Easy Vegetarian & Meatless Recipes for Lent
Favorite Lent Vegetarian and Fish Dishes From Latino Homecooks
Looking for meatless meals this and every Lent season, like so many familias who observe the Catholic calendar? Every February and March, during Lent’s six Fridays, fish and vegetarian dishes take center stage at the tables of millions of us, including some of the most dedicated carnivores. Lent always starts on Ash Wednesday, which this year happens to fall on Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day!) and goes through Holy Thursday, March 28. The season culminates in the celebration of Easter Sunday. Cue images of colorful egg hunts, end of fasting, and Easter hats.
Or perhaps you eat meatless meals year round? Familia Kitchen is here to inspire every single one of you with traditional and delicioso vegetarian and fish recipes from our community of family-famous Familia Kitchen homecooks. Here’s our roundup of pescatarian and vegetarian dinner ideas!
Keep scrolling for delicioso recipes, including: shrimp diablo, shrimp empanadas, shrimp ceviche and shrimp mofongo, to whole-fried Colombian mojarra fish and fish escabeche, to tacos with papas and poblano rajas, and finally to rice and beans three ways: Mexican-, Cuban- and Puerto Rican-style. All delicioso! Plus: one family’s very special capirotada, a sweet and filling Mexican bread dish. Each of these recipes is personally vouched for by Familia Kitchen homecooks, whose families have been making these Lent Friday recipes for generaciones.
Shrimp Diablo or Camarones a la Diabla: Fancy, Fiery & Easy
Shrimp diablo or camarones a la diabla will probably be on the table when Vivi Abeja, one of our favorite Mexican cooks, wants to serve a meal that’s a little extra and elegant to honor a Lent Friday. To make this dish’s signature fiery tomato-chile sauce, ”I love adding a combination of chiles with the sweetness of a tomato. It gives it a spicy, smoky sweet flavor that I love.”
Air Fryer Fish Tacos: Spicy & Guilt-Free
These spicy fish tacos with jalapeño-flavored cabbage slaw and pickled red onions are Chicago cook Vivi Abeja’s No. 1 pick when we asked her for a Mexican dish that is waist-friendly and super delicioso. Vivi notes that these shrimp tacos are a go-to for many of her friends and family during the no-meat Fridays of Lent.
Crispy Bacalaitos, Puerto Rico’s Famous Cod Fritters
Bacalaitos aka cod fritters taste like Puerto Rico itself, says Doña Felipa Saez of Chicago: Salty, savory, crispy y bien hot. Start with dried salted cod, add onion, cilantro and sazón — and you’ve got one of the island’s favorite starters, beach treats, and popular Lent Friday dish.
Emily’s Mexican Shrimp Empanadas
Empanadas, particularly these ones filled with shrimp, are intimately linked to Mexican holidays, like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Lent. The preparation of shrimp empanadas becomes a joyous and collaborative process, uniting people and my family members as we all pitch in to make and eat them together,” says Emily González, 22, who lives in Chicago’s Albany Park, which she calls ”the most diverse neighborhood“ in the city.
Bex’s Shrimp Ceviche with Lime, Lemon & Mango
”This shrimp ceviche was created for a very special person in my familia,” writes Bex Streeper, one of our favorite Puerto Rican-Mexican food homecooks. Bex cures the shrimp in two types of citrus juices: lime and lemon. And then, for a touch of extra, she adds a third juice: mango. It’s unusual, and triple delicioso.
Mofongo with Shrimp & Garlicky Mojo
“Mofongo with shrimp is one of my favorite dishes,” says homecook Bex Streeper about this iconic mashed-plantain dish. “It is often my first meal I seek out when I’m in Puerto Rico. In my opinion, this dish is the greatest representation of Puerto Rican food.” Making it with shrimp means it’s ideal for Lenten Fridays and year-round no-meat eating.
Fried Whole Mojarra from Colombia
If you make pescado frito for Lent or any other dinner, Janeth recommends pairing it with two popular, traditional Colombian sides: patacones con hogao (fried green plantain rounds with a zingy tomato sauce) and savory-sweet arroz con coco or coconut rice.
Fish in Escabeche, Sweet & Tart
When her grandmother made this family-famous fish in escabeche, there were rarely any leftovers, says Lisa Kear, one of our favorite Panamanian home cooks. This pescado dish was served year round and especially during Lent and Holy Week. Since vinegar acts as a preservative, the fish was made before they left for church or evening processions. Hours later, on their return from church, the fish escabeche was waiting, ever-fresh, ready to enjoy. What a delicioso, traditional family-famous meal to look forward to as a child—one she is still honored to make for her family today, Lisa says.
Baja-Style Fish Tacos With Tilapia, Pineapple & Chipotle
These Baja-style sauce-drizzled tilapia fish tacos are loved in the home of MariCarmen Ortiz Conway of St Louis, Missouri. ”I use tilapia, which is sweet, light and fresh-tasting and takes on the flavors of the chile and cilantro beautifully.” And be sure to serve these fish tacos with flour tortillas (not corn) for the most traditional pairing. “Believe me: these tacos are so good.”
Tacos de Papa and Rajas
Potato tacos or tacos de papa with rajas are a traditional go-to in Mexico when you want to make a home-cooked, hearty, hot meal for a large family or group of friends. They are creamy-spicy-melty delicious — and one of our favorite tacos here at Familia Kitchen
Marifer’s Calabacita or Mexican Squash
This calabacita or Mexican squash sautéd with red bell peppers, tomatoes and corn is one of the dishes Marifer Rodriguez, a vegetarian Texas college student, most looked forward to during childhood visits to her grandmother in Mexico. “It always tasted so good,” she remembers.
Mexican Frijoles de Olla or Refried Pinto Beans
Anjie Villalobos makes these beans the same way her grandmother simmered frijoles back in New Mexico. “She always had these beans in the house. It was one of my favorite things to eat when I was little and we’d go over,” Anjie remembers. Refried pintos are abuela cooking at their time-honored best.
Arroz Congrí, Cuba’s Essential Black Beans & Rice
Congrí, a heart- and belly-filling one-pot dish combining Cuban black beans and white rice, is considered one of Cuba’s national treasures. Deservedly. ”This black beans and rice dish has been enjoyed in many Cuban households across the country and especially in mine,” says Emily Gonzalez of Chicago. A 22-year-old student studying healthcare marketing, Emily is proud to share this family-famous recipe with the Familia Kitchen community, proudly crediting it as essential to celebrating her Cuban-Mexican heritage.
Titi’s Easy Puerto Rican Beans with Sweet Calabaza
These super-easy, super-good Puerto Rican beans — habichuelas guisadas — with calabaza or pumpkin were served at my aunt’s house regularly. Unlike Familia Kitchenco-founder Kim’s grandmor’s from-scratch recipe for red beans, Titi’s recipe starts by opening a can of red or pink habichuelas and uses sofrito, always a good thing in Boricua cooking.
Emily’s Black Beans & Rice, from Cuba with Mucho Amor
Filling, affordable and delicioso, habichuelas negras are served pretty much every week in her Cuban-Mexican family, no matter the time of day or the dish they accompany. ”We eat them in the morning with eggs, mix them with chicken in quesadillas, put them in our empanadas, serve them for Lent, birthdays and Thanksgiving. And so many other dishes,” says Emily González, a vegetarian who lives in Chicago.
Capirotada, the Sweet Way to End Lent
This capirotada, the traditional Mexican bread pudding made every Easter Good Friday, is made with Mexican bolillo loaves, piloncillo unrefined sugar, and other sweet sabores. Capirotada is a delicious, hearty and the time-honored way to fill the hungry bellies and hearts of her fasting family and neighbors after six or seven weeks of no-meat Fridays. The Christian symbolism is baked into the traditional dish: The bread represents the body of Christ, the piloncillo syrup his blood, the cinammon sticks the cross, and the the cloves the nails that pierced his hands, side and feet.
The dish was the the star of Abuelita Toña’s spread in East Los Angeles every year, says her daughter Naomi Rodriguez. ”This is a very traditional dish for Mexican people. And it’s amazing.” Naomi, her sister Beatriz, and the rest of their large familia look forward all year to taking that first dulce bite of their mother’s family-famous dessert, which her daughters now bake in her memory.
What Is Lent? Its History, Meaning and Early Food Rituals
The word “Lent” comes from the Old English “lencten,” which means: springtime. Since Easter always falls on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring, the name is seasonally fitting. To celebrate the spring equinox—when the days start to grow longer and darkness finally begins to wane—celebrations in medieval Anglo-Saxon England honored the goddess Eostre, from whom we get our current Easter.
Why Are There 40 Days in Lent & When Does It Start?
But before the Pascual spring celebration, Christians are asked to first fast and repent. And so each year, Lent starts with the solemnity of Ash Wednesday, a holy day of penitence. The Lenten season ends 40 days later with a prayerful vigil on Holy Saturday, one last somber day before the joy of Easter. (Why 40? This symbolic number was adopted in 325 CE in Rome by the Council of Nicea, a nod to the number of days Jesus fasted in the wilderness.)
Why Do We Fast During Lent?
Because eating meat is associated with festive gatherings, Catholicism holds that abstaining from carne during Lent helps people connect with the sacrifice and death of Jesus. Fasting on Fridays became official in 604 CE, when Pope St. Gregory the Great proclaimed that during Lent, Catholics must abstain from “flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs.” This ruling evolved over time, until just meat was left on the no-go list. In 1966, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops affirmed that all Catholics 14 and over must abstain from meat on Fridays as a form of “voluntary self-denial” and ”by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law.”
That was a big change: It was no longer a sin to eat meat on Fridays in general and Lent in particular. As a result, the Catholic tradition of fish Fridays has pretty much disappeared in our increasingly secular age. But, out of habit and faith, many Catholics still observe the call to ditch meat during Lent Fridays.
But First: Carnival Comes Before Lent
Before the fasting, there is one last blowout feast. In many Latino countries, the day before Lent is for carnival! The word carnival is thought to come from the Latin carnem levare or carnelevarium, which means: to take away meat. Carnival historically served a practical purpose: the merrymaking helped use up all the church-prohibited foods before the start of Lent the next day: Ash Wednesday. It’s no wonder pre-Lent feasting is essential to carnival.
Old World Catholicism made its way to the Latino nuevo mundo with the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. This means Lenten traditions unique to Spanish-speaking communities (including family recipes!) have had centuries to develop and become part of daily life.
Today, local Lent customs vary across Spanish-speaking communities. In some countries, families go to church daily during Semana Santa or Holy Week, and in others it’s all about the holiest of holies: the big Sunday Easter mass. In Perú, the Tre Ore on Good Friday commemorates the three hours Jesus hung on the cross, a ritual that originated during the 18th century. Throughout Mexico and other Latino countries, elaborate religious processions fill the streets and locals reenact the trial and crucifixion of Jesus in the days before Easter. All fasting ends by Easter Sunday, when churches are filled with music, flowers and families, who often gather afterwards to celebrate over a rich meal that likely includes a savory roast. Goodbye no-carne Fridays—until next year.
If your family observes Lent or you’re looking for meatless menu traditional inspiration, here are six Family Kitchen community family-favorite Lent recipes.
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