This article is a guest post I wrote for the comprehensive vegetarian resource site, Savvy Vegetarian. It contains the secrets of knowing how to make moreish meatless meals.

For those of you dabbling with or newly committed to a plant based diet, you will probably be having this problem. To me, a lot of vegetarian dishes suffer a lack of flavour that doesn’t seem to be fixed with salt. They taste rather one dimensional. They lack depth or fullness in flavour. To be blunt, they are bland.

This can especially be a problem for new vegetarians and flexitarians and I shall explain why. If it just doesn’t taste as satisfying as you expect, then it’s probably missing that wonderful essence known as umami.

Umami?
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to continue with this article, please head over to Savvy Vegetarian where it is published in full. It's worth your while, even if do I say so myself ;)

Let me make some suggestions:

Ditch the idea of a Western style dish. There are tasty vege sausages, vege burgers, lentil loaves (instead of meatloaf), and meat substitute products such as TVP (use instead of mince) and various mock meats usually gluten based, BUT...

The real variety of meatless meals

is in ethnic cuisines that have a long history of meatless dishes already. Oriental, Indian, Mexican etc. Go cornicopia. 

Explore!!

Each ethnic cuisine has a couple of signature carb bases, usually grains, but I'm counting potato here too. What starch/grain do I feel in the mood for? Potato, rice, pasta, polenta, bread, noodles, barley, wheat, oats, millet, quinoa....noodles, noodles, noodles (ok I have a mild obsession).

Choosing the base usually narrows down the cuisine options. Pasta lends itself easily to an Italian dish, noodles to an Asian dish etc. What cuisine am I in the mood to eat? 

Do I want spicy or creamy or soupy or dry? Baked, fried, stirfried, stewed etc. Answering this sometimes helps narrow down the options.

What do I have in the fridge already? Failing that, what is in season? Handy tip, what's in season is highest in nutrients and is usually the cheapest to buy. Can't go wrong with that combination!

Then it's a matter of putting it all together. Hmm, a potato based dish from South America using capsicums and tomatoes. Hmm, a noodle based dish with lots of bamboo shoots probably means Chinese something. Hmm, rice with a creamyness probably lends itself to an Indian korma which is great to use up all those odds and ends.

And then go searching for inspiration. There are so many recipe sites online it's not funny.

Here's an idea on how to search; modify these terms to suit and head for Google:
cuisine recipe grain other identified ingredients (and sometimes putting vegetarian on the end helps)

For instance:

Chinese recipe noodles bamboo shoots

or 

Chinese recipe noodles bamboo shoots vegetarian

Depending on the cuisine, if you want to use a substitute for meat in a recipe you've found, either tofu (Oriental) or beans (South American, Indian) will work very very well. Sometimes an appropriate cheese is great (Greek, Italian, Indian). I think because the meat is not the centre of many of these dishes, it is a lot easier to replace or remove it than in Western style I-have-a-hunk-of-steak-and-some-unidentified-greenery-on-the-side meals.