High-protein vegetarian: 30 g+ of protein without chicken

Protein without meat is mostly a question of portion. A hundred and fifty grams of paneer, weighed into the bowl rather than scattered over it, carries more protein than most people expect, and a bowl built around it does not need chicken to reach the figure on the High Protein plan. The lowest-protein dish on the whole plan is 31 g; the highest is 49 g; the vegetarian dishes sit comfortably inside that range.

Five vegetarian bowls and their numbers

These are five dishes from the plan's vegetarian menu, with the figures as the kitchen records them: the dish as served on that base.

Why paneer first

A 150 g portion of paneer is where most of a bowl's protein comes from, which is why paneer leads the plan's vegetarian menu: Indian gravies from butter and palak to kadhai, chettinad and ghee roast, and international bowls where the same paneer is grilled for a Mexican burrito bowl, a Korean bowl, a shawarma bowl or a Mediterranean one. The gravy changes the fat and the calories; the protein stays close to 40 g because the portion does not change.

That is the thing to read in the table. The butter paneer and the burrito bowl sit near 700 kcal or above because they are finished with butter, cream or cheese; the palak paneer sits lower because the spinach does the work. All three carry about the same protein.

Soya and tofu for the lighter days

Soya rara on quinoa is the leanest of the five above, with the fewest calories for its protein, because soya chunks carry protein without the fat of paneer and the quinoa adds a little of its own. The plan's soya gravies, bhurji, do pyaza, kadhai, keema matar, makhni, matar masala and rara, are its answer to anyone who wants the protein without the dairy. Tofu appears in the Thai green curry and honey ginger bowls.

The base matters less than you think, and more than you'd like

Quinoa adds a few grams of protein and some fibre; brown rice and rice add carbohydrate; multigrain roti sits beside the gravy rather than under it. On Set up my plan you can choose the base for the whole week or let it rotate, and the week's averages move with it: the numbers above are the dish as served on that base, and a different base is a different row.

If you also eat eggs

The eggetarian version of the plan adds egg gravies and egg bowls to everything above, and they land in the same range: the Egg Mediterranean Bowl on quinoa, for one.

The plan comes in Veg, Veg + Egg, Veg + Non-Veg, Non-Veg only, and the vegetarian menu is the floor the others build on, not a lesser version of them.

What we don't claim

We print the numbers; we don't tell you how much protein you need. That depends on you, your training and your doctor, and we are a kitchen. What we can say is that every dish on the plan carries its figure, calculated from the recipe and the weighed portions of each component, that the served dish can vary a little, and that a week of the vegetarian menu averages about 38 g a meal across the plan. The plan is ₹450 a meal, GST and delivery included, and the plan page shows a real week with its numbers before you give us anything.