Vegan Festive Dishes From Around the World

Injecting an International Twist to Your Christmas Holiday Traditions

We all have our favourite festive traditions and Christmas wouldn’t be the same without them. They’re often things we enjoyed as children and looked forward to all year long. Often, we don’t realise that some traditions don’t even exist outside our own family! Although Christmas wouldn’t be the same without the foods we love, maybe this year we can mix it up a little by adding a traditional dish or two from another part of the world. Here are some ideas to get your creative Christmas juices flowing.

Christmas Across the Globe

First let’s take a trip to the Balkans. The traditional Christmas Eve meal in Bulgaria (and other Orthodox Christian countries) is entirely vegetarian. Many of the dishes include grains, stuffed peppers, fruits and nuts. Christmas Eve wouldn’t be the same in Bulgaria without mountains of walnuts on the table. They also eat koliva, which is boiled wheat sweetened with sugar, honey and fruit – but it could easily be veganised by swapping the honey for maple syrup or another sweetener of your choice.

From Bulgaria we can head to Poland, where they hold their main Christmas celebrations on Christmas Eve. Although fish is traditionally eaten, a number of vegan dishes can also be found on the table. These include a beetroot soup called barszcz, and a warm blueberry soup. Poles also enjoy dumplings called pierogi, stuffed with sauerkraut and mushrooms. Pierogi can even be enjoyed as a sweet dish, stuffed with strawberries. Gołąbk is also popular, which is cooked cabbage wrapped around fillings of your choice, so can easily be made vegan.

Just across the border from Poland, in Germany, stollen is a traditional Christmas treat. Stollen is a sweet bread containing nuts, spices, and dried or candied fruit, with a magnificent marzipan log running through the middle. Although stollen is traditionally made with eggs and dairy, it is easy to find vegan versions in supermarkets nowadays.

Now let’s head somewhere completely different: Ethiopia. Ethiopian food is naturally vegan-friendly but at Christmas it is tradition to eat meat. This is because in the days leading up to Christmas, Ethiopians fast by taking meat and dairy off the table. During the advent fast, injera – a bread made from teff – is served with almost every meal. Stews, such as Shiro Wot and Misir Wot, made from chickpeas and lentils, respectively, are also common vegan dishes. In the lead up to Christmas, Ethiopians enjoy a platter of injera bread and a variety of vegetable curries, sauces and stews, known as Beyaynetu.

Staying on the African continent, let’s travel down to South Africa. Here, Malva pudding is a traditional Christmas dessert. Malva pudding is a rich, sticky caramel pudding similar to an English sticky toffee pudding. It usually contains eggs and dairy but, like all recipes containing these, it is easy to veganise and there are plenty of vegan recipes online.

From South Africa, let’s jump across the Atlantic Ocean to Central America. In many Central American countries such as Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica, tamales are enjoyed at Christmas. Tamales are a corn dough (masa), traditionally filled with beans or pumpkin, and then roasted or steamed inside a corn husk. Tamales were enjoyed by the ancient Aztec and Mayan cultures and they’re so tasty their popularity has endured for hundreds of years!

If you’re starting to feel a little stuffed, don’t worry. We’re going to end with something fresh and fruity. It’s a relatively new tradition, but in China, people have started to give each other apples on Christmas Eve. The apples are usually decorated with a ribbon, a picture of Santa or even have a Christmas message printed on them. Apparently, the tradition came about because the Mandarin word for apple (pingguo) sounds very similar to the word for Christmas Eve (Ping’anye). Now, the apples even have their own special name: peace apples (ping’anguo)

The world’s too big a place to include every vegan festive dish but there are many more!

What other vegan festive foods from around the world do you know, and are you inspired to try something different this Christmas?

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This post was written by VRC Team
Vegan Recipe Club is part of the UK’s leading vegan charity, Viva!. We have hundreds of delicious vegan recipes; from easy weeknight dinners to showstopper desserts, and everything in-between! Keep your eyes peeled for new recipes each month developed by our expert team of foodies and from guest chefs too.