meal prep it with rice. I would just put rice in the bottom of the dish and then spoon this out on top like so and some of the extra dressing from

[13:13] the edamame in the cucumber will help keep the rice from getting too dry. So that's one option but if you want to eat it a little more of like a dip style. I've served this before with nori. You can just put it in the nori and eat it and the seaweed is also great for you. However I honestly not much

[13:29] of a seaweed fan so I like to use rice cakes for other lecture crunch. I like to buy these thin ones I get mine on thrive market because they're more of like a chip where as regular rice cakes are a little too thick in my opinion but it's the perfect vessel you can just spoon your edamame cucumber salad

[13:46] on top and then take a bite and enjoy it like this. Honestly this is too much it's going to fall off back into the bowl. Let's start with a little. The rice cake adds a little bit of crunch and just helps to bulk it up just a little more which makes it more filling. So we've got two recipes down

[14:02] one to go. Let's get into the final recipe. Last but certainly not least we're going to be making my stuffed pepper soup. If you love stuffed peppers but don't want to put in as much effort I highly recommend this soup. It is all of the yummy things that are in stuffed peppers but it's a lot easier

[14:16] to make less hands on time and a soup in my opinion is a little more portable and easy to reheat in the microwave. The other great thing about this recipe is it uses less peppers so it's a little more budget friendly because bell peppers can actually get quite expensive at the store. So I prefer to use

[14:33] one green bell pepper and one red bell pepper to get some variety but if you really hate green bell peppers I know a few people do. You can just do two red bell peppers or two peppers in the colors of your choosing. So we're going to core both of our peppers and we're going to roughly chop them

[14:48] until it's about a one inch or maybe a little smaller dice. I like to have the peppers in a little bit bigger chunks than like a fine dice. I think this way when you bite into the soup you get more of that like stuffed pepper feeling because it's a larger piece of pepper. Before we

[15:03] head over to the stove you're going to need about a pound of plant-based ground beef. Today I'm using these frozen grounds. You could also use a meal alternative like apostle meat or beyond me if you prefer but I actually really like these grounds from garden. This bag has 23 grams

[15:19] of protein per serving and there's 4.5 servings per container so currently if I'm wrong but I think that's very close to 100 grams of protein in just this one bag. So we're going to add to our soup and make it nice and filling and protein dense. So if you're going to warm some olive oil

[15:34] in a large dutch oven or soup pot and the first thing we're going to do is add our vegan grounds and cook them for about 5 minutes until they're browned. Push those to the side of the pot and add a little bit of more oil and then we're going to saute our onion and bell peppers for 3 to 5 minutes

[15:51] until the onion is translucent. Now we'll go in with our aromatics. We've got garlic, Italian seasoning, cumin, red pepper flakes and black pepper to taste. Mix everything together at this point and we'll saute it for 1 to 2 minutes until the garlic is fragrant. Next add 1 cup

[16:06] of rinsed white rice then we'll also add in some tomato puree, diced tomatoes, vegetable broth and water. Give everything a good mix and bring to a boil over high heat. Then reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 20 minutes or until the rice has fully cooked. Remember to stir the soup occasionally

[16:22] otherwise some of the rice will stick to the bottom of the pot and we don't like that. Once the soup is done you can serve it warm. My favorite way to serve it is with some fresh parsley and a little bit of cheese which I feel like it's classic stuffed pepper and so delicious. This soup is a little

[16:36] thick. I personally prefer my soups more like stews on the thicker side but you can always thin it out with extra vegetable broth or you could use a little bit less rice as well. I also forgot to mention earlier if you don't want to use plant-based grounds you can also use lentils. I

[16:49] have the substitute for that in the notes in my blog post which is linked down below if you want to check it out. So that concludes this video. I hope you enjoyed all of these recipes and thanks again to Thrive Market for sponsoring this video. Be sure to go to ThriveMarket.com slash

[17:03] shoemaker to get 30% off of your first Thrive Market order and a free gift worth up to $60. I really enjoy making these videos for you and if you have any suggestions of things you'd like to see from me in the future whether it's more recipe videos a specific type of recipe video

[17:17] or maybe more vlog or lifestyle content please let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you and as always you can find all the recipes on the blog and you can find more recipes on other social media platforms as well. Thank you all so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you

[17:30] again in a future video. Bye!