Our faves are “The Vegan Chinese Kitchen” and “The Korean Vegan Cookbook”. Also https://redhousespice.com/ has amazing vegan recipes.
Any ones that are available online for free?
Even before going vegan, America’s Test Kitchen was always my go-to when learning about a new dish/recipe. Their vegan cookbook is great.
“How it all Vegan” is great, and also one about vegan Italian cooking by Chloe Coscarelli.
Not vegan (sorry), but I thought The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen by Peter Berley was really good. Not all recipes are vegan, but most (all iirc) of them also have a vegan variant.
Big Vegan Flavor by leaps and bounds is the best. My non vegan partner has raved about the recipes.
I loved the name, but everything I ever made from the Veganomicon wound up in the garbage. Tasteless mash.
For me it is a german book called “Immer schon vegan” being about stuff that always was cooked vegan from all over the world. I do not know if it available in english
Yeah, I generally rely on the rainbowplantlife website more than a book. I will say the original Bad Manners cookbook had a really good wedding soup recipe. The recipes are basic for someone who has been vegan for a while, but it’s good if you’re just transitioning recently.
I’m personally not a fan of following recipes, but my wife loves cookbooks. A few of her go to are:
Veganomicon - By Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Terry Hope Romero
And The How Not to Die Cookbook By Michael Greger, Gene Stone
I just donated my veganomicon last weekend. I never found a recipe in there I liked.
I prefer cooking suggestions or inspiration than actual recipes. Recipes result in buying 10 ingredients and using a fraction of each, then having a load of things left over.
Suggestions can be adapted to better fit what I already have. Or if it differs too much then I might pick another that is a closer fit.
Something like ready steady cook, a UK cooking TV programme. Contestants given a bag of ingredients and have to make something with it. THAT is the kind of cooking I want to be better at.
Yeah, I wish there was an easier way to distinguish what I’d call actual “cook books” from the vast sea of “recipe compilations”.
I.e., books that go over techniques, but then maybe just give some recipes as examples.
The Wok by Kenji Lopez-Alt fits that description perfectly. It is a massive book, filled with a lot of technique and explanations, and additional recipes.
A similar book is Salt Acid Fat Heat by Samin Nosrat. She also has a short Netflix docu where she dives into depth about each part. It has accompanying recipes, but the main focus is on the know how and techniques.
Lol, 2 of the books that I own cause they do this well.
Might take a look next time I have some free time around the library. Shame I usually end up in that situation on days they are closed.
Then again I think there is one not too far from where I work, hour long lunch break with very little else to do.
Yeah, I tend to get cookbooks from the library a lot.
Big fan of Big Vegan Flavor, we signed up for her ‘year of meal plans’ thing and now if we don’t know what we want for the week yet before going shopping we just pick one that sounds good and the shopping list is already made. Not technically a cookbook though, I guess.
I did too recently and I already love how easy it made my life.
I always knew there were tasty vegan recipes out there because I have eaten at tasty vegan restaurants. I’ve just waded through a lot of junk before I found Nisha Vora’s YT channel and recipes.
Recipes for a Small Planet; Not totally vegan, and got it from my grandma so it’s old af. It’s also kinda the original vegetarian permaculture cookbook. I don’t have it’s companion book, Diet for a Small Planet.
(*Edit: After looking up what vegan communities have to say about it, it does need to be iterated that while I love the recipes, it also reinforces the “incomplete protein myth”. Believing in which raises the barrier of entry to veganism more than is necessary or reasonable.)
You don’t need a vegan cookbook, you just need Middle Eastern and South Asian cookbooks.
are you sure? From what I know about the cuisines there they do use a lot of dairy and a fair bit of meat.
I could be wrong, though
Middle Eastern cuisine has a lot of meat dishes but not nearly so much dairy, and the vegetarian dishes tend to also be vegan: falafel, hummus, Jerusalem salad, Persian salad, maklouba, baba ghannoush.
South Asian cuisine tends to be vegetarian and the dairy is usually ghee (sub in olive oil or another liquid vegetable fat). 90% of the recipes are already vegan-friendly: Chana masala, tarka dal, aloo gobi are my favorites. And if you do come across a meat dish, sub in green jackfruit and you’ll have a good time.
Sure, but if people are explicitly asking for vegan cookbooks, I don’t think they’d enjoy having a bunch of the recipes feature meat and even more some form of dairy
At least you’d want recipes that have known working vegan substitutes, so you don’t have to experiment yourself. You very often can’t just randomly substitute ingredients 1:1 and expect a good result
