15 Vegetarian Thanksgiving Mains to Serve Instead of Turkey

The turkey is the least interesting thing on a Thanksgiving table, and everybody loading up on stuffing already knows it.

So skipping it isn’t the hard part. The hard part is picking a centerpiece that doesn’t leak, collapse or come out raw in the middle at 3 p.m. with a house full of people.

I’m not giving you recipes. You can find those anywhere. What’s harder to find is the one thing that goes wrong with each dish and how to stop it.

Here are 15 vegetarian Thanksgiving mains that deserve the middle of the table, and the one move that makes or breaks each of them.

1. Mushroom Wellington

Water ruins a Wellington, not your pastry skills.

Whatever moisture you don’t cook out of the mushrooms ends up in the crust. So cook the filling until the pan is dry, and don’t salt the mushrooms until near the end, because salting early makes them sweat when you want them to brown.

Then chill the filling completely before you wrap it. Skip that and you get a soggy bottom.

The good part is the filling keeps in the fridge for up to three days, so Thursday’s job is just wrapping and baking. If vegans are coming, check the box. A lot of frozen puff pastry is made with vegetable oil instead of butter.

2. Whole Roasted Cauliflower

It looks incredible coming out of the oven, and then somebody cuts into a raw core.

The fix is water before fire. Chef Eyal Shani’s method drops the whole head, leaves and all, into salted boiling water and pulls it out just as it starts to turn tender. It steams itself dry, gets rubbed with oil and salt, and then it roasts.

No room on the stove for a giant pot? Cover the cauliflower with foil so it steams first, then uncover it to brown.

Either way, it’s a side dish until you put a sauce on it. Tahini, romesco, pesto or harissa is what makes it dinner.

3. Stuffed Acorn Squash

You don’t have to peel it. Acorn squash skin is thin enough to cook and eat, same as delicata, and that’s not a favor thick-skinned butternut or kabocha will do you.

One half per person means the portions are built in and nobody carves anything. That’s the laziest hosting win on this list.

4. A Whole Stuffed Pumpkin

The pumpkin on your porch is not dinner.

Carving pumpkins have pale, stringy flesh. What you want is a sugar pumpkin (sometimes sold as a pie pumpkin), the small kind that weighs about 2 to 3 pounds and measures roughly 6 inches across, with darker and much thicker flesh.

Stuff it, roast it whole and carry it to the table with the lid on. It’s the most dramatic entrance on this list.

5. Nut Roast

Britain solved the vegetarian holiday main a long time ago. A nut roast is nuts, grains and seasonings formed into a firm loaf, and it’s Britain’s default vegetarian Christmas dinner.

It’s older than you’d guess, too. A recipe showed up in an American cookbook in 1899. The London vegetarian restaurant Cranks opened in 1961, and nut roast was its best-known dish.

It’s also the one main here that’s off the table for a guest with a nut allergy, so ask before you commit.

6. The Store-Bought Roast

There’s no shame in buying the centerpiece. The Tofurky brand has been around since 1995, and by 2017 the company was approaching five million holiday roasts sold.

Here’s what catches people: it’s sold frozen. Tofurky says to thaw it in the refrigerator for 24 hours, which means Wednesday, not Thursday at noon when you finally read the box.

You can cook it from frozen, but it takes roughly twice as long. That’s oven time you don’t have.

Field Roast’s Celebration Roast is another option. Whichever one you buy, follow the box, because instructions vary by product. And both are wheat-based, so neither works for a gluten-free guest.

7. Butternut Squash Lasagna

Cut it straight out of the oven and it slides apart on the plate. Lasagna needs 20 to 40 minutes of rest to cool down and firm up before a knife goes near it.

On Thanksgiving that’s a gift, because the rest is exactly when your oven is free for sides. You can also assemble it the day before.

Now the trap. Real Parmigiano Reggiano is made with animal rennet, so it isn’t vegetarian. Look for a hard cheese labeled vegetarian or made with microbial rennet, and run the same check on every other cheese you’re serving.

8. Vegetable Pot Pie

This is the one that tastes most like the Thanksgiving people remember, gravy and all.

Let the filling cool before the crust goes on, and cut a few slits in the top so steam can get out. You can make the filling a couple of days early.

Watch the gravy, though. Make sure the stock is vegetable stock, and know that classic Worcestershire sauce isn’t vegetarian. Buy one labeled vegan.

9. Lentil Shepherd’s Pie

The topping is mashed potatoes you were already making. That’s half the dish done before you start.

The other half comes down to which lentil you buy. French green lentils hold their shape really well, and brown lentils hold up relatively well but break down with long cooking.

Red lentils break down completely. That’s great for dal and a disaster here, because you end up with soup under your potatoes.

10. Mushroom Bourguignon

Crowd the pan and your mushrooms never brown. Cook them in small batches over high heat so every piece actually touches the skillet.

Serve it over mashed potatoes, polenta or noodles. I think stews like this taste better the next day, so I’d make it Wednesday and take one job off Thursday.

One more label to read. Some wines are clarified with animal products and the label doesn’t have to tell you, so look for one marked vegan if your guests are strict.

11. Hasselback Butternut Squash

It’s the only thing on this list you carve at the table.

Trying to cut thin, even slits into a raw butternut is a fight you’ll lose. Roast the peeled halves for about 15 minutes first, until they’ve softened slightly, and the knife goes through easily.

Then lay a chopstick along each side of the squash. They act as guards, so you can’t slice all the way through.

12. Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

One vegetarian at a table of twelve? This is your answer. It scales down to a single serving with no leftovers.

Scrape out the gills with a spoon, then pre-bake the caps cap-side down to release the extra moisture before you fill them. That’s what keeps the filling from going watery.

And wipe them clean with a paper towel. Mushrooms are porous, so don’t soak them.

13. Spanakopita

The phyllo is frozen and it won’t be rushed. Take it out of the box and leave it in the fridge overnight, then let it come to room temperature for two hours before you use it.

Keep the thawed sheets under a slightly damp kitchen towel while you work. Don’t refreeze them either, because the sheets stick together.

Squeeze the spinach dry in a towel before it goes in. It also freezes well unbaked, so you can have the whole thing done long before Thursday.

14. Savory Bread Pudding

This is stuffing that got promoted. It’s toasted or stale bread soaked in custard and baked.

Stale is the point, because day-old bread absorbs the custard more easily. If yours is fresh, dry it out in a low oven first. You can assemble the whole dish and leave it in the fridge overnight.

It’s got eggs and dairy, so it’s vegetarian, not vegan.

15. A Roasted Vegetable Galette

If the Wellington scares you, make this. A galette is free-form, so the cracks and uneven edges look like you meant them.

Same enemy, though. Vegetables are mostly water, and it leaks into the pastry as they cook, so pre-cook the filling. A layer of breadcrumbs or semolina on the crust before the filling goes on gives you a barrier.

The Bottom Line

The turkey was never the point of Thanksgiving. The sides were.

Vegetarians have known that for years. Everybody else just kept a very large decoy in the middle of the table.