Vegan Shabbat Recipes

One day of rest, one seriously impressive spread. These vegan Shabbat recipes cover everything from the vegan challah that the non-veg members of our local shul couldn't believe to vegan cholent packed with seitan and kishke, so you can spend less time stressing and more time actually enjoying the most important meal of your week.

🕍 Vegan Meats for Shabbos:

✡️ Vegan Jewish Breads

🥰 Sephardic Vegan Shabbos Recipes

🤷‍♀️ Vegan Shabbat Cooking FAQs

What might not actually be Kosher in a vegan shabbat dinner?

Despite what some folks think, vegan and kosher are not the same thing, and there are a few places where a vegan Shabbat dinner can quietly run into kashrut issues even with zero animal products on the table.

🍇 The big ones: wine and grape juice need to be certified kosher, and that extends to any dish cooked with wine, or a salad dressing made with balsamic vinegar.

🥬 Leafy greens and certain vegetables: need to be inspected carefully for insects, since halachic standards for bug checking are way more rigorous than what most home cooks are used to.

🫢 If you are wayyyy more observant than me: There's also bishul akum to consider. Certain cooked foods like rice, potatoes, and pasta are only kosher if a Jewish person participated in the cooking.

If you're hosting strictly observant guests, use certified kosher ingredients throughout and when in doubt, ask your rabbi. A fully kosher vegan Shabbat table is absolutely doable (for realsies, you got this!) it just takes a little extra attention to your pantry.

What can be cooked in advance for a vegan shabbat dinner?

If you don't cook on Shabbat, the good news is that some of the most iconic dishes in the vegan Jewish kitchen are basically designed to be made ahead!

Vegetarian cholent is the ultimate Shabbat make-ahead dish, and for good reason. It's traditionally left on a low heat from before Shabbat begins and the seitan in it just gets deeper and more delicious as it sits. The same goes for kishke, which tucks right into the cholent pot and basically cooks itself overnight.

Borscht, vegan chicken soup, and vegan matzo ball soup all taste significantly better the next day after the flavors have had time to settle. Just make 'em them the day before, refrigerate, and just reheat before Shabbat begins.

Vegan noodle kugel, and vegan apple kugel both are perfect make-ahead dishes. But not all kugels are like that. For instance, I really wouldn't love a day or two old vegan potato kugel. I mean, it would be like eating age old hashbrowns or something. ...Nope.

Vegan brisket and vegan corned beef both braise super-nice a day ahead and slice better once they've had time to rest.

You can pull off your entire Shabbat table without a single pot on the stove once the sun goes down!