Even if you have no intention of ever giving up meat, fish, dairy, or eggs, there’s a strong case for familiarizing yourself with some of the best vegan cookbooks out there. Not only is keeping to a largely plant-based diet known to be better for your health, it’s generally much more sustainable as well. (For a quick and comprehensive overview of how to eat green, see this New York Times guide.)
Happily, there are a wealth of brilliant chefs devoting themselves to making vegan food genuinely exciting, from Salt Fat Acid Heat’s Samin Nosrat—now a “part-time” vegan—to Eleven Madison Park’s Daniel Humm, who changed the three-Michelin-starred institution’s menu to be fully plant-based.
Join the revolution by purchasing some of the best vegan cookbooks available now, below.
When Hannah Che first decided to go vegan, she worried that it might compromise her cherished connection to her Chinese heritage. “My parents were immigrants,” she writes in the foreword to The Vegan Chinese Kitchen. “Food was the way they taught us about our roots; certain dishes were central not just to my family’s memories, but also connected us to a lifetime of people and occasions and places and times that went before and beyond me.” Cut to 2019, and she had decamped to China to study at the Buddhist-run Guangzhou Vegetarian Culinary Institute—rediscovering the centrality of vegetables in traditional Chinese cuisine along the way. This cookbook, subtitled Recipes And Modern Stories From A Thousand-Year-Old Tradition, sees her translate her findings into recipes for “jiā cháng cài,” or homestyle, dishes. In between instructions for making the likes of scallion oil noodles and stuffed cabbage rolls, she teaches you everything from how to prep chrysanthemum greens to the best way to maintain the perfect patina on a wok. A joy to read—and to cook from.
“We didn’t approach the book, like, ‘Oh, it’s a plant-based book,’” Ghetto Gastro founder Jon Gray told Vogue of the Bronx-based collectsive’s largely vegan cookbook Black Power Kitchen in 2022. “We were just like, ‘What do we want to cook? What do we want to eat? And what do we want to share?’ Before the advent of industrial agriculture, people weren’t eating meat every night. So we’re taking it back to that ancestral knowledge, and truly, this is how we like to eat—we’re not trying to prescribe or preach, but this is how we’re giving it up.” That means dishes like maroon shrooms, named after free Black communities in Jamaica and served with aquafaba aioli; chili lime liberation pasta, dedicated to Black August pioneers and developed from ingredients available on most prison commissary lists; and coconut ceviche with plantain chips inspired by Afro-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam. A masterpiece of a cookbook.
Dr. Shukla pays tribute to (and expands upon) his mother and grandmother’s traditional Gujarāti cookery in Plant-Based India, one of the cookbooks I found myself turning to again and again in 2022—and not just because it contains a near-perfect recipe for pālak tofu, a vegan take on a classic paneer dish. “Let food be thy medicine” is the approach here—note the charts guiding you through the best plant-based sources of different vitamins. There’s an entire chapter on dahls, another on chutneys and raitas, and a refreshingly gentle philosophy about veganism throughout. “I believe every step closer to a plant-based way of eating is commendable,” Shukla, a practicing doctor, writes. “It’s important that we are forgiving toward ourselves and that we give ourselves and others grace to make the choices that are best for each of us.”
Ching-He Huang’s Asian Greens is filled with dishes that are quick, simple, and affordable—a godsend on busy weeknights when your determination to stay plant-based is most likely to falter. The recipes nod to a broad variety of Asian cuisines, and are built around fresh produce, tofu, seitan, tempeh, and whole grains. The Fast & Furious chapter—with dozens of healthy stir-frys—is particularly great, and will convince you to invest in a top-notch wok.
As any good vegan chef will tell you, herbs can make or break a plant-based dish. Mark Diacono’s Herb is a masterclass in growing and using not just the classics (basil, chervil, dill) but also lesser-known wonders like anise hyssop and Korean mint. It includes recipes, too, many of which are vegan (or can be made so with a few easy substitutions), from tarragon rémoulade to pistou soup.
If a vegetarian diet that also happens to be free from gluten, dairy, and refined sugars sounds nightmarish to you, Amy Chaplin’s Whole Food Cooking Every Day might just change your mind. Most of its sections are built around a “base” recipe or skill, followed by clever variations. You will learn how to make genuinely delicious plant-based milks infused with star anise and vanilla bean; turn rice and seeds into gluten-free bread; and make a creamy dressing out of pureed vegetables.
Self-taught baker Sarah Hardy holds a sculpture degree from the Glasgow School of Art, and her cakes—beautifully captured on her Instagram page, Hebe Konditori—are as aesthetically pleasing as they are delicious. Her cookbook, Vegan Cakes, is a brilliant introduction to the world of plant-based sweets, teaching readers about the likes of psyllium husk, aquafaba, and xanthan gum, and features both veganized classics (like a Sherry Berry Trifle) and more unusual puddings.
A grassroots activist, Bryant Terry is fanatical about decolonizing vegan cooking, and bringing Southern, African, and Caribbean traditions to the fore. “I have approached recipe development as a collagist—curating, cutting, pasting, and remixing staple ingredients, cooking techniques, and traditional Black dishes popular throughout the world to make my own signature recipes,” he writes in the introduction to Vegetable Kingdom. There are nine chapters—Seeds, Bulbs, Stems, Flowers, Fruits, Leaves, Fungi, Tubers, and Roots—each filled with distinctive recipes, with the added bonus of an Afrobeats, hip-hop, and R&B playlist to listen to while you’re cooking.
If you’re a home chef who’s keen to move towards a more plant-based diet without going fully vegan, Ruffage is indispensable. A Midwestern farmer, Abra Berens’s knowledge of vegetables is encyclopedic, with each chapter focusing on a single variety, from asparagus to turnips. You will learn how to identify the freshest produce; how to store it; and every conceivable way to prepare it. Also genuinely useful: Berens’s guide on how to adequately build a sustainable pantry that will enable you to turn any veggie into a hearty meal.
While her previous cookbooks have focused on India, the recipes in Meera Sodha’s East are loosely inspired by the culinary traditions of South, East, and Southeast Asia. Sodha’s version of pad thai, for example, includes peanut butter and purple sprouting broccoli, while her take on nasi goreng is filled with Brussels sprouts and her kung pao is made with cauliflower. Each dish is explosively flavourful—and delicious enough to convince any plant-based naysayer that vegetarian food is anything but bland.
There are more than 1,500 recipes in Deborah Madison’s classic vegetarian tome, many of which are fully vegan. If you’re looking for a single volume to help you understand the power of “plant-centric” meals, this is it. Also of note? The vegetable index, which means you can quickly look up simple recipes based on what you have in your fridge.
Anyone concerned about maintaining a balanced diet as a vegan should follow Dena Hamshaw on Instagram (@thefullhelping). A registered dietician, her focus is on developing plant-based meals loaded with nutrients, and her cookbook Power Plates features some of her best one-dish creations. Master her formula for a Buddha bowl, and you will never go hungry again.
Rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel, Tim Anderson highlights the wealth of traditional Japanese dishes that are already plant-based in Vegan Japaneasy, taking special inspiration from shojin ryori, the cuisine served at Buddhist temples across Japan. Each dish is clean, simple, healthy—and truly elegant. One for vegans and non-vegans alike.
There are vegan blogs, and then there’s the Minimalist Baker, an encyclopedia of plant-based meals that can be searched by cuisine; dietary requirements; season; skill level; and more. Minimalist Baker’s Everyday Cooking is a collectsion of founder Dana Shultz’s most indispensable recipes, including a wealth of gluten-free options. The best part? All require less than 10 ingredients.
Yes, The Modern Cook’s Year is actually vegetarian rather than fully plant-based—but the majority of Anna Jones’s dishes are adaptable and include suggestions for vegan replacements where necessary. Divided into six micro seasons, its pages are a welcome reminder that even as a vegan, you should still try to use seasonal ingredients whenever possible.
Mildreds is a vegetarian institution in London, and the restaurant’s first vegan cookbook is dairy-free as well. Enjoy some of the heartier dishes now—the butternut squash terrine with redcurrant stuffing is dinner party-worthy—and save the clever barbecue recipes for the warmer months. The maple and thyme dressing is particularly great.
Yotam Ottolenghi knows his way around a vegetable, and his cookbook, Flavour, teaches you how to intuitively get the most flavour out of any form of produce, with dedicated sections on everything from Alliums to Charring. Among the standout recipes? Miso butter onions, spicy mushroom lasagne, and romano pepper schnitzels.
Even seasoned vegetarian cooks will be impressed by Anya Kassoff’s inventive recipes, from buckwheat risotto with roasted beets to leek, fennel, and chard pizza with an onion crust. There’s also an entire chapter devoted to veggie burgers, including her game-changing coconut black rice and edamame patties, and plenty of whole-food baking ideas.
