3 Vegan Thanksgiving Side Dishes You Can Make With a Juicer
Juicing and Thanksgiving is not a good fit?
Give these three easy vegan recipes a try
I love juicing and I love Thanksgiving. Things are cooling down towards the end of the year, it’s getting colder outside (at least here in Germany), people are generally looking forward to Christmas and I just like the city lit in beautiful colors. However, if you’re living a vegan lifestyle, Thanksgiving can sometimes be a challenge. From facing incredulous family members (“what you DON’T actually eat chicken?”), to keeping up with your own dietary goals during festivities.
For me this is a wonderful opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: I can use the juice pulp that is a byproduct of my daily juicing regimen and I can make some delicious Thanksgiving side dishes for my vegan guests. Note: I am not a vegan but many of my friends are, so I want to make sure everybody has plenty of options to choose from at my table.
Note: You do not need a juicer to create these recipes. Whenever I use the pulp you can just use finely minced vegetables. You’ll probably need less especially from the greens.
Watch me making these recipes on YouTube
geeez, that was a whole day of shootin' & cookin'
Mhhh, these are delicious vegan balls
Recipe 1: Vegan Balls with Home Made Spinach Basil Pesto
This vegan Thanksgiving side dish recipe is just awesome: it’s easy to make, you can use your carrot or sweet potato juice pulp and it just tastes delicious. On top of that we’ll create a nice green pesto (without parmesan) based on spinach and basil pulp and a generous splash of olive oil.
These are some of the ingredients for the vegan balls. Of course, not everything is juicer pulp. We have onions, celery, rosemary and thyme.
Just after sauté-ing the onions I add my juicer pulp of carrots and sweet potatoes.
Ups, I forgot to sauté the herbs so I added them a bit later.
That's how they should look before going into the oven.
And that's how they look out of the oven!
This is the spinach, basil pulp that I use as a base for my pesto. Of course, you can use basil and spinach just as is without juicing it.
That's how the pesto looks. Mine was a bit sticky so I added a splash of my home made veggie stock.
That's how these beauties look.
- Vegan Balls
- 4 carrots
- 2 medium sized sweet potatoes
- 2 stalks of celery, finely diced
- 3 onions, finely diced
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 5 tbsp olive oil, or more
- 1-2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 cup breadcrumbs
- 1 cup walnuts, graded
- 2-3 parsley sprigs, chopped
- 2 thyme sprigs
- 2 rosemary sprigs
- salt and pepper
- pinch of sweet paprika
- Pesto
- 8oz fresh spinach (less if not juiced)
- 3oz basil (less if not juiced)
- 2oz pine nuts, graded
- splash of veggie stock
- 5 tbsp olive oil or more
- 1 garlic clove
- salt and pepper
- 2oz parmesan cheese (optional, to keep it vegan)
- This recipe is for 9 vegan balls
Yummie red quinoa salad with kale
Recipe 2: Red Quinoa Salad with Kale Pulp
This recipe is for all of you who sick of plain ol’ standard salads. I highly recommend you use red quinoa as it just as a much richer taste and it looks nicer. We’ll add some great veggies to the mix: corn, red pepper, scallions and kale. I love my kale juices because it’s just so healthy, so I’m even more pleased if I can make use of that kale pulp leftover. You can find the exact instructions in the video above.
Red quinoa tastes great. I bring it to a light simmer in my home made veggie stock for about 15 minutes.
When it's ready it'll look like this.
These are my oven veggies, of course, you can use any you like but I chose: corn, red pepper, dried tomatoes, thyme and onions.
Sauté-ing kale with the scallions.
And lastly sauté everything together for another 3 minutes or so.
- Red Quinoa Salad
- 9oz of red quinoa (black or white is fine, too)
- 3 scallions, minced
- 2-3 corn cobs
- 1-2 garlic cloves
- 2 sprigs of thyme
- 1 red pepper
- 2-3oz dried tomatoes
- 1 onion
- 5 kale leaves (pulp)
- 1/2 lemon, juiced
- 1 pinch of sweet paprika
- This recipe is for 4 - 6 servings
Glazed sweet potatoes with rosemary
Recipe 3: Orange Glazed Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes can be considered a Thanksgiving classic. That’s why I needed to include them into my vegan recipe list. Also, they taste so delicious, especially in combination with cinnamon and orange juice. You have to try this. Obviously, no supermarket orange juice is allowed. But you don’t need an expensive juicer to get it. A standard citrus juicer will do just as well.
First, I need to extract some orange juice with my Omega juicer.
I won't allow any supermarket juice in my recipes. There is nothing more powerful than a freshly squeezed fruit juice.
I'm a cinnamon fanatic. The more the better. Also, it has great health benefits for your body.
Coconut oil is a great vegan butter replacement and will give your sweet potatoes a nice tropical taste.
And off they go into the oven.
- Orange Glazed Sweet Potatoes
- 2 medium sized sweet potatoes
- 4 oranges, juiced
- 1/2 cup of (brown) sugar
- pinch of salt
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 sprig of rosemary
- This recipe is for 4 - 6 servings
A little exhausted but happy
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I really hope you’ve enjoyed these simple vegan Thanksgiving side dishes. I really put a lot of work into these and can’t wait what you’re coming up with. Send me your photos on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
