10 Vegan Breakfast Ideas (#3)

Today's #VeganMoFo prompt is "Hearty breakfast--something to set you up for a day pounding the pavement in a new city." This fits so well with my "Vegan on the Go" theme, of course I had to do another breakfast round up! If you've missed my previous two vegan breakfast compilations, you can find them here and here. There are so many things you can try out for breakfast, although I'll admit it took me a while to round up this many! I'm a lot less varied in my breakfasts than I am in my lunches, so pulling these compilations together is fun for me because it means I get to explore new things. Here are ten more vegan breakfast ideas:

1. Hotteok (Korean Filled Pancakes)

Most hotteok varieties don't need syrup because of the filling, but you could add syrup if you had a really strong sweet craving. These Korean filled pancakes have a yeasty dough surrounding a sweet, nutty filling, often brown sugar and peanuts. Not all of them are vegan, but I have found a lot of vegan varieties in the freezer section of Asian markets. This one is a green tea flavor. Unlike American pancakes with syrup, these are very portable if you want something to grab to eat on the go. And if sweet isn't your thing, there are some less common savory options, too, like yachae-hotteok (hotteok filled with veggies and potato starch noodles).

2. Breakfast Sausage Hash

There are a lot of vegan breakfast sausages available these days; for this breakfast sausage hash I used Field Roast's Apple Maple Breakfast Sausage and based the dish roughly on a recipe found on the Field Roast website. Leaving the skin on the red potatoes gives a bit more color as well as nutritional value. Pre-cooking the potatoes in the microwave makes this a pretty quick thing to whip up, but if you're in even more of a hurry this could also be made with frozen hash brown potatoes O'Brien (the kind with peppers and onions already in the bag). If you're looking to impress someone, this would be excellent with a tofu scramble, too.

3. Chocolate Tofu Pudding

Silken tofu may be one of the most amazing ingredients in the vegan arsenal. It's how we get to eat pudding for breakfast and call it good for us! There are seriously tons of recipes out there to use; mine uses a package of silken tofu, half a cup of melted chocolate, a few tablespoons of cocoa powder, some non-dairy milk to thin it slightly (about 1/4 of a cup), and a splash of maple syrup, all blended well with an immersion blender and then chilled overnight, but you can adjust it to your own tastes. It's fine on its own, or you can make it fancier with toppings like I did above (shredded coconut, mini dark chocolate chips, and strawberry slices).

4. Breakfast Burritos

When you make a tofu scramble and/or some of the breakfast sausage hash above, try them rolled in a warmed tortilla with some hot sauce. I used to love the breakfast burritos at the Wawa near me as an omnivore, but this easily fills any of those cravings for me these days. Fillings are limited only by your own imagination.

5. Cornmeal Pancakes with Blueberry Syrup

A profoundly North American breakfast: Cornmeal pancakes are an indigenous food that, along with blueberries, would have been eaten on this continent in some form for thousands of years. Mine have been modernized with some European contributions, such as the addition of wheat flour to the batter for the pancakes, but you can find recipes that limit themselves to North American ingredients only. I used a recipe at Safely Delish for the pancakes and loosely followed Cafe Delights' recipe for the blueberry syrup. I spread on some vegan margarine and let it melt into the pancakes before pouring over the syrup. You could also have maple syrup or vegan honey, but the blueberries make a beautiful contrast with the yellow of the pancake and bring you some added nutritional value, plus complement the flavor of the cornmeal cakes well. These pancakes can be kept in the fridge for a few days and reheated, so if you whip up a batch of these on a weekend you'll have your breakfasts taken care of for a while.

6. Deluxe PB&J on Toast

Peanut butter and jelly on toast has been one of my favorite breakfasts for absolute ages, well before I was vegan. But there's a significant range of possibilities for your PB&J beyond the standard sandwich. Put fruit inside--bananas, apples, and strawberries all work really well--and maybe add some shredded coconut. When you're feeling really extravagant, toss in some chocolate chips.

7. Cheesy Grits and Mushrooms

Though I had some tempeh bacon with my cheesy grits and mushrooms, it really didn't need it. I'm happy to just eat grits with mushrooms. The recipe for cheesy grits I use is from Rabbit and Wolves, but I don't bother with the blackened tofu. As porridge goes, cheesy grits is probably my personal favorite. Sometimes you want something warm and savory. This is pretty much my definition of comfort food.

8. Smoothie Bowl

Smoothie bowls taste like you're eating ice cream for breakfast, but they're full of good stuff so you won't feel like you ate ice cream for breakfast. They get bonus points for being beautiful. They're also really easy to make. Just make a smoothie thicker than you would if you were drinking it--use less liquid, and you can also add flax seeds and/or chia seeds to your blender to help thicken it--then pour the thick, fruity goodness into a bowl and add whatever toppings strike your fancy. This one consisted of a frozen banana, some frozen mixed berries, a spoonful of almond butter, a splash of soy milk, a bit of maple syrup, flax seeds, and chia seeds; the mix was then topped with sliced kiwi, shredded coconut, and mini dark chocolate chips.

9. Breakfast Couscous with Apricots and Cranberries

Someday I'll find my perfect recipe for this, but until I can share mine with you, there are a lot of different ones online for breakfast couscous. I made mine guided roughly by a recipe in Reader's Digest's Live Longer Cookbook (1992). If you've not tried sweet couscous before, this might be worth giving a whirl. This version has dried apricots and dried cranberries, but I think cooked apples with cinnamon would also be amazing in breakfast couscous.

10. Orange Oatmeal with Almonds

You know I wasn't going to round up another set of breakfasts without reminding you of the orange oatmeal with almonds recipe I gave you a few weeks ago! It's a citrus-infused take on oatmeal that tends to sit on my stomach a bit lighter than many of the other things I do with oatmeal.

Let me know what you like to have for breakfast, too! I know there have to be tons of things out there I've not yet tried.