The quintessential Christmas dinner may call for roast turkey, but a meatless feast can be just as extravagant and satisfying.

Even those who aren’t vegetarian or vegan but consider themselves health- and eco-conscious are finding plenty of reasons to consider swapping the stuffed bird for plant-based plates.

While red meat is the worst offender when it comes to environmentally unfriendly animal products, poultry takes its toll on the planet too. The broiler-poultry industry consumed about 240 billion megajoules of energy in 2005, or the equivalent of 42 million barrels of crude oil—more than the entire country of Sri Lanka used that year, an Agricultural Systems study found three years later.

Cost is another factor: a heap of farm-fresh veggies costs considerably less than a free-range turkey.

Then there’s flavour. With so many possibilities for vegetarian dishes, those throwing turkeyless festivities aren’t left wanting. The way Acorn head chef Robert Clarke sees things, turkey isn’t, in fact, the real star of the show anyway.

“For a lot of people, the highlight is secretly the stuffing,” Clarke says in a phone call. “People just love stuffing.…You can put it in muffin tins for individual portions or bake it in a casserole dish, then cut it up into slices.”

Clarke likes to use fennel, rosemary, chanterelle mushrooms, and diced pear in his stuffing along with a bit of vegetable stock and oil. “You can prep stuffing in advance, then bake it the next day,” he says. “It’s like chili: it’s usually even better the next day.

“I try to get a lot of my vegetables cut and prepared the day before [Christmas] so that the next day I’m just cooking—that saves a lot of time,” he adds. “Gravy you could do weeks in advance.”

A big dish of stuffing is a given on Heirloom Vegetarian Restaurant executive chef Jesse Jobin’s holiday table, too.

“There’s no reason not to do a stuffing even if you’re not having turkey,” Jobin says by phone. “If you are having turkey, just bake it on the side. Any recipe will work. Don’t get too complicated with it. Choose three or four complementary flavours—maybe some mushrooms, chestnuts, leek, sage, and thyme; you could add some mashed potatoes in there to make it a little heavier. Pack it all in and baste it with veg stock to give it that moistness that you’d have in the turkey itself.”

Clarke always offers mashed potatoes—“My daughter loves them,” he says. For her, they’re whipped with sour cream, but he makes them simply with olive oil for his vegan wife. “The sour cream adds a bit of tang, and I like to use Yukon Gold potatoes because there’s a bit of sweetness to them,” Clarke says. “And use a decent amount of pepper.”

Brussels sprouts don’t have to be the dreadful dish of decades past; Clarke caramelizes them, adding a bit of garlic and sherry vinegar. “People are used to having really mushy, overcooked Brussels sprouts,” he says. “You don’t need to cook them for too long.”

With a Hungarian background, Clarke is a big fan of braised red or purple cabbage, and he loves beets. For a fancier number, he does a different take on scalloped potatoes, using a purée of blanched fennel layered with roasted butternut squash, cashews, and onion. “When you bake it down, it’s almost like a gratin,” he says. “I did that last Thanksgiving, and it was a real hit.”

Jobin has come up with an elaborate veggie turducken (the usual version of which consists of a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey). “I’ve been toying around with taking a butternut squash, cutting it in half and hollowing it out, then taking the flesh and cooking it down with aromatics, chestnuts, gin…then cooking leek and apples, reassembling the whole thing up…roasting it whole, then cutting slices of it.”

Burdock & Co. founder and chef Andrea Carlson recommends a roasted sunchoke terrine for a showstopping veggie dish. “The savoury herb notes and the nutty caramelization are a rich addition to a meal,” she tells the Straight. Her recipe calls for four pounds of skin-on sunchoke, a quarter cup of olive oil, eight sprigs of thyme, two sprigs of rosemary, and a bit of salt. You toss all the ingredients together and roast them in a covered shallow pan at 400 ° F for 45 to 60 minutes, until the sunchokes are soft.

“As soon as they are cool enough to handle, press them into a loaf pan lined with parchment paper or plastic wrap,” she explains. “Wrap the top and press the terrine with a weight—an olive-oil tin or large can will work. Refrigerate overnight with the weight.”

From there, unwrap the loaf and slice it into half-inch to one-inch slabs. Season with salt and sear over medium heat in olive oil until you see a light caramelization happening. Finish in the oven at 350 ° F just long enough to heat through.

A big panzanella is a pleasing salad-type dish, Jobin says. He incorporates tomatoes, capers, olives, basil, and bread with beets roasted in vinegar, using the leftover liquid to make a bright vinaigrette.

“If you wanted to go Italian, there are lots of great premade gnocchi out there,” he says. “You can take some chanterelles, add in chestnuts, leeks, butternut squash, and apple with crispy sage on top, and serve that as a nice, healthy robust pasta.”

Time-saving is a must: forget roasting your own chestnuts, for example. “There is no point,” Jobin says. “Every Italian and Chinese market has these great little packages of preroasted chestnuts in a bag for 99 cents, and you’re never going to notice the difference.”

After all, while fine food is a treat, it’s not worth stressing out over the holidays.

“Just relax, open a good bottle of wine, and be with your family,” Jobin says. “Enjoy the company.”