- Okay, so I get a lot of requests for high protein vegan meals, usually from folks who
are looking to get ripped, brawny, burly, beefy, and or hunky. So today I've got three 20-minute meals, each of which has over 30 grams of protein and is guaranteed to get you
looking as swole as I am. (intense rock music) Let's get into it. First up, we're gonna make
a Smashed Edamame Toast, like a smashed avocado
toast, but different. And I love using edamame, just like this. It comes frozen in a bag. I like to buy it pre-shelled
'cause it's less prep work and it is so high in protein. It's got more protein than any other bean and is also great for
quick 20-minute meals because it's already cooked. This is just a little frozen still, so I'm going to just run
it under some warm water. You can also defrost it in the fridge. (upbeat music) Oh wait, I need a... (bowl clanks) The blade, one sec. Where'd that be? Down here maybe? Okay. The great thing about this Edamame smash is that everything happens
in the food processor. So it is super quick, super
convenient, minimal chopping. We're also gonna add some avocado. It's kind of a smashed avocado toast like I mentioned. We need half of the medium. All right, she looks pretty good. The beauty of living in California is that all of your avocados
look nice all the time. Our taxes though, I feel like
we're paying an avocado tax. Got some raw garlic. Gonna give it a rough chop. Serrano pepper for some heat. Leave out the membranes
if you don't want it spicy or too spicy. Some cilantro, I'm gonna
just do like a large handful, I'm not measuring it. Any tough stems, you
wanna get rid of those. But tender stems, A-Okay. They're delicious they're
edible right in there. What else do we got? Lime, some lime zest. The zest is gonna add
this pure lime flavor and the juice is gonna add acidity. So they both work really well here to brighten all the flavors. Quarter cup of tahini. This is gonna add a nutty indulgence. It's also got some protein in there. Look at that. Some tamari or soy sauce. Use tamari if you're gluten free. Tablespoon and a half of that, that's gonna add that really
lovely savory depth of flavor. Optionally a teaspoon
of toasted sesame oil. I love the flavor. It's like rich and nutty. If you don't love it, you can omit it. And now we're just gonna blend it all up. Right, this is what you're looking for. It's chunky, it's not totally smooth, but it's come together in a nice beautifully green dip consistency. We'll just give it a taste. See if it needs any salt or extra lime. (calm upbeat music) That's really good. I don't think it needs anything. I love it. Bread, there's a lot
of variation in bread. You can get from the bakery, you can get from the grocery store. Since this is a high protein meal, I picked the highest
protein bread I could find. This particular brand has six
grams of protein per slice. 12 grams of protein in these little guys. All right, I'm gonna
pop this under my boiler to toast for a minute and then
we'll assemble everything. So this bread is tiny, but I
promise it's really filling. so don't let the size dissuade you. And the great thing about
this dip is is it makes a lot. So you can have this
for breakfast or lunch for several days and the full
measurements for everything is on the blog, printable format in both metric
and imperial measurements. Final couple toppings if you wanna sneak some extra protein in there, hemp seeds or hemp hearts, please have a good amount of protein. They'll add a little bit of a nutty crunch and some sauerkraut because
it's got that good gut bacteria and also it adds this nice
little tangy salty finish on top. Ta-da, it's not like gourmet looking, but it's really really delicious
and it's gonna fill you up if you have this for
breakfast or for lunch. Should we give it a bite? We should give it a bite. I'd like a bite. (calm upbeat music) This is ridiculously good. It's savory, it's salty, it's
a little creamy and nutty. It was incredibly easy to make. So definitely add this one to your breakfast or lunch rotation. Next up we're gonna
make a tofu noodle bowl with an almond butter sauce and the first thing we're gonna do is cook our noodles, our pasta. So let's get some water
on the stove for that. So my little secret is
to fill your sauce pan up halfway with water and also
put on your electric kettle to boil 'cause that boils faster. Then you can add your boiling
water to your sauce pan and that is how you get
a pot of pasta water, pot of pasta water to boil quickly. As for the type of pasta, I've got some whole wheat spaghetti here. I'm using whole wheat pasta 'cause it has a little bit more protein than your standard white flour pasta. It's got like six to seven grams of protein per serving, so not bad. While we wait for the water to boil, we're going to prep our tofu. We're gonna make some spiced
tofu crumbles as our protein. I've got a block of super firm tofu and I like using super
firm tofu for two reasons. One, it's got most of the
water pressed out of it, minimal prep work for you, you don't have to press it yourself. So great for a 20 minute meal. And the second reason
is that super firm tofu has lightly more protein per ounce than a firm or extra firm tofu because it's denser and more compact. Great for those quick protein heavy meals. I regret opening this
before going to the sink. Carefully tiptoe over there. Oh nope, it's already spilling. All right, we don't have to press the tofu but you do wanna just dab
out some water if you can. There's really not that
much left, which is great. I'm gonna slice it into a couple slabs just again to get any water out. And now we're gonna crumble
into really small pieces like the size of a blueberry maybe. Just some therapeutic tofu crumbling. Super firm tofu is also chewier than a regular firm or extra firm tofu. So you get more of that
like meat adjacent quality. You could also do this recipe with tempeh. If you like tempeh, it's got
even more protein than tofu. You would just crumble it into
small pieces with your hands and follow the recipe as is. If you wanna learn how to make
tempeh taste really amazing, I've got a whole video on that right here and I've got a few things
here to add some flavor to our tofu. We're gonna start with
a couple spices we need. Where's my half teaspoon measure? A half teaspoon each of onion
powder and garlic powder and possibly my favorite spice blend ever, five spice powder. It is intoxicatingly good. It's warm, it's slightly
sweet, it's just delightful. And some salt. Obviously we need some salt,
good amount of black pepper, and we're just going to gently
toss everything together. You can use your hands or a
silicone spatula like I am. Soon, these pale chunks of tofu will be crispy and golden brown. All right, our kettles ready. Let's finish our pasta water. Let's add some salt to
season and our noodles. We're gonna have to kind
of finagle them in there. While the pasta's cooking, we're gonna make our tofu. Got this medium frying pan, medium high heat. We're gonna add a little bit
of oil, about a tablespoon. Any oil is fine. This is avocado oil. All right, once your oil is nice and hot, time to add the tofu and
the goal is to spread it out as much as you can in a single layer. I probably could have
used a bigger pan, sigh, and you wanna cook it undisturbed
for the first few minutes then flip and continue that process so that the tofu gets really
nicely golden brown and crispy. The nice thing about this tofu recipe is because you don't have
to stir it very often, you can kind of do a couple
other things in the meantime like prep your vegetables. I'm gonna use about three
cups of broccoli florets. Just measuring that out and then we'll add it to our pasta water. This is not a florets. I'm very disappointed in
whoever prepared these. The, blah. This is not a floret. All right, that looks good. Give this a stir. You can see it's already
getting nicely brown. It smells fantastic from
the five spice powder. All right, let's add this broccoli in. Plop, plop, plop, give it another stir. Let's go see if our pasta
and broccoli are ready. No, this does not feel ready. (calm upbeat music) It is ready, I lied. Okay, it could use a little longer. In the meantime, we're gonna
get started on our sauce. Takes like two minutes to put together. It's spicyish savory almond butter sauce. I make some variation
of this all the time. I like using almond butter
'cause it's high in protein. Seven grams of protein in
two tablespoons, not bad. We're gonna use four tablespoons of that. I feel like it's gonna
be irresponsible though if I don't drain the pasta. So let's go do that. I like serving this cold
or at room temperature. So we're gonna rinse this under cold water and we'll just let this hang out in the sink to dry off a bit. Back to our sauce. Multi-tasking is fun. All right, rice vinegar
for a nice little tang, tablespoon of that. Let's give her a shake. Pretty much done. Just give it another minute maybe. Some soy sauce or tamari. Two teaspoons of that. Gonna add that savory
saltiness that I love so much. Little bit of maple syrup. Just a little bit to kind of balance the saltiness and the
savoriness and the heat which we haven't added yet, but we will. As promise, our heat. These are Szechuan chili flakes. If you don't have them, that's fine. Just use like a red pepper flake. I'm using half teaspoon. You don't like spicy food, don't use them. We're good on the tofu. Let me just show you what it looks like before I kill the heat. Nicely golden brown, crispy, perfect. All right, let's give this a whisk and we're gonna have to
add a little bit of water to make it more of a sauce
consistency for our noodles. Let's give it a taste. (calm upbeat music) That's good, a little pinch of salt. And we are off to the races. No we're not, vegans
don't go to the races. But we're gonna assemble the meal. That's what we're gonna do. Get our sauce in there. It looks good already. Gonna use the tongs I had for the pasta. Bringing this all together. Yum, now for our tofu. I can feel I'm already getting
swole just looking at this. Couple final tush, tushes, tushes. Couple final touches. Again my favorite ingredient,
just a tiny drizzle for that sesame flavor and sesame seeds. Can you tell I like sesame? I love it. These are gonna add a nice nutty crunch and also a tiny bit of protein. So win-win. She looks good. It's time for taste. (calm upbeat music) I freaking love this one. It is creamy, it's nutty,
it tastes very indulgent. Definitely doesn't taste
like a high protein meal. I honestly can't tell
it's whole wheat pasta. I love the sauce, the tofu is chewy and a little crunchy. So definitely give this one a try. Next we're making garlicy
quinoa and lentils with ricotta. This is probably a good time to tell you that I don't like quinoa. I think it is boring in
texture and boring in flavor, but it's high in protein. So I wanted to challenge myself to come up with a quinoa recipe that I actually like that can be made in 20 minutes and this is the recipe. We need one cup, 175 grams of quinoa. If you're really sensitive to bitter food, go ahead and rinse the
quinoa before you cook it. Otherwise just put it in
your water on your sauce pan. So we need one in a quarter cups of water, not too much water. You don't want your quinoa to be soggy. Let's bring this to a boil. While we wait for that water to boil, we're gonna start on
one of two condiments. These condiments are
going to really dial up the flavor and texture of
quinoa to make it exciting and also add some protein. So the first one is my tofu ricotta. I use this in pastas and sandwiches and lots of different things. It is so easy and it's
got a lot of protein and it's delicious. First I gotta drain the tofu, but we already saw what
happened when I tried to open it on the counter so I'm gonna go do that at the sink. I'll be back in second. This is one block of extra firm tofu. You don't need to press it,
but again like last time, we are going to just squeeze
out a little excess water. And you'll notice that I've been using soy products in this video because soy is one of the best sources of plant-based protein. I know some folks think
that like soy is bad for you and that it's going to like
give you boobs if you're a man. But if that were the case, there'd be a lot more men
with beautiful breasts and these, let's just say
these would not be these. These would be a lot bigger,
if you know what I mean. So that's all false. Those are just myths. If you're eating whole
food soy products like tofu and tempeh and Edamame, soy milk, you have nothing to worry about. Our water seems to be at a boil. So let's add our quinoa. It's gonna lower the heat down to low, cover and set a 12 minute timer. First in flavorings, we
have nutritional yeast. That has that really concentrated savory, slightly cheesy flavor that
is gonna be really excellent in this kind of ricotta replacement. Quarter cup of that, garlic
powder and onion powder, half teaspoon each, nice generous heaping teaspoon
of kosher salt, pepper, little bit of extraversion olive oil to give that like rich mouthfeel and body, tablespoon and a half and some lemon. The zest of one medium lemon. This is gonna brighten it,
give it some fresh zippy flavor and maybe about a tablespoon, tablespoon and a half of the juice. All right, this is it. You just need to blend it until smooth. (calm upbeat music) Quick taste. As you can see, this
makes a generous amount, probably five servings. So you can enjoy it with
the quinoa and lentils a few times during the week, and then you can put
leftovers, slather it on toast, you can put it with some pasta, you can put it on like
a grain bowl or a salad, it's very versatile. Set that aside for now. All right, I promised you two condiments. The next one is a garlicy
spiced oil with pepitas. Pepitas are high in protein. It's delicious, it's crunchy. We're gonna start by taking
four fat garlic cloves and thinly slicing them. This one is extra enormous, so she counts as two large garlic cloves. And we're going to just
very thinly slice them as evenly as you can. A smaller knife like this
is really helpful for this. Even more helpful and faster is a mandolin if you have one of these things. But it only works with
a large garlic clove because if it's small, you
don't have a lot of surface area if it's small, but a big
one like this is great. And always wear your glove
or protection, be safe. Look how cute these are. Just gonna see if the quinoa is ready and you're gonna get a
better texture on your quinoa if you spread it out on a sheet pan after it's done cooking. Just spread it out so that it
dries out and doesn't clump. Can kind of get like soggy and mushy if you let it sit in the pan. Back to our garlicy situation, we're gonna use two
teaspoons of coriander seeds. I am obsessed with these. They add this really lovely crunch, they've got this lemony
citrusy bright flavor, a little warmth, so good. That's all though. No other Indian spices, don't worry. And we're gonna use a half cup of pepitas or shelled pumpkin seeds. These are super high in protein, probably the most high
in protein seed there is. So I love using them. We're gonna warm two
tablespoons of olive oil in a small frying pan just over medium heat until it's warm. You don't wanna get too hot
so the garlic doesn't burn. And this is pretty much
my like go-to party trick for really flavorful, fun, crunchy, delicious flavor when I
don't have that much time. It's basically gently fry
some garlic with some spices and then pour it over
whatever you're eating. It's great, in goes to garlic. All right, so this is
what our garlic looks like and if any of the slices
are sticking together, try to separate them with your spatula which is what I'm trying to
do with one hand while I film. Starting to just slightly get golden. That's when you wanna add your pepitas and coriander seeds. Now this needs two to three minutes and you wanna stir frequently so that the spices and
the garlic don't burn. When the garlic starts to
turn brown around the edges, that's when you wanna add
our final two ingredients just for 15, 30 seconds at the most. Some chili flakes, standard
red pepper flake is fine but I've got this amazing
stuff from Burlap and Barrel, my favorite spice company,
red jalapeno flakes. I'm using half teaspoon. Again, adjust to your spice
level and some flaky salt. This is not flaky salt,
this is flaky salt. (calm jazz music) Forgot to mention the lentils. So let's talk about them. These are pre-cooked steamed lentils. Normally I do cook my
own lentils from scratch but you're not gonna have time
to cook them in 20 minutes. I prefer these refrigerated ones that come in packs like this. Instead of the like canned lentils, I think the texture and
the taste is just better. I did not open this right. This is a really terrible way to open it but I've made my bed. You need a half cut per serving. You can find the full measurements for like the ideal protein
range in the blog post. I'm just gonna eyeball it since
I have made a mess at this. Okay, just gonna eyeball this as well and I gotta be honest at this point, I'm not interested in this meal. Plain quinoa, store
bought steamed lentils, do not sign me up. But with those condiments,
something magical happens. Let's get a nice big dollop
of the, oh, that was messy. Okay, we're gonna get a nice big dollop of the ricotta on here and some of our crunchy
garlicy spices and pepitas. That looks a lot better. Yum, not bad for 20 minutes. If you have something
pickled in your fridge, this would be a great
opportunity to use that. Pickled carrots, cabbage, I've
got pickled chili peppers. If you've got store bought sauerkraut, you can add some of that as well. (calm upbeat music) This actually tastes pretty
gourmet, the ricotta, the garlic, the pepitas, the spices. I can totally see myself
making this for dinner even though I don't like quinoa. And if you'd like to see
even more 20 minute meals, I've got more right here, bye.
