Stanley Tucci’s Best Plant-Forward Dishes, From Pasta e Ceci to Pitti Fritti

Stanley Tucci is known for his iconic roles in films like The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and The Lovely Bones, but the Italian-American actor has also made a name for himself as a major foodie.

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As is evident from his travel and food show Searching For Italy, his multiple food-focused books (including the latest What I Ate in One Year), and his foodie videos on social media, Tucci loves to cook. His specialty, of course, is Italian dishes, many of which are pretty vegan-friendly (with a few tweaks). Find some of our favorite Tucci meals below, from hearty pasta e fagioli to sweet pitti fritti. 

Is Stanley Tucci a vegetarian?

If you’ve seen Searching For Italy, read his books, or follow him on Instagram, you’ll know that Tucci is not a vegetarian. Italian cuisine traditionally relies heavily on ingredients like meat, cheese, and cream, and the Italian-American actor indulges in all of it. However, he does make good use of plant-based ingredients, too. 

Many of Tucci’s recipes are plant-forward, made with traditional Italian plant-based ingredients like tomatoes, zucchini, broccoli, and chickpeas. Last year, he told Eating Well that many of his go-to pantry staples are plant-based ingredients.

RELATED: Stanley Tucci Loves Pasta e Fagioli, Here’s How to Make the Classic Italian Dish Dairy-Free 

“Olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil, carrots, celery, you can do a lot with that right there,” he said. “Risotto rice, polenta, pasta, and any kind of vegetable. You can do a million things with all of that.”

Below, we’ve compiled some of our favorite Tucci recipes—some are already plant-based as is, and others are easy to make plant-based with a few simple swaps. All are hearty, delicious, and inspired by the rich flavors of Italy.

5 of Stanley Tucci’s best vegan-friendly recipes

Cook like Tucci with these five vegan-friendly recipes from the actor himself. 

Stanley Tucci

1 String Bean Minestra

One of Tucci’s go-to family recipes is string bean minestra, which is a plant-based Italian soup laden with vegetables. “It’s this incredibly easy thing that my grandmother and my mother always made and now I make,” he says in a cooking video posted to Instagram. “You take a little bit of garlic, you take a little piece of onion, you take potatoes, zucchini, and some fresh tomatoes, and maybe a little splotch of marinara, and string beans and you throw them all into a pot.” He goes on to explain that you simply cook it down with olive oil and salt, to create a “very light soup that is absolutely delicious.”
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2 Pasta e Fagioli

In a Today segment earlier this year, Tucci demonstrated how to make pasta e fagioli, which is another simple Italian soup, this time made with beans and vegetables. “It’s a classic, classic dish, it’s been around forever,” he said, before whipping up his own version with cannellini beans, onions, and marinara. The recipe for the dish is also available in Tucci’s cookbook, Taste: My Life Through Food. The actor also adds chicken stock and dairy cheese to the recipe, but these can be swapped for vegetable stock and dairy-free cheese to make the dish 100 percent plant-based. “[Pasta e fagioli] has been abused sometimes, and made, sometimes, really badly, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s incredibly simple,” he explained.
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Stanley Tucci

3 Broccoli Rabe Tropiano Style

One of Tucci’s favorite side vegetable options is broccoli rabe, which, despite the name, is actually a bitter green more related to turnip than broccoli. It’s a popular Southern Italian ingredient, which is usually cooked with garlic and olive oil, just like Tucci does in his Instagram cooking video dedicated to the green. In the video, he demonstrates how he blanches the broccoli rabe first, before frying it in a pan with chopped garlic and olive oil. He adds that you can also throw in some salt, pepperoncini, and lemon for extra flavor. “It’s really a great side dish,” he says. “Lovely.”
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4 Pitti Fritti

In Italy, pizza dough isn’t just for, well, pizza. It can be many things, including a sweet celebratory treat. In one video on Instagram, Tucci explains how he’s celebrating his birthday with pitti fritti, which is simply pizza dough deep-fried in oil and then served with sugar. “It’s my birthday tomorrow so to celebrate I’ve made some pitti fritti,” Tucci captioned the post. “[It’s] essentially fried pizza dough for breakfast. Nutritious and delicious.”
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Stanley Tucci

5 Pasta e Ceci

Another of Tucci’s favorites is a plant-based pasta dish called pasta e ceci, which translates to simply “pasta with chickpeas.” In another video posted to Instagram, Tucci demonstrates how to make the dish by following a recipe from British farmer, author, and chef Julius Roberts. “I think he’s amazing,” Tucci says in the video. The dish is made with leek, onions, carrots, tomato purée, plum tomatoes, canned chickpeas, and pureed chickpeas. “It’s a great recipe,” says Tucci. “So simple.”
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